Malaysian signs made funny by their bad English

Some signs I've seen in Malaysia have poor grammar, resulting in some quite witty double entendres, especially in light of being in a predominantly Muslim country. Here's a few:

Incase they decide to attack you?


Presumably not a sex toy stall in a train station?

Not sure I'll be frequenting this cafe. Was it a vegetarian woman's finger?

No staring competitions in parks!

If you can't get the TV to work....

Women! Don't get any radical ideas like wanting to go out at night

Men! Don't even think about doing a hard day's work

Bahasa Indonesian - as simple as language gets

To have the people of 17, 000 islands with over 500 languages and often no formal education communicating, requires a pretty simple official language. Bahasa Indonesian is certainly that.

The vocabulary is of usually quite short words that seem to stick in my head much easier than any other language I've attempted. Some word and phrase sounds make me chuckle, like, "laba laba" - spider and "Dimana lumba lumba?" - Where are the dolphins? (very important for the Bali to Lombok ferry crossing). Others are quite poetic, e.g. "matahari" - sun (literally eye of the day). "Makan angin" - eating the breeze (I'm just strolling) - usually stops the hassler's persistent, "You need transport?" or, "Just look look [in my shop]". "P'lan p'lan j'lan j'lan" - walk slowly - was put to good use on our Komodo dragon hunting day.

Indonesian grammar is incredibly simple, with no tenses (adding yesterday or tomorrow to say I go indicates time), no gender, be verb ("saya lapar" - I hungry, "anda gila" - you crazy) or plurals. Making plurals or strong emphasis for a word is done simply by repeating it:
kopi - coffee, kopi kopi - 2 coffees
anak - child, anak anak - children
bagus - brilliant, bagus bagus - marvellous!
tidak - no, tidak tidak - NO!
sama sama or sama dua - you're very welcome (lit. "you're welcome twice") .

Some nouns are constructed from related verbs by adding small suffixes:
Makan - to eat, makanan - food (eat thing)
Minum - to drink, minumin - a drink.

To curse, there are some great expletives, including:
"Anjing!" - dog!
"Celaka!" - misfortune!
"Setan!" - Satan!
Can you imagine stepping in dog turd on a British street and yelling, "MISFORTUNE! DOG!"?

As well as the pleasantries, I think some stern or slightly antagonistic phrases need to be learnt in any new language, chiefly to prevent getting ripped off or being misinformed so as to hand over your money. With the 300% inflation of all prices for being Western, an indignant "mahal" - expensive leads the bargaining towards a more favourable value. When the quoted time for an event is too short to really happen, or excuses for super-inflated prices are pouring out, "pembohong" - liar brings the garbage-talker a step back towards reality. In obvious scam situations, "Gamoo bohong" is the ultimate insult, suggesting not only are you a liar, but one at the scum end of the social pile. Unfortunately, this was the phrase I used most frequently on Lombok island, see later blog site 'Louder than bombs'.

When I met up with Rob in Bali he greeted me with, "Hiya mate. Rambut anda chantik"- your hair is beautiful. What a useless expression! I thought. Not 15 hours later he'd cheekily put it to good use, yelling it to a young chap who'd sat down outside the warung (roadside food shack) just to stare at us, and who'd obviously dyed his hair himself without a mirror. Badly. Gary Glitter style.

Now we've both got a bit cocky with our use of the local lingo. To confuse the street hawkers with their ubiquitous , "Where are you going?" or, "Where is your wife", we reply, "Saya lupa" - I forgot. To return the cheekiness of nosey locals, we (only dare in Bali) shout, "Anda Chantik!" - You're beautiful! at cafe girls, old women forcing us to buy their pencils and bananas, and the wife of the hassling motorbike renter. "Sudah punya pacar?" - Do you have a boyfriend?, gets giggles from the ultra-friendly (ultra-beautiful) Balinese lasses.

I've not come across any confusing synonyms yet, the nearest being "[Gunung] berapi" - volcano, with "berapa?"- how much?: "Gunung berapa?" is asking how much the fire mountain is for sale for - a considerable amount I imagine as many of Indonesia's volcanoes are +3000m tall and active. Best of all though, Bahasa Indonesian is practically the same language as Bahasa Malaysian, useful as Malaysia is my destination for recuperation and battery charging before Cambodia....

Descending into an active volcano in a thunderstorm: Mt Bromo, Java

Josh and I made a pact that if we ever met up/travelled together after we departed South Korea, it should involve an active volcano. Two months later we were racing across Bali towards East Java and the smoking Gunung (Mount) Bromo.

The coach ride was as typical and interesting as bus travel in Asia. Firstly, there was the bus driver's kamikaze overtaking manouvres on single track and often untarmaced roads. Then for entertainment we had busking guitarists who'd board, cat wail, and then come round with a cap demanding payment for the unwanted ear-bleeding they'd just caused. Then they'd jump off the bus to be replaced by another guitar team and gesticulate 5 (5,000 rupiah) whilst pointing at Josh (kind, Western, apparently rich, tourist), who'd be pestered into stumping up cash again after a couple of minutes. I chuckled and gazed out at the stunning rice paddies, intricate temples and deserted black-sand beaches of south Bali whizzing by.
At Gillimanuk port, we became cacooned in a nest of boxes and rice sacks as the back end of our bus became a mobile parcel depot. Locals carrying great baskets full of water bottles and sliced fruit etc atop their heads were given only a minute to board the bus and harrass us into buying their wares, before the ferry ramp starting lifting and they frantically scrambled off the ship, some running the 45 degree slope and leaping a 2 metre gap without dropping a single pack of peanuts.
On Java, the difference in wealth and culture compared to Bali is considerably wider than the 1/2 hour ferry crossing: the art and temples swapped for functional concrete and corrugated iron buildings and mosques. The single-track major artery to Surabaya was lined with food stalls, headscarved ladies, and men just sitting around or piling more sacks onto the loaded bus. Rice fields looked barer and the agricultural landscape semed much more exhausted than Bali's.

There are 2 kinds of time: real time and Indonesian time. In real time our bus journey would have been 7 hours, but as our bus and driver ran on Indonesian time it took 11 hours. Thankfully, the 1 hour time zone change as we sailed across the Bali Strait meant we arrived at Probollingo bus station (via Brisbane?) at only 11pm. We (two 6-footers with big rucksacks) were then wedged into a seat stuck on the front of a rickshaw bicycle by 10 men just milling around (don't they have homes to hang around being uselessly in?), and set off at a snail's pace (pity the poor old sod who pulled the short straw) for what would have been an 8km crawl to a hostel. To save another hour and heaps of patience, we jumped out and walked a little faster to the first hotel we came to.

The next morning we got up for an early start up to Cemoro Lawang village, perched 2000 metres high on the rim of the Tengger mega-crater: a 10 km wide caldera floored with black sand and containing the smaller volcanoes of Bromo (2329m), Batok (2440m) and Kursi (2581m). Our transport was a 26-seater bus that was going nowhere until full. So much for getting there early for a seat. We impatiently passed 2 hours playing the Korean games Paduk and Omok whilst our bus idled in the bus station or drove to a petrol station and back with a boy hanging out the bus door and yelling our destination into the ear of every pedestrian. We got excited every time the bus moved, alas only to do another lap to the petrol station. No wonder Indonesia is a poor country! Half the workforce and their rapidly rotting produce are being driven circuits around their towns looking for other potential bus passengers. The other half (mostly male) are just squatting on the roadsides and staring intently and nothing in particular. Does the country need so many half-redundant bus, bemo and rickshaws drivers and life spectators? How about some road builders?
Finally, we were driven up the steep, winding, precarious, stunning route up the Tengger massif, chatting with school kids who, "Wow!" ed at our places of birth then babbled on about Beckham, Ronaldinho and Rooney.




Javanese Beckham fans

After ditching our bags in the first hostel room we saw, Josh and I dashed across the main crater floor of grey sand 'desert' and outwash fans of sand and ash that have poured down the ugly slopes of the bellowing Bromo volcano. We passed the contrastingly beautiful Gunung Batok, cut by gullies and covered in vegetation so resembling a giant lime jelly castle, with such enthusiasm we didn't notice the rapidly thickening and darkening clouds.

Gunung (Mount) Batok rising from the floor of the giant Tengger crater

At Bromo volcano, we bolted up a staircase of extremely corroded iron and concrete then stared down into the crater and its exhuding plume of grey, noxious steam rising from a pit with walls green-tinged with sulphurous compounds. When the wind brought the cloud in our direction we coughed and wheezed and rubbed our stinging eyes as the rotten-egg gas, laden with sulphur dioxide and sulphuric acid, attacked our bronchioles and corneas as it has the concrete steps. We purchased a bunch of flowers to hurl in as an offering to the god within Bromo and pray for our safe return to the hotel. Upon taking our money, the flower-seller legged it down the steps to his horse, looking up at the angry dark sky, though I didn't think much of it.

Making an offering for protection to Bromo

Off we set to do a lap along the narrow crater rim, steeply dipping ash layers on one side of the sharp circular arete and smoke-belching crater to our right.

Inside Gunung Bromo

"Fancy descending to have a closer look at the smoke hole?"

"I'd like to state on record that my first attempt at rock-climbing shouldn't be out of an active volcano."

Half-way round the crater rim, we noted what may have been a faint track downwards. It was then I felt my hair rise and scalp tingle with intense static and I realised a lightning strike was imminent. I crouched low on the narrow arete until my scalp stopped feeling tickly. Then the Heavens opened, accompanied by a lights and sound show of electric flashes followed only a second or so later by growls and grumbles of thunder. Did we continue to walk around the flat crater rim and stand out like, well like lightning conductors? Or did we descend into the smoking crater to seek shelter from the storm? We opted for the latter and a minute later Josh was leading the way down the steep side.

Josh (middle right) leading the way down into the belching mouth of Gumung Bromo

After a while we came to a sheer drop and could go no further. We had no shelter and were soaked, nervous, torchless and the light was fading.

There's no way down and no shelter from the storm here

We realised we had to dash for the hotel 3km away, putting all our faith in the urban myth that we'd be safe from lightning in our rubber soled trainers, and that the god inside Bromo was happy by our offering earlier. We tentatively ascended to the crater and strided and slipped our way half way round the volcano rim to the steps and down onto the sand plain. Now were were truly the highest points for kilometres around. We made it back across the Tenggar crater floor, flash flooding in places, for the most relieving and thankful to be able to have one again cup of hot tea.

The next morning was a 3am starter, to hike up to the highest point on the Tengger caldera rim (2770m), for sunrise over the local volcanoes and the towering Mt. Semeru (3676m) behind. Our guide was a friendly and spritely lad and got us to the viewpoint for 4am rather than 5am, so we could stand shivering and wet in thick fog for an extra hour. Sunrise was just lighening of the fog and at 7am we descended to get Josh on his bus back to Bali. Even though the fog never lifted and we saw nothing but the inside of dense cloud, we gave our guide 60,000rph (6 dollars) payment. He was absolutely thrilled as it greatly subsidised his 1 dollar for 16-hour working day wages, and said his pregnant wife, who he saw only once a week, would be happy too. He'd also put a bit of it aside, towards a motorbike.

On our descent we passed truckloads and horseloads of workers and their baskets, off for another day's toil in the fields. They wore colourful shawls and ponchos and scarves around their heads, and I felt like I was in the Andes. Josh was doing a good job of concealing his disappointment at not seeing sunrise over the volcanoes. As we came out beneath the clouds, Gunung Semeru, hidden beneath the height of the far wall of the Tengger crater, revealed its hiding place by releasing an almighty ash cloud high into the sky. We watched the plume rise and roll and fold then start to dissipate in the high atmosphere winds. 18 minutes later we were treated to another eruption. Josh saw his 2 active volcanoes in 1 vista after all.

An ash plume rising from behind the far wall of the Tengger crater, revealing the hideout of Mt Semeru.

I, however, merely had my appetite enhanced by 2 smoking volcanoes in a day. So I took a 10-hour bus journey east with a lass from Chorlton (so great chat), past flat-lying rice fields occasionally protruded by +2000m high conical stratovolcanoes, to Jogjakarta city at the base of Gunung Merapi. Despite a stroll on the lower slopes of the near-3km high pyramid of Merapi, described on local postcards as the most active volcano on the world's most volcanically active island, we saw little of its peak. The rainy season ensured Merapi's summit was tantalisingly hidden in cloud, although I could make out the difference in textures between water cloud and ash cloud mingling near the top of the volcano. Its lava flow wasn't visible at all.

*2 months after my volcano mooch of Java, I see on the news that Merapi has started violently erupting and Jogjakarta city and the villages on the volcano's slopes may have to be evacuated. I'm jealous of those locals able to witness Merapi's waking up, but also very concerned about their lives and livelihoods. After its pyroclastic flows killed dozens in the 1990s, Merapi must be regarded by the Indonesians, who understandably don't want to leave their land and homes, as nothing less than a very formidable and dangerous volcano.

Blissful Bali, and scaling its beastly volcano, Agung

I'd never fancied visiting Bali, as I'd got the impression it was an Ibiza for teen Aussie backpackers. With its vivid culture, spectacular scenery and temples, and enormous conical volcanoes, that ignorant opinion couldn't be any further from the truth.

I arrived in Bali into a late night torrential rain storm, and raced to the nearest tourist resort for an easy hotel search. Kuta-Legian is the town hit by the Bali bombs that killed 202 nightclubbers and locals, and left the tourist industry today absolutely decimated. Walking through the next morning's downpour in search of a poncho, the only men standing on the street pestered me with, “Transport transport? Cheap price” and did not abate until my responses turned to necessary rude. The place was a ghost town: the McDonaldses, cafes, bars with Happy Hour billboards, big hotels and resort complexes all devoid of custom. Local workers sat idle, miserably looking out across the rainy street or down at their hands permanently holding a cigarette. The only courteous Balinese chap I met stood at a big hotel's palm-tree lined driveway entrance, with a mirror on a pole and checking for explosives under each arriving vehicle. I decided to flee for somewhere with a bit of life. I had to pay my day's budget to hire a private minibus to Ubud village, as the local shuttlebus had been cancelled due to a lack of passengers. It was well worth it.

There are some places that each of us holds as personal world heritage sites: the Mancunian footie stadium we got our first bar job; the beach in the quaint uni town where we played cricket on Wednesday afternoons; Prague. Bali's Ubud belongs to that list. Even in the driving rain, Ubud was visually stunning with its picture postcard terraced paddy fields, Monkey Forest Road lined with craft shops and cafes that are too cool for anywhere else I can think of, and incredibly ornate and colourful Hindu temple as every other building. At each corner of most houses, were shrines with carved statues and clouds of incense smoke and baskets of fresh fruit and flowers.


Typical cultivated landscape of paddy fields and tropical fruit trees



Typical temple (seemingly every other building in a Balinese town)



Typical Balinese artwork

For 2 quid I got a brick and bamboo bungalow with tropical garden creeping towards the balcony and free local coffee. At dusk the noise of birds, frogs in the fountain and chiming of bamboo gockenspiels sent me and the woman harvesting the adjacent paddy field drowsy.

The 2 quid a day bungalow

After another drenching looking for a cafe dinner, I was invited to a restaurant table by a group of Banda Aceh tsunami volunteers and their friends. French and drunk Vincent was thrilled to hear I was from England, and keen to share with me his song for the English, "You... can... go... f**k yourself, you can go.................... repeat until bored" However, what I thought was going to be a long evening turned out to be a cracker of banter and rum, especially as it culminated with me having to pull the legless Vincent out of the knee-deep-in-porridgey-mud rice field that he'd impressively, though unintentionally, back somersaulted into.

As a perfectly compatible group, we spent the next few days cycling by the most beautiful cultivation landscapes and most intricate religious buildings I've ever seen, and chatted with the carvers of most expertly worked sculptures. Eva and I visited caves inhabited by bats that fluttered in our faces and around us. Wearing compulsory orange sashes (no Glasgow Rangers connotations I'm sure), we hiked to 1000-year-old temples perced precariously on deep gorge edges, through dense tropical forest hosting the delicious combination of red coffee beans, fat cocoa pods and sweet mangoes growing within the same armreach. I learned from these Pharmaciens Sans Frontieres volunteers of the immorality of Western and Chinese pharmaceutical companies who'd sent hundreds of tons of out-of-date medicinal 'aid' to the tsunami-destroyed areas of Banda Aceh. Their twisted incentives included gaining tax breaks as a result of their 'charity' and, by shipping it to poor Indonesia, be desposing of their unsaleable drugs more cheaply than they'd be able to in the West.

With village names including Gitgit, Gobleg, Bone and Ringdikit, we had to explore more of Bali. The best option was by motorbike, though not my favoured one after 2 motorbike falls out of 2 motorbike rides in Thailand. Whilst hiring our guest house owner's motorbike for a quid a day, he didn't help my nerves when warning us of motorbike parts thieves at the tourist spots we planned to visit. Of even more concern was our lack of a motorbike/international driver's license (if I'd known I'd need one when I was passing the fake documents stalls on Bangkok's Ko San Rd...) and prediction by our hostel man that we'd be stopped by transport police. I'm not usually one for supporting public sector corruption, but I had no choice but keep a 50,000 rupiah license absence waiver in my top pocket. Thankfully, I didn't need to donate it to any bent traffic coppers.

First stop was the royal Balinese palace at Klungkung, with wall murals within its court room depicting horrific punishments. Farmers being whipped into doing the work of the oxen they'd mistreated and people who'd farted in public places having hot pokers thrust somewhere they wouldn't pass wind from again, stand out.

Mean Balinese farmers paying for their cruelty to animals

After a fried noodle lunch in Gelgel village, we took a dirt track through paddy fields to the middle of nowhere. By a tiny shrine with adjacent graves, we watched people doing laundry in the river. The only sound was the chanting of a male choir somewhere in the direction of the mighty volcano Rinjani on Lombok island, filling the horizon from a couple of hours sailing away across the sea. Near Besakih temple, we stopped to watch a religious ceremony and were mobbed by children dressed in the traditional Balinese garb. At the ceremony's end, we watched mesmerised as hundreds of women exited to take fresh fruit to a shrine, balancing many-kilo fruit baskets on their head as they walked down the road.

Traditional Bali dress

Ceremonial procession of women carrying offerings for the gods to the shrine

Our final destination for the day was the base of the beast Gunung Agung ('Biggest Mountain') that towers 3041 metres above Bali (reduced from 3142m by its 1963 eruption), with the obvious intention of climbing it. After collecting friends Frank and Maude and our guide, Gung, we started the ascent at midnight, from 900m altitude.

Gunung Agung volcano punching through clouds. Photo taken from 25km away on Lombok.

The first 4 hours of ascent were through thick and humid jungle. It was pitch dark beyond our torch beams and eerily quiet. I never imagined that the place most naturally smelling like a florist or cosmetic shop would be the side of an island arc volcano in the middle of the night. The sweet floral fragrance was sleep-inducingly intense. Also unexpected was the absence of scary animals and insects. Except the leech I found on my arm and gorging on my blood that put me on red leach alert thereafter. An odd animal story Gung told was that once a year a cow or goat is dragged up Agung, to be sacrificed to the Hindu god of fire. I struggled to imagine how humans could get a cow up here. The gradient had become a continuous 45 degrees and we slipped and slid in mud and loose gravel, and used tree roots (projecting out where the path had been washed away) like ladder rungs. Thankfully, cattle are led up a shallower gradient path that we weren't taking as an important ceremony was taking place there this evening. Well not thankfully for the animal, as at the summit it is shoved into the volcano's crater to tumble to its deathly fate with Brahma.

At 2500m high the vegetation quite abruptly changed from jungley to Alpine shrubs, pines and long grasses. The hot breeze changed to a cold northerly and fleece, hat, scarf and gloves were hurriedly donned only minutes after leaving the jungle. The path morphed from eroded gravelly gully to crusty lava: like walking on a giant, stale, meat pie lid. From a sheltered resting place (4am) I watched sweeping torchlights belonging to local people as they foraged for vegetables to sell at the local market at 7am. The sharp edge of the flickering lights of Dempasar city marked the Bali Strait washing the shore a couple of kilometres below us.

Only Eva and I contined to the summit, scrambling the steep slope and often sliding 2 steps back for 1 step forward, only halting a slide by digging fingers into the pumice piles we were trying to climb. The volcanic rocks alternated between fall and flow deposits, with rhyolitic dribbles preserving their fluid flow structures before rapidly decomposing to shingle and sand.
Under pink sunrise clouds at the summit, Gung made an incense offering to the gods while we ate Top wafer bars sat on the top of the crater rim feeling top. As the sun climbed above the horizon, the perfectly pyramidal shadow of Agung shrank back from by the volcanoes of Java, to maybe only twenty miles long across the outwash-cut gorges and rainforest 3km below us. It also crept around towards the active volcano Batur, sat inside a giant caldera that clouds poured like cappuccino froth over the rim of. To the north the back arc sea was shallow and light blue, whilst south of Bali the fore arc Indian Ocean was a deeper blue.

Descending into the many-miles-long shadow of Gunung Agung, cast across Bali 3km below towards the volcanoes of Java

Eva and our guide, and the 1717m high volcano Batur (below us) at sunrise

Descending, the only sound was of the wind, and my remains of my trainers (shredded by the sharp volcanic rocks) crunching the pumice gravel. Back at 2500m we thawed with hot tea and noodles, before trudging, exhausted, down through the heat and humidity of the rainforest. We arrived back at Besakih Temple at 1pm, totalling 4200m of tropical and freezing ascent and descent in 13 hours.

To the heavenly coral reef atolls of the Gili islands next, for a well-earned rest...

Kuala Lumpur and the Cameron Highlands

Kuala Lumpur and tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands

Despite the name 'muddy confluence', Kuala Lumpur is an incredible city: a fusion of stunning Western and Muslim architecture, many cultures and races, and a public transport dream. Even my arrival into Kuala Lumpur by bus from the Teman Negara jungle was an adrenaline rush, as the suspiciously cheap-ticket coach dropped something I suspect was the gearbox onto the middle lane of the motorway, and a hitchhike ensued.
My first view of the city, from many kilometres away, was of the world's tallest Petronas twin Towers, like some Fifth Element or Coruscant (Star Wars) building: double shimmerings of 452m of shiny metal and glass, incorporating into their design the 5 pillars of Islam and the 8-sided star I see in every street paving stone.

The Petronas Towers

From the top of the KL Tower the whole city can be seen, including the old railway station and British colonial era Merdeka Square buildings, that remind me of the trippy architect Burgess's buildings in Cardiff. Best is the city central cricket pitch, surrounded by mock Tudor buildings. I had a great view from the top of the KL Tower of cumulonimbus clouds build, then deposit rain and lightning on only the east part of the city.

The colonial buildings and cricket pitch of Merdeka Square

The old Central Station

The major populations are Malay, Chinese and Tamil Indian and all are extremely hospitable. English is widely spoken, and although a little odd at first, seeing Indian and Malay people conversing in English in a Chinese restaurant is now completely the norm. The females are extremely beautiful, almost all getting a 7 out of 10, and I find the Muslim Malay ladies extremely, mystically, sexy with their headscarves, tight jeans and shy smiles.

My typical daily routine is to go into Chinatown for my fresh fruit for breakfast: a mango, banana, apple orange, avocado and 1 piece of some fruit I've never seen before. Today I had a dragonfruit: pink and baking apple sized with yellow leaf-like peelings of skin and white inside with thousands of tiny seeds.

Dragonfruit

Dinner is always in Little India, and usually a roti canai or uppatham bread with tomato and chilli, coconut and lentil curry sauces, all served on a banana tree leaf for a plate and eaten with the right hand. Left-handed Rob made the faux pas of using the 'wrong hand' to eat, and we had a crescent of waiters round our table laughing at the Englishman eating curry with his bum-wiping hand. I keep forgetting the stigma attached to the left hand, and regrettably have raised my left hand at drivers urging them to let me cross, and, doubly regrettably, shook my left hand at a beggar as an, "I'm sorry I have no change" that I hope he interpreted as only that.

The public transport system here is from the future. Where else can you go across a capital city take by driverless underground train with front windscreen to watch the tunnel walls race by, that suddenly emerges into the bright sunlight to go above streets as a monorail (weaving like a slowish rollercoaster between buildings and streets), then a silent and smooth commuter train, followed by a bus, all for 60p and only 10 minutes maximum wait between each?

Kuala Lumpur is definitely a city of the future, and what a cultural overload of a place to live!

The Cameron Highlands

Despite my enthusiasm for Kuala Lumpur, the heat is too stifling for a long stay. So for my birthday, Rob and I fled for the Cameron Highlands, a blissfully mountainous place and interesting fusion of: Alpine and Troodos scenery; Indian restaurants; patches of jungle on the high slopes; little pieces of colonial Britain; villages with wooden stilted villages of no-longer-traditional Malaysian aboriginals and tea and strawberry plantations. Oh, and a hitchhiker's paradise.

We took a luxury VIP bus for a couple of quid, the 3rd of 3 Malaysian coaches I've travelled on with luxury interiors and half-blitzed gearboxes, this one screaming for mercy as we meandered steeply up into a landscape not dissimilar to the Troodos Massif of Cyprus. That is until we came to rows of finely pruned tea bushes terracing the hills away to the horizon. The climate was a refreshing cool after the tropical last 2 months and I wore a fleece for the first time since Korea. My birthday banquet in an Indian streetside cafe came with a 3 for 2 beers deal (pretty exceptional in a Muslim country), hard bargained with the waiter, a Nepalese doppelganger of Dan Raynor.

The next few days our group of randoms hiked to the main sights. A jungle track down to a tea plantation was barely trodden compared to the touristy ones of Taman Negara rainforest, sometimes 30cm wide and precipitously by a 100 metre high and steep forested incline. The trees were much smaller than Taman Negara's, certainly none of 2 metre diameters, and the dentist-drill sounding insects and humans were thankfully absent. Our 'reward' for getting out of the jungle after losing the track was an extortionate 18 Ringgit for home grown tea and a scone. Sod that! We had the hostel's cheaper option, complete with cream and jam. Marvellous!

The Cameron Highlands still retain much of their British colonial heritage. English Beth and I left our Cameronian Inn hostel and took a bus as far as the Brichang golf course club house, as seemingly every other vehicle that passed us was a vintage Land Rover or new Discovery model. We visited the Healthy Strawberry Farm and tried to blag an hour picking the fruits in return for free punnets, or assistance with the jam-making and a free jar of yesterdays batch afterward. Our kind offers of cheap labour were declined via the local electrician acting as translator. So we walked up to a non-traditional Malay aboriginal village, where 50 wooden houses on stilts with grassy roofs competed for hillside space with, more numerous, washing lines crammed with sheets and clothing. It must have been village laundry day, and what with the green grassy slopes and blue cloudless sky, the image was straight off a Daz Ultra TV advert.

Another day, Rob, Beth, Parisian Julien and I strolled down through the rows of tea bushes of the Sungai Palas Plantation, past the occasional mock Tudor or turreted, Scottish Laird's house, and down to the tea processing factory. We gave ourselves a tour of the factory, round big, sturdy, 1930s tea leaf grinding and drying machines. I tried to blag a 1/2 day tea picking for only a small fee from the plantation manager, but she explained it wasn't possible as the migrant Indonesian workers slaving for a basic Malaysian wage would be unhappy at having some of their earnings picked by us pleasure seekers. Fair enough. Only later, when I spent 2 months in Indonesia, would I see how desperate Indonesians are for a decent day's income to send home. I had a pot of the home-grown orange pekoe tea, recommended as an excellent choice for a breakfast and I concur.

To cover the 7km back to The Cameronian, we had a hitch-hiking competition: 2 teams of 2, each having only 5 minutes by the roadside to charm a lift. We got back to the hostel in 3 rides, each accomodating all 4 of us (on the 1st pick-up truck we got the driver to stop for 4 Scandinavian pedestrains too) and a total by-the-road waiting time of only 21 minutes. Easy! For my last evening before venturing away to Indonesia, I persuaded the team to take a night venture into the jungle, armed with only torches, red wine and blonde Kent lass. We saw big crickets and spiders, thorny stick insects piggybacking their young, and a big green insect emerging from its chrysalis. What a rebirth it had, surrounded by giant bipedal creatures making blinding flashes with their cameras. Then back to the hostel for a local-grown tea and sleep under a blanket.

Bali next.........