Total tea

Day 118 - Tanah Rata

And as soon as I was inside I knew something wasn't right

I let out a laugh through a grimace...I graphed. I'd met Cory the day before on my way down to the Cameron Highlands. They are, as the name suggests, highlands. They are not, as the name suggests, where Ferris's friend fled after wrecking his father's 1961 Ferrari GT California. They are, in fact, a fief of Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton and Malaysia. 'Call me Dave' he says to his friends. Dave and his family come here in the summer so the children can have luge lessons while he screws, serfs and eats pigs. Or some combination of those verbs and nouns. The temperature cools as you wind your way up to the tea plantations that blanket these hills and the air provided a nice respite from the coastal swelter. Resolved to find more ethical pursuits than the ex-Prime Minister I'd booked on a walking tour. Rainforest stills covers two thirds of the area and, while the forest here is the oldest in the world, it falls outside the national park of Taman Negara and so enjoys none of its protection. Jason, the tour guide, was forthright about the danger to the landscape as we picked our way up narrow trails. He talked about the corporate interests that lean so heavily on the ground, pushing, pressing, flattening and fattening.

I nod with in "oh, terrible, terrible" kind of way until he jolts me with the revelation that he has had friends that were involved in protests against these corporate interests that were suddenly never seen again. And there it is. It takes the form of 'more tax and jobs' in one country and 'can I donate to your foundation' it another. In others still it is 'would you like a new car' or 'put him in the van'. It is capitalism. Many sides, all coin. Our group steps carefully around rare orchids and pitcher plants until the rainforest ends with a legal precision and the hills become a monoculture. One plant, camellia sinesis, tea. I find an attractiveness in tea plantations that I think is the sub-conscious knowledge (if that is not a oxymoron) that they are exotic. They tell me that I am on the other side of the planet and I thrill at that. In England they'd be a dull field of shrubs but here they are the orient. We finished the tour with an obligatory stop at the tea house. And I do mean obligatory. Jason's otherwise excellent overview of the tour, with photos of the day, that he sent afterwards finishes with a page of PR on the Bharat Group. There's is a tale of 'entrepreneurial foresight', 'hard work', 'dedication' and this page was the price for letting us walk through their 1600 acres and their 'ease of accessibility along the Cameron Highlands trunk road'. Anyway back to those ladyboys...
The hike had induced a thirst and not for tea. The town in which I was staying the night was called Tanah Rata and it didn't teem with bars. And there were certainly no houses of ill-repute nor dens of vice. It was not Cory's kind of place at all. We found a beer in the Rainforest Café, an apt name as you could see both rain and forest from the terrace.

As the heavens opened Cory told me of his adventures in Bangkok and Bali and many places in between. Adventures with men and with women and many places in between. His most extraordinary night involved the unconvincing prostitute referenced at the start of this post, a gender-based dispute, a gang of hookers breaking into his hotel room, Cory stealing a purse to obtain a refund from aforementioned unconvincing prostitute and the police searching for him up and down the Khao San Road. And, even more surprising than that, he'd met a certain mohawked, face-tattooed, Liverpool-supporting cousin of mine. Granted Faron did hang out everyday in a popular bar in a popular place in Laos but still the world can be small. And a woman could be a man. I suggested that the metropolis of Kuala Lumpur would be more to his taste than sleepy Tanah Rata.
Nope. The next day we were in the capital and Cory hated it instantly. I was ambivalent. It was noisy and dirty but not in the beguiling way that Hanoi has but in a way that feels hostile. A stroll in Kuala Lumpur is interrupted by main roads that rip through the city. Risk your life or take the bridge helpfully positioned half a mile away. I've never heard a person extoll the virtues of this place and it was becoming apparent why. Because it isn't a person-sized city. And by that I don't mean its sprawl, its only 1/6^th the size of London, but in its small places. The roads I mentioned beget those bridges and as hot tarmac burns your feet cold steel slices through your eyeline. It's a city that assumes people will get by, go around, walk the curb like a tightrope. Its infrastructure corners and cages us. KL did have one redeeming feature though - the presence of a friend. With serendipitous timing Ollee was in town. She'd even tried to book into the same guesthouse though it was full. She'd stayed there before and suggested we signup for the barbecue on the roof deck. That was also full so we ended up on the street with a plastic bag of beers like hobos. Which suited us fine in all our unpretensions. We swapped travel stories accumulated since we last met a month and a half ago. Jesus, a month and a half. So many people and so many places in that time. Her stories were inevitably more wild than mine - dangerous sleepovers, guns, whole blocks of heroin. And there it was again, that instant ease and 'again' was something I didn't think I'd get. Aside from the standard biography, tips and travel anecdotes the other thing that travellers meeting on the path must discuss is the absolute cheapest place to get beer. Ollee knew a place in the market. The bar was little more than a few plastic chairs and tables and a fridge. But surrounded by clothing stalls we did drink some very cheap beer indeed. Cory joined us and I got to hear his wonderfully debauched stories all over again. He can't help but tell his tales of Bangkok with a faraway look in his eyes, I suspect he'll be on a plane tomorrow. A local stops by and we strike up conversation. He's pleasant with a teddy bear-ish demeanour, if teddy bears didn't believe in the moon landings. To be fair give their limited life experience they might not. And being naturally immune to COVID they might not believe in that either. They'd have a lot in common with this guy come to think of it. After checking that none of us were American he confessed himself not a fan of the country before stating that China was a force for good in the world. The conversation cast my mind back to my trek of the previous day. The guide had told me of his concerns that the Chinese were increasing their influence in the country. Twenty three percent of Malaysians are ethnically Chinese and that is no small number to form a fifth column. They'd best not increase the price of beer, that's all I'll say.