After the heat and humidity of Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and, well, everywhere, the cool, fresh air in the mountainous Cameron Highlands region was more than welcome. I only spent two nights and one full day in the tiny, one-street town of Tanah Rata, but it was a very productive day.
The day started out by waking up early for a half-day tour of the nearby BOH tea plantations. I unintentionally learned a lot about tea production and the BOH company (Malaysia’s largest tea manufacturer), but mostly it was just really beautiful.
Welcome to BOH 
This is the road. 
Me! 
They told me to act casual for the photo. 
Me again! 
Got really lucky and ended up meeting really cool people on this tour. 
The first of the many photos of tea fields. 
The second. 
The homes of the tea plantation workers. 
Another tea field photo wow. 
It was really pretty okay I couldn’t choose which photos to include. 
Six? 
Look at that greeeeeeen.
After an hour break for some really tasty Indian food, three of us set off on our own to go for a hike. Some background: apparently local guides in the area intentionally remove signs for trails to keep tourists from being able to hike without paying for a guide. Did we let that stop us? Nope! Should we have? Maybe. The three hour hike was pretty steep on the way up, but the real trouble started on the way down. It had recently rained and we basically had to scale a mudslide down the mountain while holding onto makeshift ropes (they were hoses tied around plants). All three of us slipped and fell (some of us a few times because we aren’t the most coordinated even in ideal scenarios) and by the time we made it to the road (which wasn’t where we were supposed to end up, by the way) we were covered in mud.
The first sign telling us where to go. Looks official, right? 
We climbed up that…. I was really skeptical that it was leading to a trail. 
More official-looking signage. 
I like the use of duct tape on this one. 
The jungle walk! 
The view wasn’t really worth it…. 
To get down a sign said “follow power lines”… 
He is not happy about what he has to do. 
This was way more treacherous than it looked. 
Just a cute little house we passed… 
We had no idea where we were at this point. 
Finally saw the road!
A few minutes walk down the road led us to another tea plantation (not BOH, tea is really big up in the mountains of Malaysia). We stopped there to drink some tea, then we hitchhiked back to the hostel! It took a while because nobody wanted to pick up the travelers covered in mud, but eventually a very nice (insane driving) guy in a pickup truck let us hitch a ride in the back! It was kind of an awesome end to an awesome day.
More tea fields! 
Super green. 
This might be a repeat photo but I’m too lazy to check. 
It looked different than the BOH tea fields. 
Hitchhiking! 
Laughing about how weird the whole day had been. 
Muddy, tired, and sitting in the back of a pick up truck = happy!
😀