Item From the Past: The Cameron Highlands

A few sentences in a short essay called "Malaysia" by Paul Theroux, published in the collection Sunrise With Seamonsters (1985), first introduced me to the Cameron Highlands. "[In the Cameron Highlands], the air is as cool as an autumn day in England; below you, in Tapah and beyond, people are gasping in the heat and swatting mosquitoes, but you are thousands of feet up, in a temperate climate, where strawberries grow and beds need blankets and rooms log fires," Theroux wrote in the early '70s, early in the transition of the area from a British hill station into a modern Malaysian resort district in the central mountainous region of the Malay Peninsula.

When I first went to Malaysia in July 1992, I visited the Cameron Highlands for a few days, and liked it so much that when Yuriko and I came that way again two years later, we stayed there a few days. For all I know, the place has been overdeveloped by now, but 20 years ago it still had some cool green hill station charms.

The highlands are home to Cameronian Boh tea -- and the plantation, whose green, tea-planted hills are seen here -- was open for tours.

The local farmers are also proud of their vegetable crops, as you can see.

Theroux was right about the pleasant climate, which lent itself to long walks. We walked along some of the jungle trails, but during my first visit I found myself on a road that ran next to a golf course (behind the fence on the left).

AWAS means CAUTION in Bahasa Malaysia, but I don't think you really need any language to understand the sign.

One evening Yuriko and I went out for a walk and came upon a park-like area from which some of the evening sky was visible. I was able to pick out the Southern Cross, riding low. As we were looking up at the nighttime sky, the call to evening prayers began off in the distance.

Item from the Past: July Fourth on the Malaysian Peninsula

On July 4 [1994] we boarded a train in Bangkok, which pulled out at 15:15 and headed south, through the hilly lushness and small towns on the Isthmus of Kra, a land feature that fascinated me on maps as far back as elementary school (along with Sulawesi, which I knew as the Celebes). It’s a long isthmus, and the train wasn’t especially fast, so we rolled on into the night.

Next to us was a girl freshly out of Berkeley, Kara, who had a lot to say about where she’d been, e.g., “China sucked!” We sympathized. She was one of the few other North Americans I’ve met in recent weeks. Plenty of Europeans, plenty of Australians, but not so many from my continent -- too bad, southeast Asia is worth the trip.

The berths were simple but reasonably comfortable, and the air conditioning worked fairly well, unlike during the run up to Chang Mai a few weeks ago. We arrived at the frontier with Malaysia just after waking up, and spent a while outside the train on the formalities of border-crossing.

We arrived at Butterworth more or less on time, and caught an enormous car ferry, mostly empty, for the short hop to Penang Island. Once on the island, we paid a tricycle rickshaw man RM$4 -- $3 fare, $1 tip -- to take us to the New China Hotel. He was the picture of a rickshaw man: wiry, deep brown, Chinese. The New China, a charming dump, distinctly risky in terms of fire (though we had a large window for escape), was cheap and well-located in Georgetown. Wooden floors, high ceilings, a flapping ceiling fan. Squat toilets, cold showers, and an indifferent-looking bar downstairs. All for RM$17.60 a night.

Georgetown turned out to be a low-rise, whitewashed, somewhat seedy town, good for walking after the heat of the day died down, and early in the morning. I took a couple of good walks before Yuriko woke. Over the next few days took in Ft. Cornwallis (nice clocktower), wandered around the Komtar Mall, saw the Kek Lok Sri temple, climbing its pagoda, swam at Batu Ferringhi beach, and rode the cable railway up Penang Hill. To escape the heat, we saw Heaven and Earth, an Oliver Stone failure, and the moderately funny Maverick, both subtitled in Bahasa Malaysia.