We left very early that morning from the Komtar Tower in Penang. We didn't know exactly where the bus stop was… We barely had a few minutes to spare… Just enough time to try and walk around the building, ask where it might be, but since it was so early there weren't many people around…
In the end, we found a series of shops selling bus tickets, including ours, which printed our tickets in a flash, and we boarded the bus directly, which was already there. For your information, I had booked the tickets online using this website: https://www.busonlineticket.com But we still needed to find the agency to be able to obtain the ticket physically (since we couldn't print it ourselves).
Welcome to Tanah Rata
It still took us a good seven hours (including breaks) to reach our destination. There were several reasons for this, the first being that to reach the Cameron Highlands, due to the altitude, we had to take a mountain road, which slowed our progress, especially since we encountered traffic jams… And that's the second reason. It was a Saturday, and apparently the Cameron Highlands are very popular with Malaysians on weekends. And since it's in the mountains, the road isn't wide, just a dual carriageway, but people park haphazardly along the roadside at every market we passed.
In this case, the Cameron Highlands comprise three small towns, starting from Penang: Brinchang, Berinchang, and Tanah Rata. Our bus's final destination was Tanah Rata.
Upon arrival, we simply followed a tout, the only one around, as we didn't have a hotel and were a bit too lazy to look for one. So we ended up at Cameronian Inn, a little out of the way but accessible on foot although we were taken there by van. Given the budget (70 RM) it was ok so we took the room and went straight to explore the surroundings.
The least one can say is that the architecture undeniably evokes the "mountainous" side of the place. Unfortunately, we didn't see much that day… After a disappointing lunch (the only restaurant that looked "modern"), we wondered what to do… Hesitating to rent a scooter as usual to explore the surroundings, we decided against it when we saw the sky becoming seriously overcast, especially since the afternoon was already well underway.
So we decided to just go for a stroll in the immediate area, starting by walking along the main street towards a garden marked on a local map. There, we were "caught" by a group of young girls and another couple of tourists to watch their little dance show and give them a rating.
Little rain dance?
We don't mind, as we don't expect much from the garden, so we take our time. There we are in this small public park (which was perhaps the garden we were going to…) watching these young girls dance for a minute or so; they're clearly having fun. We have to give it a score out of 5,000… (a strange scoring system, but oh well…).
We're good sports, our tourist neighbors jokingly told them it was worth more, and they jumped for joy! When it was our turn to give our rating, we made the same comment, giving them a double rating, and they jumped for joy again! What a simple way to please!
Without knowing if it was because they knew the rain was coming, everyone left in the blink of an eye of a true 10 seconds! We found ourselves there all alone in the middle of the park with the rain indeed starting to fall.
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Tanah Rata, boredom was not far away…
We had to wait a good hour for the rain to finally stop. Given the time, we decided to head back to the main street and settle down at a café. We ordered a small glass of wine; I opted for strawberry, since it's the local specialty. It was a shame it was mixed with too much water… Meanwhile, the rain continued to fall intermittently…
We only left to eat our evening meal (although we could have eaten in the same place). So it wasn't far to go, as it was just a few meters away at the "Restoran Sri Brinchang," which has a confusing name since we're in Tanah Rata... But that's normal, because Mount Brinchang is the name of the main mountain in the area. This restaurant serves typical South Indian dishes., served in a banana leaf instead of a plate.
Traditionally, people eat with their fingers, but I did have cutlery. With full stomachs, we returned to our hotel. We had previously taken the time to look at the prices for tours to Cameron Highlands. As the weather wasn't great and we weren't planning on staying very long, we opted for a one-day tour only, which is rare, but Tanah Rata really gave us that feeling of "boredom".
We bought our tickets at the hotel, because they had a discount, The tour cost 40 RM per person instead of 50 RM for the day discovery in the plantations, including the visit to the moss forest and the tea manufacturing plant of the company which ultimately owns all the plantations (BOH).
