The hills are alive……..

Mandy: Saturday 3rd August

Our coach journey was OK, nothing like I had worried about in my very over active imagination for the last two days and nothing like as bad as what people had put on trip adviser about being sick all the way as there were so many twists and turns. The coach, unusually, had a lot of white backpackers on although they were half our age. We trundled through the lush green hillsides for a couple of hours up towards the Cameron Highlands until we came to Brinchang.

We got off the coach along with various Malaysian people, one lady carrying THE biggest bag of what looked like Bombay mix I have ever seen! It was like a small suitcase (seriously) but the white backpackers stayed on…off to another location!!

We have walked around the lovely local street market which has the best hawker stalls so far on this trip and we have not seen one white person (smile) most are locals, Chinese or Malaysian tourists which is perfect. (smile)

We walked to a local Temple to stretch our legs and have a look around, smell the incense and take more photos of gold Buddhas. (smile) On our way out we met a very nice Chinese man selling ebony wood, translucent wooden discs and natural walking sticks……..and a white dog. The Chinese man wasn’t selling the dog we just met the dog too. We, sorry Glen! had a lengthy conversation about wood and making walking sticks …….and my Brother Mark. (Smile) Mark, we have twinned you with this Chinese Man in the way towns are twinned. (Smile) …….note to readers: this will make sense to my Brother.

Glen made the mistake of being friendly to it (the dog!) and it followed us all the way back to the hotel even though we were trying to give it the slip by splitting up occasionally and hiding behind things! The dog would look at me and then look at Glen each walking in different directions and then choose one or the other of us and keep coming! It was not unusual for a dog to follow us but as Glen had noticed the unusual thing was that it only walked on the white lines on the road! It walked like a dressage pony too he pointed out! Glen wonders if he was using them as camouflage thinking we could not see him following us! (Chuckle)

It is lovely to have arrived in the middle of this green Tea Plantation covered ‘jungly’ hillside full of strawberry and lavender farms (smile) it is so peaceful….except for a random old man who keeps letting a firework off……more of him tomorrow.