Sunday, April 24, 2011

A warm trip to a cool place

Dear readers,

I've been to Cameron Highlands and back for the weekends. Cameron Highlands is a reasonably established tourist attraction in Malaysia, which as the name suggests, is located at slightly higher grounds than most cities in my country. The whole journey spans from Saturday morning to Sunday evening, with a bunch of friends, 3 of them to be exact. We stayed in a quaint little hotel for the night. Cameron Highlands has always been famous for its high altitude and having cooler air than the rest of the major cities in Malaysia.



Allow me to provide a little history for Cameron Highlands. This place started out as a tea plantation at first. When there seems to be more space for crops, vegetable farmers joins the fray, and Cameron Highlands at that time houses tea plantation workers, tea factory workers, and vegetable farmers. With the population growing, the need for the basic necessities grows in accordance and merchants soon flock the agricultural town to provide services to the local community. When people started to have free time and a good life down in the hot cities, some of them had the notion to spend their holidays in one the cooler regions in the country, planned a trip uphill, and decides to like it.



So, the good word spreads to the rest of the people living in the hotter places, and when people started to flood the agricultural site to spend their time and money, hoteliers, wet markets and other opportunists soon flocked there and shaped that place into the Cameron Highlands that we know today. Cameron Highlands is now a hotspot for people who plans to do budget trips, as it is a place to chill out, literally, and let loose the loads of the grisly commercial world that we work in for that few pieces of paper in exchange for the good (and bad) stuffs.



With my brief history of Cameron Highlands out of the way, lets talk about what me and my friends did during the trip. I won't really drill down to the dirty details, but, for most of the part, we had fun hanging out in the room, around town, and enjoying the cool air that we don't get in the cities we live in. As the journey starts, all of us were picked up from our houses by our designated driver. It was a three hours drive, and with us playing around with the music collection of each other's electronic storage devices, and cracking out jokes among ourselves. Racism, sex, life, was the most common topics that us simple human beings can think of, and we were talking about it in what humuorous ways that we can think of. We decided to have brunch at a town called Rawang, because we aren't too keen on being starved for the whole of 3 hours.



When we finally reached Cameron Highlands, we stop by a dessert shop selling strawberry themed desserts for some sugary goodness, before heading to our hotel for the check in process. Once the check in process was out of the way, we took our dinner at two places. At first, it was at a fast food shop, and we extended our appetite to a nearby night market, which have several food stalls in it. We had :"Char Kuey Teow" and "Apam Balik" to fill our tummy to the brim. Heading back to the hotel, we bought some carbonated drinks that was supposed to be used as mixing solutions for the liquor that one of my friends have brought for the trip.



We had two noble intentions for the trip at start: To get pissed drunk on liquor consumption and to have steamboat under the night sky with cold air around us. Both these intentions have not been fulfilled. Instead, we had a different kind of fun playing the Fantasy Flight board games and card games that I have brought. There was a short recess in between the games, where we headed out to a convenience store nearby to get us some supper. Instant noodles, chips and nuts that was to accompany us for the rest of the night where we try to win the board game, which is an action RPG.




Waking up the next day, and after getting ourselves washed up and ready for the remainder of the day, we head down to have our breakfast at the hotel's cafeteria. It was buffet style and I ate up enough to survive for the whole day. Then the rest of the trip can be summed up by the places we visited: The tea plantation and factory, the bee farm, and half way up some god forsaken road that was en route to a hiking site, which wasn't part of the plan. 



One of the deepest impression that I have for the trip is actually that short period of recess that we had in between the games that we had in the room. It was the sky. The new moon was hiding itself from vision, so the night sky is filled with fickle spots of light, emitted by the celestial bodies that covers the darkness of the universe. At the period of me gazing at the stars, me and one of my friends had a brief chat on what is there to life. It's amazing that how different people can have so different views on the same subject.



I believe that in talking to people and trying to understand more of the topics that surrounds us daily, which can lead us to new discoveries, or strengthen old views with newer perspectives. It was a refreshing talk, even if I had differences in views of life with my friend. Inhaling the night air that is cooler and fresher than what we can get from the city, I went away from the balcony and continued the board game until the need for sleep claims the better of me, and the rest of us.




At the drive home, my friend shared a song from an artist that I love, which I never really got to know. I'll end this article with that same song.


Have a great week ahead, and if you have ANY inquiries, I'd be happy to oblige.

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