gathering light

After many months of "after A levels, let's...", it was pretty exciting to finally go on a holiday together! We (Clare, Farah, Lois, MJ and I) took a night bus from Golden Mile and reached there next morning, then went to the tea plantations and tried a pot of the tea there, climbed the tower on top of Gunung Brinchang (the highest peak) for a really spectacular view, went on a fun but muddy walk through the mossy forest (bit like Fangorn in LOTR) to learn about the uses of the plants there, and visited the orang asli settlement. (Mixed feelings about this last one- while it's good that they have access to more study and work opportunities, who'd want to have your home used as a tourist attraction?) Being pretty stoned from the long bus ride, we spent the rest of the day slacking in the hotel.

The next day I woke early up to the faint sound of "Amazing Grace" being played on a wooden flute. I went down to take photos of the beautiful scenery and to find out who was playing, and ended up talking to a very cool 70-yr old grandma from Ipoh with bright red hair who is learning music now her kids have moved out. After eating an indecent amount at the buffet breakfast, we explored the strawberry farm, butterfly garden, bee farm and various plant and flower centres near our hotel. The butterfly garden was really fun as the friendly worker there started picking up butterflies and putting them all over us, then taking out praying mantises, giant millipedes, vipers etc and casually placing them on us! He got offended when we rejected his offer of an enormous and furious lizard which was trying to bite him though ): We then ran up the very steep Raju Hill and bought jam and pigged out on strawberry desserts at thestrawberry farm at the top, then headed down to Kea Farm (which had more strawberry products than I even knew existed) and caught a bus to Tanah Ratah for amazing scones and claypot chicken rice. We spent the rest of the night playing Imaginiff and finding out inane stuff about each other, then woke up early the next day to catch the sunrise. Then, it was the long bus ride back. (nearly 12 hours due to many rest stops!)

All in all, good scenery, good food and good company, and definitely something to remember after we all go our different ways (: