Tween Travels

(Don’t worry – Madeleine will be back next post!)

While we were in George Town planning our next stop, we realized that it was one of the busiest times to travel due to Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan. John found us an Airbnb in the Cameron Highlands, a few hours away by bus, where we figured we could spend a few days waiting out the holiday. Added draw: the area is much cooler due to altitude.

Per our host’s instructions, we got off the bus in a small “kampung” (village) surrounded by fruit and flower farms. Immediately, a friendly teenager approached us and asked if we were staying at the black house; when we said we were, he led us down a few narrow side streets to our home for the next four nights.

The apartment was somewhere I would have thought was very cool when I was traveling in my twenties. But the years have turned me soft and I couldn’t escape the feeling there were insects (or worse) lurking behind the wooden packing crates fashioned into bed bases. On our second night, a giant beetle dropped from the corrugated roof of the kitchen, sending Madeleine screaming through the house. John swacked him with a flip flop and I threw him onto the street where he landed with a disturbingly solid thud.

The downside to being so close to picturesque farmland was the abundance of manure-loving flies. The stores and restaurants all used sheets of sticky fly paper which were crawling with flies, yet somehow there were still flies everywhere. We drew even more attention to ourselves as outsiders by frantically slapping at ourselves and fanning our food.

Surprisingly, Madeleine and William took everything in their stride. Whereas they were initially self-conscious around the village kids, who stared at them like they were movie stars, they soon made friends at the playground and on the makeshift soccer court. I was especially proud of Madeleine for scoring the equalizing goal in a match against some village boys.

It really helped that we ate some of the most delicious food of the trip so far. The restaurants were basic, with no written menus, but everything was fresh and tasty. On our last night, a man on the table next to us saw us coveting his plate of sliced cucumbers with soy sauce. He went to the fridge, took out two cucumbers, and presented them to me, making us guess that he was a local farmer. Our server chopped them up for us and I swear they were the tastiest cucumbers I’ve ever had.

While we also enjoyed hiking through tea plantations, picking fresh strawberries, and meeting lots of sweet stray dogs, my favorite memory is watching Madeleine devour an entire plate of special fried rice in a rundown, fly-infested cafe and declaring it the best thing she’s ever eaten.

Madeleine will be posting soon about our adventure in beautiful Ipoh. It’s taken me longer than I’d like to admit to put this post together so I have a new appreciation for her posts! Thank you for all the comments and messages – we all love reading them.