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.........