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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!

LOL!

I had considered not blogging this trip but then I realized that if I really did, I would have not blogged for my past THREE Cameron Highlands trips!

That’s so bad of me! THREE times and I didn’t even bother to record it in my diary!

Cameron Highlands has given us so many sweet strawberries and even sweeter memories – I’ve decided I simply cannot be so bad to it!

On June 28th, I went to Cameron Highlands with my dear!

Also went there in November last year, but didn’t blog… (picture taken at the exact same spot)

ALSO went again exactly 365 days before the latest trip, on June 28th, 2008, but also didn’t blog…

So this time I am totally going to blog about Cameron Highlands, before I neglect it for the third time!

Looking back, it is weird and extremely coincidental that my hair happens to be dyed brown every time I went to this place!

Cameron Highlands is a really wonderful place with wonderful memories!

My dear and I went back to Cameron a few weeks ago for a special occasion which had taken place there.

It was a relaxing trip with no pre-planned schedule. We just went wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted.

We stayed at Heritage Hotel, a hotel that was excellent in terms of its location which was away from the town areas, and was – despite already being on a ‘highland’ – situated on top of a hill!

Cameron Highlands is one of the most beautiful, scenic places in Malaysia.  If you need a serious breakaway, locally, this is the place!

In this trip, we went back to the wonderful Smokehouse, which was a small, traditional-English-cottage-styled hotel outside the town of Brinchang.

We had visited this place the last time we came to Cameron Highlands, and we had been so fascinated!

This place had an interior of a nice Englishman’s cottage, with fireplaces and comfy couches and candlelit tables and grandfather clocks… but the exterior, the garden, was heavenly!

It was superbly well kept, with lovely bird fountains and huts, and a small, winding path in the middle of the green bushes and flowery plants flourishing all around you… You’d have thought you were in some Swiss countryside or something!

All the gracefulness of the garden, set with a white marble table with warm tea and freshly-baked scones…

Oh… this blogger is drooling on his keyboard…

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We also went to pluck strawberries at a ‘self-pluck’ strawberry farm!

We’ve each been to Cameron Highlands almost a dozen times since we were young and we had never tried out the self-plucking process…

… which turned out to be quite pointless, actually.

Because one of the workers over there seemed to be too free and he got around the farm and kept running back to us with huge, ripe strawberries!

He must have been thinking that we were going to be so happy to receive so many guaranteed-sweet, professionally-plucked strawberries when the fact was that we thought, politely, that he was merely spoiling the fun!

We ended up plucking only TWO of the dozens of strawberries that we walked out of the farm with!

But it was still quite a fun experience, really!

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Also in Cameron Highlands, the bee farm where you could experience being surrounded by live bees:

And lots of cactus shops and centers that strongly tempt you to purchase pots and pots of cactus (what’s the plural word for cactus?) home only to regret buying them later when you got back.

I always ride home with my parents with at least some cactus each time I went to Cameron Highlands when I was young.

And I always abandon them in no more than three days.

And they always live on even after I had abandoned them.

Unbelievable living things, cactus are, aren’t they?

If God Himself were to look down from heaven, He would have wondered what those little humans had done to the hills below that He had once planted with tall, majestic trees:

The lush green blanket of tea plants on the hills has become some sort of an icon for Cameron Highlands!

I think it would also serve as an ideal, spacious, carpeted landing spot for alien spaceships.

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One thing I feel about Cameron Highlands though, is that it is getting a bit too commercialized, really.

The place used to be a small town where people farmed and grew vegetables and fruits, while some other folks owned beautiful orchards and gardens.

But now it has become a bustling commercial town with tourists and price tags everywhere…

Sigh, but I guess whenever a place attracts people, it attracts businessmen, and traders, and Starbucks, too.

Anyway, I still love Cameron Highlands very much and it remains one of the blissful venues of my comfortable childhood memory!

Hope whoever’s reading this isn’t going to click the ‘X’ button on the upper right corner of the screen after seeing the post title.

Yup, Bali Trip entry again! But thankfully, this is going to be the third and final part of the longest travel log ever recorded on James-Chow.com!

Read Part 1 and Part 2 first ya!

I hate to start this entry with a bad note, but this is really how it went…

Departing from the hotel on the third day, we were brought to yet another temple, only this one was unanimously agreed to be the supreme most boring-est of all boring temples in Bali, ever.

I think it was called Taman Ayun Temple or something…

The only area that seemed a tad more interesting was the centre court of the temple, where most of the impressive-looking ‘towers’ were located.

But that area too, unfortunately, was closed to the public. So all we could do was look from outside the ancient moldy walls surrounding the area!

Although the overall compound of the temple was very large, the buildings were generally dull and the temperature was scorching hot!

I can remember some of us saying we’d much rather cancel this visit and head to the beach instead… By the way, so much for a Bali trip, there was NO beach activity in the tour guide’s official itinerary!

So, in the temple, everyone was just taking photos around and doing things that only people in extreme boredom would do.

And soon we were headed back to the bus and, after lunch… guess what?

That’s right! We were brought to visit another temple!

I can’t even think of anything to write about this temple besides that it was much cooler there and there was a beautiful lake at the edge of it.

We left the place after taking some photos along the lake.

Now, if you thought our temple trips were over, you thought wrong – it was almost 6PM and we were brought to our third temple visit of the day!

Really gotta salute these guys… After going on one of their tours, you’d start to think that Bali has only got nothing but old temples to offer its tourists!

However, this temple was… finally… slightly different.

We were brought to this place called Tanah Lot, and there was a temple built on top of a huge ‘rock’ on the beach.

When the tide rises, the path towards the entrance of the temple would be flooded and the rock becomes a mini island!

Sounds really mystical and sacred, doesn’t it?

I also found this small cave-like place that got abandoned by the people after the tide rose and covered the place with sea water.

I was really curious about what that mysterious little white sign could possibly be pointing at, since there was nothing but a dark, low space beneath a humongous piece of rock.

So I went through the shallow water to have a look.

I was stunned.

Holy shit! I found the Holy Snake of Bali!

Until this day, I still can’t figure out what in the world – is – a Holy Snake. All I can imagine is a huge, talking snake wearing a gold crown and granting people treasures and gold coins and stuff…

LOL!

Back to reality, at Tanah Lot we saw one of the most beautiful sunset views in our lives!

I believe that the Tanah Lot sunset scene will be etched in my mind forever.

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After dinner that night, finally – after three days blundering in Bali, we found it… the gem, the heart, the very soul of Bali’s tourism industry:

No, it ain’t the seaside, and sure as hell not the temples. It wasn’t about the shopping places or any other cultural stuff…

… It’s the clubs, baby.

Lying at the very heart of the buzzing tourist town of Kuta, was a long stretch of street, called Legian Street.

And if you’re on this street, open your eyes… and be awed, as we totally were.

Bali tempts you with one of the best… no, in fact, the – best – clubbing experience that you can never find in any of the clubs in KL!

Why?

Because the clubs here were, firstly, adequately spacious with huge dance floors, the music was damn syok, the DJ was awesome, and the dance floor was never empty, or never even less than fully-packed…

But above all, the clubbing crowd in Bali was, for lack of a better word… perfect.

You could never find a club back in our place where there were so many angmohs from all over the world mingling with each other in such a friendly and open way!

It was as if every single person you happened to be facing on the floor was an old friend! There was very few talking over the booming music, of course, but everyone would see each other and smile, dance, shout, and laugh…

No groupings and gangs scene… no six-guys-dancing-around-one-pretty-girl scene… No girls being taken-advantage scene… No group of single guys acting cool with cigarettes scene… Nothing!

These people were just friendly tourists, just like us, trying to get a taste of Bali’s sweet night life!

And if you think clubbing here would burn a nasty hole in your wallet – it’s free!

There is NO COVER CHARGE – you just walk in and have fun!

Even the drinks were insanely cheap, by clubs standards I mean. While a bottle of Chivas cost us a standard Rp1,080,000 (RM340); a bottle of beer, however, cost only Rp20,000, that’s only like RM6!

Now, there was something that none of us realized when we were actually in the club:

The club that we happened to visit, called Paddy’s Club, we had no idea, was actually the – very – club that was destroyed in the infamous suicide bombing incident in 2002!

See Wikipedia article!

Apparently, after the nightmarish incident, Paddy’s Club was rebuilt and there we were! Standing on ground zero where more than 200 clubbers had been horrifyingly blown to smithereens! And we didn’t even know it!

Holy snake, I mean… Holy shit, dude!

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We left Paddy’s Pub at around 3AM, tired but satisfied. For the past 4 hours or so we had danced and danced unstoppably and there were times when it had felt dizzy and wobbly but we just couldn’t stop…

When we finally did stop we were totally exhausted and drained.

We slept so well that night.

The next morning, to treat the hangover and aches all over the body, we went for a spa – no Bali trip is complete without trying out their spas!

A 120-minute spa session cost Rp350,000 (RM110) per person.

I had been slightly reluctant to go for a spa at first, but the moment I stepped into the private room, I knew I had made the right decision.

The 2-hour full-body massage + scrub + floral bath was heavenly!

And with the nice, relaxing music and aromatherapy, plus my super-exhausted and sleep-deprived body… I could have laid there on the soft massage table whole day and stubbornly refuse to leave until they called security.

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Our last destination in Bali was Ulawatu Temple – a serious contender against the beautiful sunset scenery of Tanah Lot Temple for the best temple in Bali!

This time, instead of being on the beach, this amazing temple stood majestically on top of a cliff overlooking the sea!

The scene, as you can see, was breathtaking:

The thing about camera shots is that they don’t really look as amazing as they do when you look at the scene in reality.

So if you think the scenes in the pictures are nice, think again – the reality is actually a thousand times more magnificent than what you see in the picture!

I don’t know if the photos make it any clear to you – but it was very, very high up!

And there was no fence or walls or whatever along the cliff, one slip and even the ferocious Balinese gods can’t save you.

At around 4PM, we left for the Bali airport and departed from the wonderful island at 6.30PM.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I had already been cautious about the ‘over-temple-ish’ tour itinerary before I went for this trip itself. And now it has been proven that my worries have become reality!

All in all, I think the only temples that are worth going are the last two – Tanah Lot and Uluwatu Temple. The others would be better off cancelled and the time scheduled for visiting beaches instead!

Really, our schedule was so packed that we virtually had no free time at all except at night, which of course, was not suitable for beach activities as well!

OK, all that’s just my opinion – There could be many other tourists who totally enjoyed the temples so much and had the time of their lives strolling around the moldy old temples admiring cracked walls and terrifying gods.

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Complaints aside, I cannot express enough how happy and contented I am with this trip!

The local people were nice; the tour guide was fabulous; the sceneries were magnificent; the prices were unbeatable; the places were unique, and most of all, the friends that we made during the trip were the best!

Although we sometimes complained that some stuff were boring, the trip itself had actually never had a moment that lacked flavor.

Bali – I’ll definitely be back again someday!