What an odd place the Cameron Highlands is! We were expecting a
Malaysian version of Ambleside….it’s not! On one hand it’s pretty
awful with scruffy towns, loads of tourists and pretty crappy tea
shops. On the other, it has some stunning scenery over the tea
plantations (see photo) and some really interesting wildlife and it’s
lovely and cool. You could probably stay longer and do some treks in
the rainforest but we are ill-equipped for the creepy crawlies, both
physically and mentally.

We think it is a fine place to visit on the way to Kuala Lumpur and do
the sites in a day, but we’ll be glad to be heading to KL tomorrow
morning. Thankfully the tea at the Boh tea estate was lovely and they
also had good scones!

We were up early for our free breakfast at Hutton Lodge before
jumping on the 204 bus to Penang Hill funicular train. The train took
us to over 700m above sea level for an impressive view over
Georgetown. After seeing a Hindu temple at the top, the biggest
spiders we’ve seen in our lives and a couple of snakes on show, we
headed back down for some serious walking.

Georgetown has three official heritage walks but after looking at the
map we figured we could bundle them together and do them as one. We
saw some great colonial, Chinese and art-deco architechture and met
some lovely locals along the way. Little India was a particular
highlight as the sights and sounds were exactly what you would want
out of the place.

After getting slightly caught in a rain storm we headed back to our
hotel to tidy ourselves up before dinner. And what a dinner it turned
out to be! We went to the highly recommended De Tai Tong Cafe for the
best dim sum ever (sorry Zo & Paul – you would have loved it). It was
brought to your table by little old ladies with trollies and you just
pointed at what you wanted (we pretty much had the lot…twice).
Then, as the locals recommended it on t’internet, we tried the custard
tarts (!?) for dessert and they were truly amazing.

Finally we had arranged to meet back up with Sara and Paul (see photo
– they are the others) for our last night together. We shared a few
beers and stories before saying our final goodbyes (our itineraries
don’t match up so much now but we feel we will cross paths again
sometime in the future – at least we hope so).

Now we are back in our room waiting for the funeral prayer music to
finish across the road before going to sleep. Night night.

A quick post to wish Ben’s Dad a happy birthday. Hope you have great
day with everyone in London and we hope this photo will please you to
see that Hull City have definately made it by having their flag flown
in Catus Restaurant on Langkawi 🙂

Sorry we have been a little quiet recently but we have been doing
nothing at all to update you all on. Just hanging around at Zackry’s,
maybe having a bit of a walk and then drinking too much with everyone
else staying there in the evening. In fact we had a real gang going
and we were just about the last to leave. It seemed quieter everyday
someone left and replaced by people who just didn’t join in as much.

We will miss Niamh, who was the best hostess ever – we’ve never seen
someone work so hard (& probably never met anyone so Irish and said
“jeysus” quite so brilliantly!). She’s an absolute star and looked
after us so well. It was sad to say goodbye today. But hey, we must
all move on.

We caught the ferry to Penang today, just after a game of bowling at
the jetty. We’re now in Georgetown. As the name suggests it’s an old
British colony but now it’s main areas are Chinese and Indian. So far
it’s a great town, especially the curry we had tonight after we were
invited into the kitchen to try some before chosing. Yummy!

We also randomly met Sara & Paul from Swizerland again (3rd time in
our last 3 places! Wierd) and so had a drink with them before bed.
Exciting day of exploring tomorrow.