Cameron Highlands Day 2

This morning started of early...too early! Some of the others staying in the dorm beds werent as considerate as we typically are in the noise they make while getting ready. I also dont understand what there is to DO here at 6 in the morning, but thats beside the point! We eventually got up and went outside to get a bite. We split 2 scones with whipped cream and homemade strawberry jam, and two fried eggs. This seem to taste better when your this high up! We then decided to void showering since our day plans consisted of hiking and a tour. We put our stuff up in a room for tonight (its $4 more) instead of the dorm beds, and headed out for a trail that led to a waterfall. We came upon this little park for the general population to use but it was so much nicer than our parks back home. It was small and didnt really have as cool of jungle-gym type ammenities like we are use to, but there was so much greenery and flowers it was just beautiful! We played around a little here then continued on toward the waterfall. We finally reached the edge of the road that lead into the woods and went right in. Instead of continuing down the path to the waterfall, however, we decided to go on this one we happened to see first. It was STEEP, climbing over roots and trees going towards the top of this mountain/hill but boy was it a good feeling getting to the top. Right where the path continued down, a tree and a bunch of foliage had fallen to block the path, so we just went down the same way we came up. Once down, we kept going down the original path to the waterfall. When we came upon it, after about 5 minutes of trying to figure out how to set up the camera to take our picture, Geron just happened to come down the same path so he took the picture for us. The waterfall was really cool but the water is quite a disgusting color, looking like a lighter-orange color but very similar to the chocolate river in Willy Wonka. We continued on the path and after a little, the path went left but there was a fence with a gate that would open that went off down to the right. As Robert Frost would have suggested, we took the less travelled path behind the fence. It was a fun climb down and back up, but by the time we made it back to the main road, we were absolutely famished. We trudged back to the main street and had a simple indian lunch of cheese naan and chicken fried rice (kind of chinese also). Afterwards we met up with Maddy back at the guesthouse and signed up for a countryside tour for the afternoon. It was a RM25 well spent. The driver was very friendly and first took us to a rose farm/garden. He said he would be back at the bus in half an hour so we had that much time. We didnt think we would need NEAR that much but the expansiveness of this place was so much more than we anticipated. Everything in this city works with the natural landscape, as opposed to how we cut out the shape WE need the mountain to be back home. The rose garden had multiple levels that wrapped around different sides of the mountain and TONs and tons of roses and other flora. Thirty minutes almost wasnt enough time. From there he drove us up to a Tea Farm/plantation. These places are absolutely massive with just multiple rolling hills completely dedicated to tea trees. Dr. Rob would be so jealous we toured the farm, the manufacturing facility, saw where the workers live, and got to try some fresh tea. I thought it was rather funny that there was a soccer pitch where the workers stayed and they played other people who worked at the vegetable farms and strawberry farms etc. The driver said "the tea team is pretty good but the cabbage team, not so much". Got a real kick out of that. We then proceeded to the butterfly gardens and bee gardens, which were cool but really paled in comparison to the first two stops. Our final two stops were the stawberry farm and a buddhist temple. The strawberry farm we had been looking forward to all day for the fresh strawberries, but apparently there had been so many tourists doing the "pick-your-own" option we couldnt do that. We did get to have a cup of homemade strawberry icecream with sliced strawberries and cream on top, however. Winning. In the temple we saw "Malaysia's fourth largest buddha", which maddy pointed out and we agreed is quite a weird thing to claim. Don't you usually stop counting at around 3 when you have statements like that?? Anyways, the temple was alright but the tour in general was great fun. The driver dropped us off at a night market in the town over where we snacked and got some goodies for home before we found a food court to grab a bite at. We know were taking advantage of our foreign adventures when we find places to eat where there are NO westerners and no english menu options. Made for quite the enjoyable meal, but I still dont know what it is we ate. We copped a cab with maddy back to tanah rata and walked back to our guesthouse. We sat outside and talked with maddy a while about life in America, life in Australia, and how everyone should take opportunities to do stuff like this. There really is nothing else like it. After a good long talk with her, we went up to our room, took FREEZING showers, and are now updating you on our full day. Tomorrow well be here again, this is our favorite place so far so we really want to soak it in and do some more trails and enjoy this place. Well update you tomorrow with everything, the fun and the boring! Goodnight!