May 2006

Cameron Highlands was a good place with some great views but it rained almost constantly throughout the time we were there so it wasnt the best place weve been. We managed to go on a few tours around the area and take a look at the tea plantations amongst other places and a trek through the rainforest in the mountain, which was quite good.

Rainforest where we went trekking
Foret tropicale ou on a fait une randonnee

Boh Tea Plantation
Plantation de thé

Trust us to travel on one of the only bank holidays in the Malaysian calendar, we thought that the 'travel agent' would have the foresight to warn us about these things but we were wrong. In a trip that shouldve taken only a few hours ended up taking fourteen, most of these spent in traffic jams at the border between Thailand and Malaysia. We arrived in Georgetown at 1030 at night and checked into the first place we found.

After going to Fort Cornwallis on the west coast of Penang, we found out that Pulau Penang is the oldest British settlement in Malaysia, taken by Captain Francis Light in 1786 until Malaysia became independant in 1957. Named Georgetown after King George III.

We took the mountain train up to Penang Hill which had its moments.

Georgetown is a mix of different types of people, not just the locals and the travellers but other people have settled here and you can see this with the areas like Little India and various temples and mosques dotted around.

Penang has modernised also and has the skyscapers and shopping malls in the centre of Georgetown.

Apart from the beaches etc and meeting up with the blokes met on Ko Phi Phi, Ko Lanta was a bit of a non event. I spent most of the first day recovering from the sea sickness i endured during the trip from Phi Phi.

We moved up the island to Long Beach after the first night as like i said we were miles out from civilisation but it seemed that everywhere on the island was like this. As it was coming into the low season, everywhere was dead so we decided to only stay a few days and head off to Malaysia.

Also we did a bit of a tour of the island as as it was my mates last night, he wanted to see monkeys before he left so we headed for the national park which after we braved the dodgy jungle/dirt roads it wasnt really worth it, but we did get to see a few monkeys.