Cameron Highlands: Tea, Strawberries, Rafflesia, and Dead Bugs

For as long as I can remember, being a passenger in a moving vehicle has always equated, for me, to being a sleeping deadweight in a moving vehicle. That’s because my body has always been especially susceptible to motion sickness, and it’s primary defense mechanism, as though in a gesture of defeat, is to completely shut down into a deep, conflicting-avoiding sleep that takes me far, far away from that screaming, confused, and pissed off vestibular.

Naturally, my body was not too enthused about the last hour of my bus ride into Cameron Highlands, an absolutely beautiful hill station in peninsular Malaysia, no doubt, but accessible only through an extensive pass of ridiculously windy roads (the locals call it the “snake roads”). It didn’t help that the bus driver drove as though he had some kind of mission to overcome the forces of inertia, or maybe he needed to pee really bad, but a little sensitivity to the non-locals who are not used to their brains being sloshed around violently from side to side for a whole hour would have been nice. Why did I opt to stash my Dramamine in my large bag, which was in the luggage compartment on the bottom of the bus?? Bad decision #126.

The evil snake roads were partly forgiven because of how I felt about what I saw after the grueling ride was finally over.

This is BOH Tea Plantation, one of the three major tea plantations in CH and the largest tea grower in Malaysia. In my opinion, this picture does not do justice to how breathtaking the view actually was, even on a cloudy day.

If you look closely, the hills to the left towards the back have a slightly brighter green sheen. These hills are ripe for harvesting the tea leaves. Once they have been picked, they revert to a duller green. They say that during peak harvest season before the tea leaves have been removed, these hills become rolling sheets of a beautiful green glow and are even more stunning to see.

During the ride in, you are also greeted by numerous strawberry farms, which Cameron Highlands is also known for. It is the only place in Malaysia where you can find strawberries, and though not cheap in relation to other fruits in the country, by the principle of scarcity, Malay locals will drive in to remind themselves of their sweet taste, as well as to escape from the humid heat into the cool evening air of the hills.

It was my first time at a strawberry farm, and it was interesting to see how they are grown and picked before being batched into shiny plastic containers and shipped away.

As with all fruits, a strawberry begins from a flower, a modest and clean white flower crowned by a bed of leaves.

The flower petals soon shed off and the strawberry bud begins to grow larger…

…and larger…

Until it plumpens into a beautiful, sweet, bright red strawberry! Mm mmm…=) They tasted as fresh as they look, and the freshly made strawberry jams were also quite good.

Jungle Trekking to Rafflesia
One of the most popular things to do in Cameron Highlands is to explore the many trekking trails through its jungles and hills. Combine that with searching for the world largest flower, the Rafflesia , and you’ve got a tour agency (or many tour agencies) making bank from curious tourists. Actually you’re not really searching for them, they’ve already been sought out and located by locals of the Aborigine village, the original discoverers of the flower in CH. Being able to view a Rafflesia in full bloom actually puts in you in a slot of the lucky few because though it takes a whole year for the buds to grow, Rafflesias bloom and die within 7 short days, during which time pollination must occur between a male and female flower that are both in bloom. This difficulty in successful pollination, combined with ongoing human activity that consequently interferes with this process, makes the Rafflesia a dying species in Malaysia.

So, of course, I had to go see one too 😛

The trek took 1.5 hrs to get there and 1.5 hours to get back. The incline at times became quite steep, and there were some stream passes and large boulders to climb through, as well as paths of thick clay mud, still slippery from last night’s rainfall, but for the most part, it was not too difficult of a trek. One man, probably around 50 or so, slipped and jammed his leg into a wayward branch, letting out quite a bit of blood onto the lower half of his pant leg, but he laughed casually and remarked, “How typical, for the oldest man to go first eh?”

This is how the trail looked, more or less.

Sweat-ridden.

When we finally arrived at the Rafflesia site, the tour guide warned us 1) not to touch it, because it could be poisonous, 2) not to swat at the bees and insects that will be flying around it, and 3) not to breathe, because Rafflesias smell of rotting flesh. Cool.

Here we have a bud in the early stages of development. It was the size of a mini basketball.

They then slowly cocoon out of the bud, preparing to bloom.

And finally, a Rafflesia! We were lucky to catch one in bloom at all, but this one was in its final dying stages (day 5), and you could already see the beginning decays of the petals around the edges. All in all, it was about a meter in diameter.

You do NOT want to fall into the center of this thing. Spikes of death.

When it dies around a week later, the glorious Rafflesia turns into “elephant shit”. Appropriately named.

After the Rafflesia viewing, there was a quick blow-pipe demonstration. This was the “jungleman’s” choice weapon to use back in the day to catch animals (even tigers, which do exist in these jungles, says Mr. Tour Guide, who flashes us his machete on his belt, as though that’s supposed to make us feel better…). On the tip of the dart that shoots out when you blow into the pipe, is a poison that paralyzes the animal temporarily. Then you dash towards the animal to hack it with your machete, badass style. Being a jungleman sounds not too shabby, I thinks.

Blow piping!

That’s right. That’s my tour guide marveling at how deeply I had pinned the dart into the target! Maybe I am a junglewoman in the parallel universe…

After we made our way back to the van, it was time for a lunch break. Some people opted not to eat and headed back home, but since I had booked the full day tour, I stuck around and had myself some fish cake Curry Mee noodle soup, confirming that though it was no Penang Curry Mee, you can’t really go wrong with it no matter where you go in Malaysia.

Once I was done refueling, I learned that I was, in fact, the only full-dayer of the pack (something that rarely happens, apparently) so I got to get a private tour for the rest of the day. Hell yes! Because private tour also means…tour guide as personal photographer 😉

Butterfly + Reptile + Insect Farm
I probably would have never entered into one of these places on my own accord. It’s not like I’ve never seen a butterfly or a snake before. But since it was part of the package, I got to visit them. Turns out, I actually enjoyed it a lot, mostly because unlike the yellow tapes of America, anything goes in these kinds of places in Malaysia, and I was allowed to touch virtually ANYTHING (at my own risk, of course). It was like being in a “I Dare You” house and every enclosure was a challenge just waiting to see if I had enough balls.

And usually…I didn’t =P. But here are a few in which I did.

This beetle was about 4-5 inches long, including its hellish looking mother horns. I’ll admit, I only decided to hold this one because it looked super weak, like it was dying and didn’t put up much of a fight at all (thoughts on that later).

Gecko! It was squishy, and tried to run up my arms.

This one DID run up my arms. I’m glad I had on long sleeves for this one.

This guy did NOT want to come out of his shell (he was a shy one), so I sang him sweet lullabies and he finally warmed up to me.

Don’t mind the grumpy face, he happily obliged to take this picture with me 🙂

Yes, that is a SCORPION. It took about 3 rounds of meditational breathing before I was ready for this one. If you look closely, you can see that I am actually biting my lips pretty hard. Otherwise, I think I put on a casual smile fairly well, don’t you think? =P

Let’s take a closer look. The red bulb at his tail tip means there’s poison in there. I’m surprised they didn’t make me sign a waiver form, but then again, all of Malaysia is pretty much a big fine print of “at your own risk” and “we are not liable”. Which makes me very, very…stupid lol. Sometimes, stupid can be so much fun!

Here are some other sightings at the insect/reptile farm.

Insect or flower?

Insect or leaf?

I call this one the “happy face” bug

Hmm…where is the bug in this picture? I don’t know, you tell me 🙂

Can you count how many there are? For the longest time, I could only count 6…

This is a toad with a huge open sore/gash/wound on its cheek.

An observation: The level of animal care and treatment conscience is vastly different in other countries than it is in America. The whole concept of “animal rights” is a very western idea. In other places, Malaysia included, animals are just animals, dispensable for the greater human good. Even the fact that I was able to touch whatever animal I wanted goes to show that there is very little concern for the well being of the animals being showcased here (as well as the humans silly enough to touch them). As difficult as it would be to tell whether an insect is healthy or not, even I was able to tell that these insects were not in the best shape.

Like this bug…his middle leg is missing the lower half.

And these toads…why the hell are they not trying to gobble down that huge butterfly that’s right in front of their face? Well, because…it’s dead.

Remember the twig and leaf bugs you couldn’t find in the picture above? Well, here they are, conspicuously out in the open because they are also, dead.

This one was tricky. It suspiciously allowed me to get a little too close to take a picture. It weirded me out so I tried to touch it, and when I did, it fell to the floor. Ah. Dead. Again. That’s when I finally took my eyes away from the sky and looked down to the ground of the butterfly room. Dead butterflies. Everywhere. Don’t they ever clean them up?

Well, now that I’ve left you feeling like I was walking through a colorful graveyard…here are a few pictures of the LIVE ones that I managed to snapshot.

Pretty flowers 🙂

And bunnies! Because well c’mon, they’re freakishly cute and its totally appropriate to stick a random bunny farm in a bug/reptile farm (wait…were they for display or for…feed..?)

On my last day here, there really wasn’t a whole lot left to do (beyond the tea plantations, there really isn’t a whole lot going on in CH). So I decided to take a long walk through some trails, and between the two main towns here, Brinchang and Tanah Rata. During my walk I ran into this small vegetable sanctuary.

Also, what I would kill for one of these babies. I want one to speed through an Amazonian jungle and make barbaric noises while doing so.

In red too!

Concluding Factoid: the Rafflesia is actually not a flower, but a parasitic fungus.

(Apparently I thought this was interesting enough to end with)