Malaysia – Unexpected Illness

By Rough Guy’d

As my cousin and her husband had only just arrived into Malaysia, her parents (who live in Ipoh) decided to take her to one of the most famous tourist sites, the Cameron Highlands... This meant that with nothing else to do, I ended up going back up into its heights for the second time in a week.

While this didn’t sound too interesting it ended up being quite different from my last trip. Unlike the more sedentary pace of the last trip, this trip was more about trying to fit more into a shorter amount of time. Also this trip didn’t see us stay a couple of nights up there but rather drive up and down in one day.

As a result of the different attitude, we managed to see a lot more including a big rose garden, a butterfly park, the famous big waterfall of Cameron Highlands and a second and longer trip to see the Boh tea farm. Probably the biggest tea farm up there, it was quite a sight to see acres upon acres of tea plants all covering the steep hillsides with workers carefully picking their way through them to pick at the tender young tea buds that are used for making the tea we drink.

However as far as good points about this trip were concerned, that was about it. The first bit of bad news for me was a blockage of ears, most likely due to a change in air pressure as I went up and down twice so soon and my inability to clear my ears saw me unable to stand up due to the pain and wasn’t cleared until a couple of days later with the help of some anti-inflammatory pills.

Unfortunately I could tell that even after that, my ears were still not 100% and fearful of doing further damage, I decided against diving in Malaysia a full month later...

The second bit of bad news came from I suspect, the Muslim restaurant where we all ate lunch. The curse of the traveler had hit me and while this wasn’t the first time, it was a particularly nasty case and combined with my head, didn’t do me any favours. Though we came down and met up with some more relations at the nearby town of Kampar where the wedding would be held, I wasn’t good company to say the least.

All this and the wedding was only two days away. Morale of the story, don’t eat anything that isn’t freshly cooked and piping hot regardless of how nice the restaurant looks unless you have some very good preparation beforehand.

Thankfully both of the problems, though not clearing up properly, did manage to clear up enough for me to be able to attend most of the wedding and chat and talk with most people because it turned out to be a pretty good wedding after all...