Cameron Highlands was founded as part of the British love for escaping heat. The British, in their infinite wisdom, tended to invade hot countries and then proceed to complain about the heat - and thereby establishing Hill Stations to escape from that very same heat. Thus was Cameron Highlands created. Of course in those far off colonial times, Cameron Highlands was infamous for its cooling climate, insurgent communists and, later, disappearing planters (Jim Thompson). With the advent of global warming those cooling Highlands have simply become Highlands, with a temperature marginally cooler than the green, equatorial, lands below.
When I had my own Durian orchard, and lived in Perak, I visited Cameron Highlands on a fairly regular basis. In my ancient Kia Rocsta I would saunter up the winding road from Tapah, careen around the sheer drop bends, drive past indigenous sellers of local wild bee honey, and sidle towards the home of the festering wound smelling raffelasia plant and that establishment entitled - The Smoke Lodge (established 1937). In those days I had neither the money nor the inclination to sup at the pseudo-Western Smoke House, keen as I was to meld into the background of my adopted country, and wishing to sample not the delights of Brighton or Hove, but rather of Perak and Pahang. Times change and people change. Once in the Cameron Highlands I would buy the odd nicknack, copious amounts of honey and indulge in a few dozen strawberries - and regret that indulgence on the emetic drive down. Now it was Christmas. My first real Christmas for 7 years, and it was time to indulge in those Western delights.
Unfortunately we, that is my wife, children and I, were staying in the insalubrious Dahlia Apartments at Cameron Highlands, which in no way lived up to its floral name. The entire building seemed to suffer from a damp problem and our apartment, upon opening the rickety door with no bolt, smelled musty. Mental warning bells had began to sound when we had noticed the septuagenarian receptionist and piles of discarded furniture littering the building - those bells rang in great abundance on exiting the lift (on the fifth floor) and upon observing a threadbare settee - oozing stuffing. We navigated our way along that mould-stained landing and, as we did so, encountered several other seemingly war-torn items of furniture, no doubt casualties from the ongoing tourist skirmishes. The apartment was ample enough for the four of us, but the mould induced fragrance seemed to permeate everything. Bed sheets, blankets and carpets all smelled of mould. It was all we could do to try to sleep amidst all that dankness.
We exited that apartment in the damp evening. We left the kitchen tap, with its persistent, and damnably annoying drip, dripping. We bade farewell to the set of tablespoons so thin that Uri Geller could have used them in his spoon bending act, and wished to regain some of that initial excitement we had upon our arrival in Cameron Highlands.
In a newly born naivety we sought to seek solace in some kind of sumptuous repast, and to hell with the expense. The fact that it was raining was not the fault of The Smoke House, but the misunderstanding regarding the lack of Earl Grey Tea, was. Simply put, Lady Grey Tea is not Earl Grey Tea. Earl Grey Tea is flavoured with the oil of the bergamot plant. Lady Grey Tea - a newly fabricated invention by the Twinnings company, is flavoured with the Mandarin citrus. They are not, repeat not, interchangeable, despite the waitress insisting that they were one and the same - they are not. That was my first disappointment with The Smoke House. Admittedly it was a small matter, but it rather set the scene for the further disappointment.
Being Christmas time, The Smoke House was bedecked, not with boughs of holly but with a sufficiency of natural greenery, dried flora, mock topiary Bambis, mock blue Delft plates, mocking Tibetan tea pots (which in all reality had never rubbed shoulders with a Yak) and - poinsettias. The latter adding a welcome familiarity to the pseudo-Victorian museum version of Christmas which The Smoke House had chosen the emulate. Gazing upon those red and green poinsettias reminded me of those years in Clacton (On-Sea), when I would hasten to Sainsbury’s emporium of all things middle-class (and slightly exotic) in Colchester, to purchase the elegance of poinsettias to grace my Christmas dinning-table. With my mind firmly back in Malaysia, Pahang and Cameron Highlands, I gazed a little in awe at the mixed metaphors of The Smoke House Christmas presentation. Mixed metaphors and wrangles over tea do not bode well for a forthcoming dinner, especially one as expensive as The Smoke House Christmas dinner.
Ostensibly, the meal was set to explode, like a Malayan Emergency hand-grenade, with all kinds of sumptuous gourmet promise. Turkey was on the menu, accompanied by Cranberry jelly and Bread sauce. We also opted for Cod and Chips - the first time that I had seen Cod on the menu in Malaysia and, to round off my longing for nostalgia - Cauliflower Cheese, there being four more than hungry people at the dinner-table that night. The food was delivered in an appropriate style, with due deference to serving etiquette, but the portions fell far short of the promises the cost of each item had made. We were crestfallen. The paltry size of each dish, were as if Dicken’s Scrooge himself were eecking out the portions at the back of an impoverished kitchen. There was barely a spoonful of carrots, a minuscule amount of potatoes and hardly four slices of turkey on the overly small Christmas Dinner plate. The Cod was little better, in a strange batter, and the Cauliflower Cheese, I was convinced, was but a child’s portion. One bread roll, each, was proffered - not, you might notice, a basket of bread rolls and there was no butter knife to use with the meagre yellow curls. This all badly let that eatery down. Overall, the size of the meal was a great disappointment. It was right then, as we tried to savour the few crumbs of food we had been served, that all thoughts of breakfast at The Smoke House the following morning, disappeared. Instead, we had the remains of the Christmas fare I had cooked and we had brought with us, for breakfast.
Later, a customary drizzle mimicking London rain accompanied a jaunt to the Bharat, Cameron Valley, tea plantation, where meandering rows of tea bushes disappeared their green way into the distance and fresh light green leaves sparkled like lights in the occasional sun. The emporium designed to trap the unwary traveller was not surprisingly called The Tea Room. It boasted of scones (plain and blueberry) apple pie and cream and cheesecake. Liquid refreshments consisted of a variety of teas sold by that company, with the Malaysian sweet Teh Tarik taking preference, for local visitors, over the elusive Earl grey.
A barrage of wannabe photographers had descended upon the tea room shortly after we arrived. Their subject matter was not the grace and beauty of the plantations rows, but each other and themselves. Cameras with short, long or wide focal distances, ipads, iphones and tablets of all descriptions snapped the ubiquitous Facebook photos, jamming the free WIFI system which slowed to a crawl. Fingers pointed to cheeks, chins rested on hands, men posed manfully with or without cigarettes, children posed with the two finger ‘bunny ears’ salute and elderly relatives looked on a little dazed at all the flash photography directed at their children, grandchildren, nieces and/or nephews. After the obligatory photo sessions, young energized children sped away to play, slightly older children engaged themselves with Facebook or Twitter on their tablets, while older children and adults resumed their love affairs with their smart phones. The wonder of the scenery was all but lost on all but one woman who was sitting sketching, then capturing the sight, for posterity, in watercolour - my wife.
Time must have a stop and, after two nights of mustiness we eventually ambled our way back down those hills and headed back towards Ipoh. Lunch in Ipoh brought a most amazing roasted duck at the Sun Yeong Wai restaurant famous for its roasted duck – and with good reason too. We travelled on, back to Bukit Mertajam and our temporary home with the in-laws. The following day, an inexpensive Dim Sum repast followed at Huang Zuo in BM and all was well with the world, and that expensive Christmas meal in Cameron Highlands all but forgotten.
