Last week, I received an immense, but totally enjoyable, task from my lecturers in my faculty:

I was to bring the honorable external examiner of my degree course in MMU – Prof. Dr. Wolf-Fritz Riekert, from Stuttgart Media University of Germany, on a 3-Days-2-Nights leisure trip to Cameron Highlands.

Dr. Riekert’s job as the external examiner for MMU is to evaluate and advise on our Degree program’s structure, curriculum, marking schemes etc.

He is also to visit our university at least once during his term of appointment, and during these visits give lectures, seminars, workshops, and finally write a report on the faculty’s progress to the University.

And now he has come to Malaysia to do just that!

Dr. Chang (second from the left), the program coordinator of my course, had been planning a trip around Malaysia for the Professor after the Prof had finished his last task in MMU – an evaluation interview with a few students, where I was also selected as an interviewee.

It was at that time when he thought it would be good to have a tour guide accompanying the Professor on his trip, since he was not familiar at all to our land… and so I was given the job!

Also coming along were some of my good friends: Hanif (the one acting cool in sunglasses), Ariadne (behind the camera), and the terrorist from Arab, Osamah (first on the left).

I was the driver for this trip. And not only that the petrol and toll costs were all paid, I was also thrilled to find that my automatic-geared Wira was totally awesome because it could carry the weight of SIX people (five people plus the Prof’s super-uber-ultra-heavy luggage the weight of a sixth person) all the way up to Cameron Highlands!

We took up three rooms in Equatorial Hotel, at the very peak of Cameron Highlands!

We didn’t do much on the first day because we reached only at seven in the evening.

We all had classes in the morning and the Dean of our faculty, who was also there when we discussed the trip with Dr. Chang, had personally ordered us to attend the classes in the morning before going on the trip – so we obeyed – and thus arriving so late…

That night, we brought the Professor to have steamboat for dinner!

The Professor had never heard of steamboat before! And he was so amazed by the way we simply threw all the raw prawns and fish and chicken meat and vegetables into the boiling pot and just scoop out and eat!

He must be thinking in revelation that this must be the way people in Asian third world countries have their food…

Luckily, he didn’t seem disgusted or anything (or at least he didn’t show it)… Haha

If anything, he in fact seemed pleasantly fascinated with how we could, in his own words, ‘turn a regular meal into an activity’, and tried to learn the names of the various local vegetables and food… Ariadne also taught him her so-called ‘proper’ way to peel prawns! (without using hands, of course!)

Truthfully, we weren’t very sure if he was full or not after the meal! Because all he managed to scoop out of the pot were tiny bits of meat and some veggie, plus most of his time were occupied in taking pictures, chatting with us, peeling prawns, and drinking Chinese tea!  

After the dinner we had a drink at Starbucks. Where he told us that even in Germany, people thought that Starbucks was overpriced given the products they sell – coffee – which could be found in similar quality just anywhere.

The Professor also enthusiastically showed us pictures of his wife, his children, and the place where he stayed in Germany!

The garden outside his house was… like… UNBELIEVABLY WONDERFUL.

The picture above is not a postcard! It is his garden!

Totally makes us wish we could stay there and study there and work there and get married there and grow old there and die there and be buried there and rot there.

That night back in the hotel, after saying goodnight to the Professor at his room, we took the opportunity to tell scary ghost stories among ourselves in our rooms!

Hanif was so not afraid that he fell asleep during the ghost storytelling.

The next day, we had a really nice breakfast in the hotel, and then went out for jungle trekking.

It was a rather easy track and Ariadne even wore slippers! Which however, in the end, caused her to have to stay behind for a particular steep path! Haha!

Easy as the track was, it was nevertheless a tiring journey – climbing up and down the muddy slopes and stepping over huge tree roots and gigantic fallen tree trunks…

It was the first time the Professor trekked in a tropical forest, and he totally liked it!

We ended our jungle trekking at a waterfall where cool, fresh mountain water flew endlessly from inside the forest…

There were also some ‘ducks’… but, haha, never mind…

Next, we had lunch in a famous mamak stall in Cameron Highlands, where we ordered banana leaf rice with curry mutton and roti canai for the Professor. He had said that he was very interested in trying as many of our local food as possible!

We also made the professor eat with his hands, the Malaysian way! (we didn’t actually make him do it, of course, he voluntarily and sportingly did it!)

And we made a video of him eating with his hands!

A really interesting thing with the video is that if you watch it carefully, you’d see the Caucasian woman behind wearing an extremely disgusted look at our direction, where the Professor was eating with his hands!

It’s totally hilarious, the way she looks at us, you know! She’s probably thinking what these barbaric teenagers are making that poor European old man do… LOL!

After the very interesting lunch, we headed off to the one place in Cameron that the Professor declares a ‘must go’ after he had seen it on the internet:

- the BOH tea plantations!

To us, the plantations were nothing but a lot of well-ordered green trees. But to the professor, the scene of infinite rows of carefully-planted tea plants stretching over mountains was truly, utterly amazing.

Like….. this amazing.

Hanif fell to the ground and worshipped the plantation in amazement.

Of course he wasn’t, joking only lah!

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Some random pics at the tea plantation…

After coming down from Mt. Brinchang (yup the plantation was halfway up the mountain!), we went to the Bee Farm, where there were beehives with thousands of live bees all around you – unprotected!

Kinda had a hard time convincing everyone we won’t die after this visit!

It became worse when there were even disclaimers at the entrance telling you that the farm people will not be responsible if you were injured or died or something…

But we had a good time inside anyways.

After that we went to a number of other great places as well, such as the Strawberry Farm where we could pick strawberries ourselves, the Aborigines Village where indigenous people lived, and the Cactus Point where we found cactus with balls, literally!

At night, before dinner, we had a nice long walk at the famous Brinchang pasar malam, where local people sell all sorts of locally-produced stuff – from strawberry umbrellas to cute little pots of cactus!

We also brought the Professor for a treat of a lifetime – something the westerners had always dreaded… Durian!

It was the very first time that the Professor had durian!

Whether or not it would be his very last time, we could not tell for sure… Because we weren’t sure how we should interpret his comment – “well, it was quite nice…” accompanied with a kind, warm smile, slowly nodding head.

The next morning, we made a final stop at the Cameron Valley Tea House, where they served fresh Cameron Valley tea on the spot, before descending the hill.

We all had a lot of fun with Dr. Riekert over the three days on Cameron Highlands, I bet that he felt 30 years younger during the period of the trip too!

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Stuff that we learned from a Professor coming from Stuttgart, Germany (Place where Mercedes-Benz came from ):

We, as well as many people around the world, shamelessly pronounce the names of the top cars manufactured in Germany WRONGLY! (At least compared to how the German people pronounce it.)

For example, ‘Mercedes’ is not pronounced as ‘Mer-SAY-des’ but instead ‘Mer-SEE-des’.

‘Volkswagen’ is not pronounced as ‘Volks-WHERE-gen’ but ‘Folks-VAAR-gen’ (‘V’ is pronounced as ‘F’ and ‘W’ as ‘V’.)

Finally, ‘BMW’ is pronounced as ‘BMV’ – yes ‘V’ as in ‘Bee-Am-VEE’!

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P.S. We happened to see a lot of Mercedes cars all along the roads that we travelled in this trip, as well as a number of Porches, BMWs, and even a  Hummer on Cameron, followed by an impressive sight of over TWENTY FERRARI‘S speeding up Cameron Highlands in a line when we came down… Kinda gives the false impression to the German visitor in our car that the people in our country drives a hell lot of expensive cars and are not stuck with stupid Protons and Peroduas.

We’ll miss you a lot, Professor! Come visit us again soon!

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