When I was planning this trip, I considered almost every aspect of it in detail so I wouldn’t feel like I’d missed out when I looked back on it. Something I paid particular attention to was international transfers. I’ve heard many stories about trouble at border crossings when travelling overland so I made every effort to avoid similar problems, so far so good I say. Although I realised today that perhaps I should have paid similar attention to domestic transfers as well… Langkawi to Ipoh was not supposed to be a stressful journey, it wasn’t supposed to be a lot of things but it ended up being them anyway.

Some general details about the trip: I left my Langkawi hotel at 6:30am with a 25 minute walk to the ferry terminal and a 7:30am ferry to catch. The ferry took about an hour to get to Kuala Perlis (as expected). Then also as expected, there was a 5 minute walk to the bus terminal and a 1 and a half hour wait for the first bus at 10:00am. 1 and a half hours didn’t seem like a long wait on paper but sitting on a seat at an outdoor bus terminal, while in the baking Malaysian heat and surrounded by mosquitoes did not help pass the time. The bus arrived at 10 and left 15 minutes late. The journey to Ipoh was 5 and a half hours (again, as expected). What was not expected was the 1 hour wait for the bus from Ipoh to the Cameron Highlands and the following 1 hour delay in its departure. The reason I said earlier that I should have researched domestic transfers too is that I had no idea I’d be getting to Ipoh at nearly 4 in the afternoon. This left me with no way to see the Cameron Highlands (my only reason for stopping in Ipoh) and to get back to my hostel on the same day, problematic because I was only supposed to be there for 1 night anyway. Uncharacteristically, this led to my decision to abandon my plans and instead book a one way ticket to the Cameron Highlands (one way because by the time I’d get there, there would be no buses going back the other way and I’d have to spend an unplanned night at a Cameron Highlands hostel). So I bailed on my Ipoh hostel without telling them (sorry Shanghai hostel, I couldn’t find any internet access!) and made spontaneous plans for somewhere else.

Anyway, back to the Ipoh to Cameron Highlands bus, so instead of leaving at 5, it left at 5:50 and instead of arriving at 7, it arrived at 8:30. When I actually got on, I noticed that it was seriously old, and I mean 20 or 30 years old, I also noticed that the top speed when going uphill (incidentally, most of the journey was uphill), was around 25mph. When it wasn’t moving at top speed, it was hovering somewhere around the area of 10-15mph. I couldn’t be sure though, the speed gauge was broken. Also by-the-by, it didn’t have any seat belts and the headlights didn’t work properly, something that made me fear for my safety later because it started getting dark at around 7 but we were rolling until 8:30. Since mountainous regions create their own weather systems, there was a lot of cloud and mist up there too, causing visibility to drop to only a few metres as it started getting darker. I was not comforted by this or the fact that there were thousand metre sheer drops only a few feet from the edge of the road. Even though the views were incredible (being surrounded by numerous, vegetation rich mountains on every side is never a bad thing), the whole experience has soured me on some of my plans for the rest of the trip. In particular a 24 hour bus ride through similar (but apparently much more poorly maintained) terrain between Vietnam and Laos. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any need to be a hero with that one, I’m going to book a flight instead! That said though, I very much enjoyed parts of the bus ride up the mountain, the parts where I wasn’t thinking death was imminent that is. There were at the very least, literally millions of trees on those mountains and such thick, richly varied vegetation too. I can only imagine how many different kinds of animals were living up there. There was even a cool little village at the top of the mountain, it was small, and it was clear that the main reason it existed was for tourists but it was still very cool. As were all the tea plantations, fruit orchards and flower gardens. In fact, minus the last three things I mentioned, the whole area, with its mountains of varying sizes and thick, lush jungles was very reminiscent of Peru. I wasn’t expecting that and didn’t know Malaysia had this sort of thing to offer.

Also on the plus side, the amusingly hobbit sized hostel I found only set me back £3 for the night and I managed to find a great 5 hour tour of the Cameron Highlands (including a 4×4 ride, a visit to a tea plantation and a lot of jungle trekking) for only £10.

My bus from the Cameron Highlands to Kuala Lumpur the next day was at 2pm so it was an earlyish start for the highlands tour at 8:45. While I was waiting for the start of the tour, breakfast at the cheap hostel was surprisingly delicious; as well as tea plantations, strawberry farms and various other fruit and vegetable orchards in the highlands, there are also a number of honey farms. I don’t normally like honey but thought I’d try some (probably the freshest honey I’ll ever eat) on my French toast and it was fantastic.

I was the third person to be picked up for the tour but there were 9 of us in total, an older English couple and 6 Dutch girls around my age. As always, everyone was a pleasure to spend time with. Our tour guide/driver took the 4*4 to a butterfly sanctuary at first. It was cool as you could walk through and go right up to them; none of them were in cages. What was even cooler were the things like the pit vipers, the 3 horned rhinoceros beetle, the horned tree lizards and the banded geckos, thankfully, all of those were in cages. Next it was a rose garden, it was kind of boring but at least there was a nice view at the top. We headed to the peak of the mountain we were on after that, at 2,000 metres it was the second highest in the area. Sadly, it was misty when we got up there so there was no point in climbing the viewing tower but as we’d all had a great view of the area from the rose garden, nobody was too upset. At the top there were several routes through the jungle and forest too and when I say routes through the jungle, I don’t mean routes paved with cement or artificial steps or anything like that, it was just gaps in the trees wide enough for us to squeeze through, it was pretty rough. The ground was soaked because it had been raining earlier and at some points I thought I was going to literally sink into the mud. There was a lot of thick vegetation, cool types of trees that I hadn’t seen the likes of since Peru and a few small animals but nothing too impressive. Apparently, there were a bunch of deadly pit vipers around (the kind that blend in very well with their native environment) so everyone was slightly on edge as we trekked through because we were told they could be anywhere. It was something that needed to be said but I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I was more concerned about the snakes than the sheer drops that were around practically every corner. Obviously I’m fine but in hindsight, I probably should have paid a little more attention to those. It was really cool being in that jungle though, weaving between the trees and hanging branches, navigating the very muddy, uneven and at times, very vertical terrain was good fun and definitely the part of the tour I thought was most worthwhile. Nearly at the end of the tour, we went to the star of the Cameron Highlands, the tea plantations. Another of the postcard perfect sights I’d seen in Malaysia, the plantations stretched as far as the eye could see and because of the mountains, were very vertical as well as horizontal in nature. We saw a few workers collecting the tea that was being grown there (boh tea) and I commented that they must have calves of steel because it can’t be an easy job. The final stop of the tour was a strawberry farm. It was nothing impressive and the Dutch were even less excited to be there, a few of them sarcastically sounded surprised when we were told that the strawberry seeds were imported from Holland. The fresh strawberry milkshakes were good though!