Cameron Highlands, and Kuala Lumpur

Highlights of our return journey from Ipoh to K-L: Uncle Sam took us up into the mountains, winding up and up to the fantastic high pass farms and villages and hotels of the Cameron Highlands, where many Malaysians go on holiday, to escape the heat of the low lands; being cooler in the Highlands, European fruits are grown here. But at various elevations, other harder to come by, jungle vegetables and fruits, including strange varieties of bananas, which were delicious.

We lunched at a Cameron Highlands Tea farm, which grows orange pekoe (bought some here for mom and dad) and offered us scones, cookies and as Marcus put it, 'tea and sympathy' on our long drive back ...

Best part of the drive came as we wound north through the vast Malaysian jungles, the new mountain road offering fantastic views of lush tropical valleys and passes. Then Uncle Sam spotted some aboriginal blow-pipe hunters climbing down out of the trees and crossing the road. These aboriginals collect jungle fruits and sell them at road side huts made from bamboo stalks and leaves ... But they survive by hunting and gathering, using blowdarts to shoot monkeys, and eat the meat.

Sam called to the young pipe-hunter returning to his hut, and the boy---he seemed only 17 or 18 to me---came out and talked to us, or rather to Sam and Lucilla, who were familiar with his dialect (they grew up in the foothills of these mountains, and know several dialects). The boy demo'd his pipe for us, putting two darts into the side of a tree some forty feet away; the darts hit the same spot so precisely they formed a V, sticking out of the tree (something I've seen Costner's Robin Hood do with arrows in a movie, but that was special effects; this was a boy who lives without electricity or running water, surviving by his hunting-gathering skills in the jungle and feeding his family of two, maybe three children who we saw by the hut).

Pic Six: an older aboriginal wandered in, wanted to try on my sun glasses, then hammed it up for me.

Pic Seven: K-L from the end of Unlce Sam and Aunt Belinda's mountainside street (it was a foggy afternoon).

Final Pics: Petronas Towers.