Seasons on the Move

Cameron Highlands – August 20

Fab awoke in the morning and quickly rushed to the bathroom. The vegetarian banana leaf set introduced itself to the toilet bowl. Both Fab and Jen were hurting. Jen had spent the night hugging the toilet. Mike and I slept like babies. Fab stayed in bed for most of the day, so it was up to me to get everything ready to go. We were planning to depart for the Perhentian Islands the next day. I spent the day doing laundry, checking email and arranged for a mini-bus to Kuala Besut, the departure point to the islands.  

When I got back, Fab was in severe pain so I took her to see a doctor. The doctor told her not to worry and gave her some pills to ease the pain and stop the vomiting. “Bad food,” he said, “Those guys, they’re just Southern Indian pretending to make Northern Indian food. Amateurs.” Fab took the pills and she began to feel better. By the end of the night, she was able to eat again.

We finished off the night by watching “Breakfast with Hunter”, a documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, in our hostel room on Mike’s computer.   

Cameron Highlands – August 19

I spent the entire day catching up on a bunch of things. I wrote out the screenplays to the films I had already shot and made a hard copy of the film roll logs so Pascal Trottier, my editor, could get down to business.  After that I updated my MP3 player. New stuff: S.O.A., Panda Bear, Black Flag, Depeche Mode and a little Hot Chip.

At night, all four of us went down to an Indian restaurant and had a vegetable banana leaf set and some Paneer Masala. After, we went back to the guesthouse and went through the pirated VCDs looking for something to watch in the TV room. Jen wasn’t well, so she went to bed. Fab complained about stomach pains. Mike and I felt fine and decided, against our better judgment, to watch Irvin Winkler’s “Life as a House”. The movie was an exercise in patience. The Chinese-made VCD did nothing but skip and freeze, Hayden Christensen was awful as per usual, and the movie was, as Mike said, “one of them cancer movies”. Despite all this, we watched the entire thing. Still not exactly sure why.

Cameron Highlands – August 18

Fab and I had a quick breakfast and then headed out on our walk. It took us a while to find the hiking trail, but after asking for some directions we found it. The walk itself wasn’t all that spectacular. There was a waterfall with a bunch of trash at the bottom, a muddy path that was slick under foot and a bunch of mosquitoes.  We had thought that we would get in some valley vistas, but what we got instead was a face full of foliage. Nonetheless, the walk was peaceful and Fab and I had a nice talk about family, friends and our future.

When the trail ended, after about two hours, we were spat out a the base of vegetable farm which gave way to a two lane highway that wound through the highland hills. We had a map in hand that indicated that there was a tea plantation about 4km up the road so we decided to push forward. I say push because it was humid as hell and the highway went one way, up. Well, I guess it went down too, but that wasn’t the direction we were headed.

After sweating and cursing on the side of the road for an hour, we decided to try our luck and hitch a ride. Before long, a nice Muslim couple stopped and picked us up and escorted us up to the Cameron Valley Tea Plantation. The woman in the passenger seat smiled at us and told us that they were on their second honeymoon.

When we hopped out of the car, we walked down to the plantation to take a look around. The place was full of package tourists and the tea was over-priced. We passed on the tea and decided to wander through the plantation for a while.  We took some nice pictures and then decided to head back to town.

Not wanting to keep climbing the highway’s incline, we asked another couple if they could give us a lift into town. No problem. This attitude was becoming typical of the Malays, they would go out of their way to make you feel welcome. After we got dropped off in town, we had a little lunch and then went back to the guesthouse.

Not much happened in the evening. Jen discovered that a cat had pissed on the pillow in her room. It took her a few days to realize this because her nose had been stuffed as the result of a lingering cold.

Cameron Highlands – August 17

Got up early, had some tea and scones for breakfast and then took it easy for the rest of the day. Mike and I spent the afternoon working on a screenplay about racism in the prairies and the infamous “starlight tours” provided by Saskatoon’s finest.

Fab and I were starting to worry that we were going to end up spending too much time in Malaysia. We decided that we needed to make plans to leave the country. After searching the internet for cheap flights headed north, we booked a ticket with Air Asia to Siem Reap, Cambodia (home of Angkor Wat) for September 2. Pleased with our purchase, Fab and I went back to the guesthouse, sat in the garden under the stars and made plans to go for a hike in the surrounding jungle the following morning.

Kuala Lumpur to the Cameron Highlands – August 16

Got on the bus a little past noon. The ride to the Highlands wound up through a mountain highway. The views were quite something. I think the ride lasted about four or five hours, all hair-pin turns and steep drop-offs. Surprisingly, Fab’s stomach didn’t seem to have any problem with it. I wiled away the hours listening to music and reading Fitzgerald.

Once we arrived, we were picked up in a mini-van and escorted to the guesthouse. We were staying in Tanah Rata, the main village in the Cameron Highlands. The temperature there was about ten degrees (maybe more) cooler than what we had experienced so far in Malaysia. Needing a break from air conditioned rooms, the cool climate was much appreciated.

The guesthouse was located in a quaint little courtyard full of blooming flowers and silence.  The room was another story. The room itself was clean and spacious, but the curtains were stained with mildew and our sheets were musty. However, it was nice to have a private room again.

After checking in, Fab and I went out to discover the area. We wandered around town for a while until we found a secluded little tea room at the edge of town. We sat and chatted and sipped tea and tried to figure out what the next month had in store for us. From what we could tell, well, we couldn’t and that’s what we kind of liked about it.

Kuala Lumpur – August 15

My god, I cannot believe we spent so much time in KL. Don’t get me wrong, the city is pretty cool, but enough already. In the morning we planned our escape. The Cameron Highlands, an old British hill station where there are a number of tea plantations, was where we decided to run. As Bruce Dickinson once squealed, “Run to the Hills!” Funny enough, I picked up a pirated version of Iron Maiden’s “Best of the Beast” while we were in Ao Nang.

After booking our bus ticket for the next day, we all went out to the Batu Caves, a Hindu shrine located in, you guessed it, a cave. The bus ride out to the caves took forever, but I got in some good music listening: a nice mix of Bowie and Roxy Music.

The caves were located at the top of around three hundred stairs. It sounded kind of daunting, but it was really nothing. We fought off thieving monkeys on the way to the top. During World War II, the Japanese used the caves to hide armaments.  We spent about an hour wandering around and then caught a local bus back downtown for dinner and an early bedtime.

Kuala Lumpur – August 14

Tired of toast, Fab and I had a big, expensive breakfast with a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Afterwards, we picked up our laundry from the cleaners, posted our purchased goods and bid Matt farewell.

We took it easy at night and went to bed early. After the lights went out, I sat up with my headlamp and began reading F.Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise”.

Kuala Lumpur – August 13

Mike and Jen went to re-new Mike’s passport at the Canadian embassy, so Matt, Fab and I went shopping. I bought myself a couple of smart shirts and Fab bought herself some knock-off Ray Bans.

Matt decided that he was going to go back to Thailand the next day, so after we returned to the guesthouse we decided to celebrate. We met up with Mike and Jen and then went for a drink. What was intended to be a quick tipple (booze is expensive in Malaysia) soon snowballed into another night of drunken revelry (funny how two out of the four nights that I have been properly drunk so far on this trip have come in a Muslim country). Once again, we chased down some Indian food to soak up the beer and then retired to the room for a late night screening of “Beerfest” on Mike’s labtop.

 Kuala Lumpur – August 12

Didn’t do much due to the rain outside and the painful kink in my neck that had seemed to get worse by the day. Once the rain let up, Fab and I ventured out to catch up on our email and look for a bite to eat. Surprise, surprise, we found a cheap Indian restaurant. I had dosa and a chai tea and puffed on some clove cigarettes.

Kuala Lumpur – August 11

Having met up with Matt at the guesthouse, we all decided to head to Kuala Lumpur Lake Gardens to check out a butterfly garden. We couldn’t find the butterflies, but saw some deer mice, looked at some orchids and then went back to Little India to relive the previous night’s culinary glory. After dinner, Fab and I, tired of the heat, decided to go back to the guesthouse and chill out. Matt, Mike and Jen went shopping.

We met up with them later at a nearby pub, drank too much beer and then gleefully walked through the steamy night in search of a midnight snack. Amid the chaos of the KL nightlife, we dined on noodles at a roadside stall whilst being serenaded by traffic noise and a blind man playing Bob Marley covers on his guitar.