To tour or not to tour, that is the question!

One of the many questions facing travellers these days while trekking around from place to place is, "shall we take the guided/organized tour, or risk it and go it on our own?" There are many other questions that fill the traveller with such joy such as, "is that really worth that much, or should I bargain down a bit more"...or, "what is that thing attached to my leg"...or, "is that really the toilet?" Today, we were faced with the tour dilemma and had to make a quick decision about whether to go on the organized Countryside 1/2 Day Tour all around the Cameron Highlands visiting a tea plantation and factory, a strawberry field, a rose garden a cactus garden, an insect/reptile/butterfly farm and a bee farm or just trek around the 14 paths unguided and try to find these places alone up hills through forests etc...So, we opted for the tour with the help of a very friendly staff member at the Father's Hostel we are staying in. This hostel is a real treat and the cheapest yet on our travels. It is located atop a grand hill with a panoramic view of the whole Cameron Highlands and in the morning when the mist and wind is rolling in, you can smell a mixture of the tea leaves and chrysanthemums from the plantation and gardens along the base of the hilltop. We are sleeping in old WWII bunkers that were actually built by the British and housed the soldiers during the war...mom, we are actually sleeping in the same cot beds as these soldiers did back in the 40s...how cool is that?!?! There are several gardens with the biggest hibiscus flowers I have ever seen (my father would love it, as he adores hibiscus flowers) and some very quirky and adorable staff members that randomly grab you and show you various beetles and colourful butterflies that find their way to this fantasy-like place. The main city of Tanah Rata, where we are staying in the Cameron Highlands, is a very quaint little place set inside a series of paths leading to tea plantations, various flower and vegetable garden, orchid gardens, forests, mountains and hilltops everywhere the eye can see. There are plenty of shops and restaurants and a price is just a price! There are heaps of strawberry fields as well and there appears to be a strawberry theme throughout most of the stores in that they sell fresh homemade strawberry jam and preserves, ice cream and pretty much every possible strawberry item one can imagine...umbrellas, earmuffs, bags, lollipops, key chains...I could go on and on. Alex and I have indulged in fresh strawberries with cream, strawberry ice cream with strawberry jam on top, strawberry milkshakes and strawberry muffins and we could eat more! There is a little cafe that we have found that sells scones with their homemade strawberry jam and you know we will be trying some of them later tonight, as well as a lovely hot cup of strawberry infused tea for myself, as it gets very nippy up here in the Highlands! Back to our dilemma...well, we decided to take the tour, despite being burned by tours before, but after the Taman Negara unguided tour extravaganza, I personally needed a bit of a break and to be babied and taken from place to place and what a treat it was! We have discovered that some travellers can be quite negative and put a downer on tours or other traveller's plans in general and this actually does put some people off their original plans and we find this quite rude and disturbing so we just ignore that type of negativity and go along with our plan and this tour was great. We started off with a lovely breakfast at our hostel and were picked up in a large comfy minivan with only 5 other people who were all quite sweet in their own little way and headed off to the Rose Garden first, which was actually a massive flower garden extravaganza set on several levels up a giant hill with the top offering breathtaking views of the whole Cameron Highlands. It was like a little fairy tale world with so many species of flowers and cacti and weird colourful statues dotted around every corner like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and some strange oompa loompa looking characters in the shape of large tear drops. On one level, there was a giant bird aviary with hundred of tiny black birds that almost looked like bats chirping away in full blown conversation about some thing or other...perhaps migration. We managed to get to the tippy top to take in the freshest air imaginable and the sites extending for miles, what a treat! Then, off to the strawberry farm to pick some fresh strawberries and indulge in every possible strawberry flavoured concoction known to man...it reminded me of the Poteet, Texas Strawberry Festival I went to with my family as a kid. After stuffing ourselves with every possible strawberry treat, we headed to the Boh Tea Plantation...the oldest and smallest tea plantation in the Cameron Highlands, though there are 3 other Boh tea plantations in Malaysia and all of these added together equals about 1200 hectares of land making Boh the largest producer of tea with the largest amount of land in Malaysia. Boh tea is the most popular tea in Malaysia and the plantation we visited today was amazing and consisted of a series of velvety green folds of tea plants rolling over hundreds of hills. Each royal emerald fold of tea is separated by a thin pathway just large enough for one body to squeeze through during cultivation time making it look like the world's largest maze. We were then taken to the tea factory and got to watch first hand how the tea is processed and which tea is best. For example, tea bags are the lowest form of tea...they are the like the hot-dog of the meat world. The best kind of tea is loose tea and of course they sell it by the kilo in the gift shop...but fear not, we did not buy anything! Then, we were whisked away to a bee farm and the local market where we got to purchase various locally grown fruit and fresh tomatoes and corn of the cob for a snack. We bought some Cameron Highlands Apples which look like baby watermelons on the outside, but taste like honeydew melon on the inside. We popped down to the bee farm and took some snaps of bees pollinating various flowers then off again to the reptile/cacti/butterfly farm and this was some fun! First, they take you to a series of caged snakes and insects and then take some out of those cages to put on your body for you to touch and basically freak out at...it was scary, but fun. Then, you get to roam around the rest of the garden consisting of hundreds of cacti and a special terrarium type room overflowing with brightly coloured and perfumey flowers and hundreds of butterflies dancing all around...landing on your shoulder and resting on the flowers. Then, after all of that, there is one more stop at a huge Chinese Temple adorned with bright red figures and huge gold statues of various animals and G-ds. Our guide then dropped us off in the middle of town so we could pick up our freshly cleaned jungle laundry and have a quick curry lunch before heading out for a mid afternoon walk on one of the 14 paths...hmmm...which one to choose. This is half the fun...we had to take into consideration the distance and length of time to each one therefore narrowing our decision to 3 paths...number 10 up a giant hill and back down, but there was a lot of mist and it felt/smelled/looked like rain so we opted out of that one...number 14 down a bit of a treacherous path and then up again leading to the Boh Tea Plantation, which we had already visited and to be honest, we needed a break after the leeches...and number 9 a 1 1/2 hour walk through the forest on a well trekked easy to follow path to a waterfall...number 9 it is! So, we took some water and the path map and off we went to see a small, but lovely waterfall with a somewhat vigorous hike there and back...I use the word vigorous quite loosely, as this was NO Taman Negara! We saw some birds and beetles, but NO leeches. Just before we left for our hike, we came across a training centre for children and young adults with special needs called Persatuan Kebajikan Orang-Orang Istimewa and spent a couple of hours with the young people there learning about what they do each day and teaching them some English words. This is a gorgeous little house that has been converted into not only a respite home for families, but also a school to teach the students life skills, as well as curriculum courses. There are 10 young people living there varying in ages and disabilities and they were all so sweet and lovely. They spend all week at the home and then go to their respective family homes for the weekends. The woman who works there is the sweetest person who adores each and every single student she has in the home and she calls them her own children. The residents gave us a grand tour of the facilities and we taught them some English and sang, what else but karaoke with them as well. They showed us how they earned money to help fund the school through making various arts and crafts that they sell including some gorgeous bookmarks that we purchased for ourselves and some of the readers in our families (Mom, Sue/Mum, Wendy, Julie,) and then we had to leave say goodbye, but promised to come back tomorrow morning for a few more hours to volunteer before we leave for Georgetown on the island of Penang. We made it back to the town from the centre just as it started raining and ran into our Aussie mates, Peter and Maggie and indulged in a Steam Boat (which John has tried and loved) for dinner with a discussion about the best way to travel around Australia and other helpful tips. Now, a Steam Boat is a huge metal bowl of two different types of broth separated by a metal divider. The bowl is put on top of a hot plate to keep it warm and then they bring you plates and plates of various meats, seafood, eggs, tofu, noodles and vegetables that you get to throw into the metal bowl and cook for 4 minutes and then indulge! What a treat...not only was the soup delicious fresh and healthy, but I had too much fun tossing all the bits inside the bowl, while learning about which direction would be best for travelling around Australia and which bits to avoid as per the horror movie Wolf Creek...so a win win situation all around. This past week has truly been one of the best weeks we have had travelling and we have crammed so much into such a small space of time, but certainly don't feel that we have missed out on anything or rushed through and that is a true achievement when blazing through a country like Malaysia, which deserves more time to explore. We have adored our time here and this has been a wonderful place...we have a few more days and then off to a new country...Thailand for some kickboxing hell!