Personal: Cameron Highland

Day 1&2

A recent trip to Cameron Highland give me a new perspective of this chilly hill town. I resided in its major town named Tanah Rata (literally means flat land). The oxygenated atmosphere seems had self-healed my damaged biological clock, I woke up at 7am (as oppose to 11am or 12pm in KL) had a breakfast at the Malay hawker stalk before beating the path up hill.

Brincang is where the true delicious Chinese food is found and surrounded by farms open for tourist visit such as the bees farm, strawberry farm, tea house& flower greenhouses, it's a worth visiting place for tourist and local.

There is a bus station but counting on its services is rather hard to imagine so instead I hired a cab which cost me RM6 from Brincang to Tanah Rata. Cab services is plentiful and friendly driver is no doubt proactive in keeping their business alive.

Well, chill out at hostel's balcony while read a bit for leisure fit the bill of my purpose here.

There are hundreds of DVD available at Daniel's lodge making time easier to pass.

Day 3

About an hour ride from Tanah Rata down the hill on highway toward Ipoh passing through myriad of farm greenhouses along the way has an aborigines kampong (settlement). A point to start the jungle trek in search of the precious flower named Rafflesia, the biggest flower in the world.

Unlike mossy forest up in Brincang this is a rainforest with stream cutting everywhere and slope both steep and shallow along the trek making the trip perplexing. nature has its way to replenish the dehydrate soul and after a nice detox it's wonderful to have body hydrated again.

Aborigines here remind me of their close relative in Taman Negara where the earlier hunt with blowpipe and dwell in simple DIY bamboo houses with offspring roaming around with their born coverings without the fear of mosquito or insect of any kind, perfectly blend into the jungle lifestyle. While over here they live in brick houses and work as tourist Ranger. No complain since our tour guide Mr. Ah Choo remark that the modernisation is a recent effort of Malaysian government.

The growth of human activity is evidence by the on going deforestation and construction of new greenhouses at the cost of mother nature. It's a dilemma as human myself since it is mean to keep our species subsistence by filling up our appetite but at the same time sacrifices our precious oxygen factory, the rainforest. Nonetheless what found unforgivable is the poisonous smoke emitted from truck roaming around the hill spoiling the refreshing air.

While it's the noble intention of the government to up lift the aborigine life here I wonder whether it's their temperament to be a Tourist Ranger than live a life they use to; hunting, live in bamboo made houses and lead a nomadic lifestyle in their previous forest that has partially transform into greenhouses nowadays??

Blowpipe testing

Whether it's worth to exchange their inheritance culture& lifestyle for materials foreign to them is out of question here but what trigger my sense in relation to the transformation is that human is escalating it's K-selection capacity while breeding like R-selection which literary means human is overcoming it's limiting factor for mortality while populate its species at greater height in tandem with need of resources hence bring down the carrying capacity of earth. In another way, it means earth is getting smaller and resources is getting more scarce with the exponential growth of human population along with the exploitation of resources.

Rafflesia flower

Half-day Rafflesia tour package is RM60+RM10 entrance to aborigine. Booking is widely available at any corner within Tanah Rata but "Kang Travel " is the most famous agency around.