A driver was at the bus terminal to meet me and I was whisked off to Daniel’s Lodge. It had looked so good on the internet, but the best room was depressing in the extreme. Without air conditioning walls soon take on a stained and worn look in the humidity, even at the is altitude. The single, highly colourful sheet was clean, as was the blanket neatly folded at the bottom of the bed. Eddy assured me that even the bathroom light worked and there was hot and cold water in the shower. Green netting was stretched across the louvre window and an pair of athletic spiders were chasing about the walls hunting the mosquitoes that followed us inside. Eddy was pleasant and helpful and I tried to keep the disappointment from showing in my face. I am getting soft. I used to stay in this sort of place, and worse, all the time.
The Cameron Highlands and Tanah Rata have long figured on my list of those places that I long to return to. If I am fed up I often think of the times that I have spent here. I arrived with a sense of excitement, keen to explore old haunts and see what had changed.
Leaving my baggage locked in the room, deciding that I could risk leaving my computer and cameras in this backwater, I walked back into town. Within minutes I was trying to remember quite what it was that I had seen in the place.
Short break to fetch insect repellant.
Back in the garden bar now. Classical Indian music in the background. A small shrine with a candle floating in a Guinness glass to my right and a Comanche painting on a wooden plaque hanging on the wall above. A rat has just run across the floor.
There have been changes in Tanah Rata, but not on the scale that I expected. On my last visit there was a lot of building work going on. This is now completed, with the exception of one substantial structure which has been abandoned. Its concrete skeleton gradually being reclaimed by the forrest. A few additional rows of shop houses, blocks of apartments and a new bus station have also been added, but substantially, the town is still recognizable.
It wasn’t any more beautiful 16 years ago although at least then the jungle, if I can call it that, encroached on the very edge of town and the old colonial buildings still stood in a glorious isolation that suggested that the British were not that long gone. The town was functional, a place to buy supplies, have a beer and an Indian meal.
I used to stay at Father’s Guest House, so called because the main house was owned by a priest, who, if I am not mistaken worked at the convent just down the hill. During the Emergency and up to Independence in 1957 the gardens had been used as a British military base. By the 1990s the nissan huts had been converted in to dormitories for travelers. It was a good place to stay; cheap, friendly and with great views across the mountains. In the evening everybody would gather in the cafe at the bottom of the hill, exchange stories and enjoy a beer and perhaps a film.
By the time of my second visit, which must have been in 1991, a substantial section of the surrounding jungle had been ripped up, to prepare the ground for the large blocks of apartments that dominate the entrance to Tanah Rata today. I remember being angered and indignant at this.
I was particularly frustrated because I could see no point in the development. None of the Malaysians that I met had showed the slightest interest in the natural environment. To most of the Malays that I knew, the countryside meant farming, something that they were trying to get away from as they sought the financial prestige of the growing middle class. To them, enjoying nature meant a game of golf, or at most sitting in a waterfall, modest in their white T-shirts. The Chinese I knew were only interested in gambling, hence the great success of the Genting Highlands, home to the only casino in Malaysia.
Why then, I thought, destroy this place of natural beauty, just so that Malaysians could sit in their hotel rooms or in a coffee shop drinking tea and chatting?
This was an interesting time in my intellectual development. In my studies I was acutely aware of the pitfalls of ethnocentrism and yet my attitude towards Malaysians in general, and Malays specifically, could only be described as dismissive. I loved the Malay language and their traditional culture, but they seemed so misguided, so lost in the current swell of economic development. In many ways I suppose I was sure of my own ethnic superiority. I can laugh at it now, but at the time I was very serious. It is an attitude that I see today in many of the men that work in Saudi Arabia. A belief that the locals just aren’t up to the job and couldn’t possibly manage without us. It is nonsense of course and completely ethnocentric.
So, sixteen years on, it appears that the level of environmental destruction around Tanah Rata is relatively minimal, limited in extent to about half a kilometer in each direction from the centre. The population must have increased many times over and this has been good for local businesses.
Returning from my walk I was still thinking “Why am I here? What was it that was special about this place?”. I changed and went for a run, intending to follow the route of the last walk I took here, out of Tanah Rata and through the jungle to the golf course, then back down the main road. A combination of poor memory and recent building sent me off course and I found instead the Cameron Highlands Hospital, a strange location for such a large institution, but perhaps the cool mountain air aids recovery and cuts down on air-conditioning bills.
The old Smokehouse, a very English hotel at the edge of the golf course is unchanged, right down to the plastic sheeting over part of the roof, although to be fair, it might have been repaired and leaked anew. I have always wanted to stay here, and it annoyed me that it is still beyond my budget. As I write though, a little devil is perched on my shoulder saying ‘splurge, go on, you might never be back here’. Good argument.
It was a good run, 47 minutes including the diversion to the hospital. It would have been a full morning’s outing on my last visit here. I am older but much fitter now, and that pleases me.
The Chinese restaurant, the only decent place for breakfast, not good but a place where memory often takes me, has gone. In its place a seedy bar with pool tables and a loose looking woman leaning on the door frame.
The Indian restaurants are still there, their waiters still pouncing on passers by fluttering menus in their face and reeling off a list of dishes. Their sarongs, or kain pelicat, now replaced with trousers.
KFC hasn’t made it here yet, although there is a KLC with remarkably similar colours, logos and menu. Across the road and at the other end of town there is a would be McDonalds, again with all the right packaging, colours and menu items.
I ate roti canai with a group of Malay teachers who were in town for an English and Art ‘expedition’ with their students before repairing to a Japanese (!) restaurant for coffee, cheesecake and their free internet connection. Internet! Last time I was here, I hadn’t even heard of it. Now I can email from my laptop from the middle of the jungle. Well, almost.
Daniel’s lodge has one redeeming feature. A bar in the garden. It is difficult to get beer as the bar girl, Dutch unless I am mistaken, keeps wondering off to sit by the fire and chat with her friends.
I titled this entry “Why do we go back to places?” and it occurs to me that I have yet to answer my own question. I have been thinking about it all evening. I think that it is an attempt to recapture a feeling or a mood that we enjoyed. I was happy when I visited the Cameron Highlands in the early 1990s. I was free, either traveling or at university or both. I was busy studying Malay and anthropology and loving every minute of it. I had a clear vision of where I wanted to do with my life and the belief that I could make it. The Cameron Highlands were a cool place to be, literally and socially. I had work to do and the time available. Father’s guest house was a great place to study and to relax. Times change and I never realized those ambitions. . To recapture the mood by returning here was folly, but I needed to come here, to see it once again, to realize that. I can go now.
The Cameron Highlands and Tanah Rata have long figured on my list of those places that I long to return to. If I am fed up I often think of the times that I have spent here. I arrived with a sense of excitement, keen to explore old haunts and see what had changed.
Leaving my baggage locked in the room, deciding that I could risk leaving my computer and cameras in this backwater, I walked back into town. Within minutes I was trying to remember quite what it was that I had seen in the place.
Short break to fetch insect repellant.
Back in the garden bar now. Classical Indian music in the background. A small shrine with a candle floating in a Guinness glass to my right and a Comanche painting on a wooden plaque hanging on the wall above. A rat has just run across the floor.
There have been changes in Tanah Rata, but not on the scale that I expected. On my last visit there was a lot of building work going on. This is now completed, with the exception of one substantial structure which has been abandoned. Its concrete skeleton gradually being reclaimed by the forrest. A few additional rows of shop houses, blocks of apartments and a new bus station have also been added, but substantially, the town is still recognizable.
It wasn’t any more beautiful 16 years ago although at least then the jungle, if I can call it that, encroached on the very edge of town and the old colonial buildings still stood in a glorious isolation that suggested that the British were not that long gone. The town was functional, a place to buy supplies, have a beer and an Indian meal.
I used to stay at Father’s Guest House, so called because the main house was owned by a priest, who, if I am not mistaken worked at the convent just down the hill. During the Emergency and up to Independence in 1957 the gardens had been used as a British military base. By the 1990s the nissan huts had been converted in to dormitories for travelers. It was a good place to stay; cheap, friendly and with great views across the mountains. In the evening everybody would gather in the cafe at the bottom of the hill, exchange stories and enjoy a beer and perhaps a film.
By the time of my second visit, which must have been in 1991, a substantial section of the surrounding jungle had been ripped up, to prepare the ground for the large blocks of apartments that dominate the entrance to Tanah Rata today. I remember being angered and indignant at this.
I was particularly frustrated because I could see no point in the development. None of the Malaysians that I met had showed the slightest interest in the natural environment. To most of the Malays that I knew, the countryside meant farming, something that they were trying to get away from as they sought the financial prestige of the growing middle class. To them, enjoying nature meant a game of golf, or at most sitting in a waterfall, modest in their white T-shirts. The Chinese I knew were only interested in gambling, hence the great success of the Genting Highlands, home to the only casino in Malaysia.
Why then, I thought, destroy this place of natural beauty, just so that Malaysians could sit in their hotel rooms or in a coffee shop drinking tea and chatting?
This was an interesting time in my intellectual development. In my studies I was acutely aware of the pitfalls of ethnocentrism and yet my attitude towards Malaysians in general, and Malays specifically, could only be described as dismissive. I loved the Malay language and their traditional culture, but they seemed so misguided, so lost in the current swell of economic development. In many ways I suppose I was sure of my own ethnic superiority. I can laugh at it now, but at the time I was very serious. It is an attitude that I see today in many of the men that work in Saudi Arabia. A belief that the locals just aren’t up to the job and couldn’t possibly manage without us. It is nonsense of course and completely ethnocentric.
So, sixteen years on, it appears that the level of environmental destruction around Tanah Rata is relatively minimal, limited in extent to about half a kilometer in each direction from the centre. The population must have increased many times over and this has been good for local businesses.
Returning from my walk I was still thinking “Why am I here? What was it that was special about this place?”. I changed and went for a run, intending to follow the route of the last walk I took here, out of Tanah Rata and through the jungle to the golf course, then back down the main road. A combination of poor memory and recent building sent me off course and I found instead the Cameron Highlands Hospital, a strange location for such a large institution, but perhaps the cool mountain air aids recovery and cuts down on air-conditioning bills.
The old Smokehouse, a very English hotel at the edge of the golf course is unchanged, right down to the plastic sheeting over part of the roof, although to be fair, it might have been repaired and leaked anew. I have always wanted to stay here, and it annoyed me that it is still beyond my budget. As I write though, a little devil is perched on my shoulder saying ‘splurge, go on, you might never be back here’. Good argument.
It was a good run, 47 minutes including the diversion to the hospital. It would have been a full morning’s outing on my last visit here. I am older but much fitter now, and that pleases me.
The Chinese restaurant, the only decent place for breakfast, not good but a place where memory often takes me, has gone. In its place a seedy bar with pool tables and a loose looking woman leaning on the door frame.
The Indian restaurants are still there, their waiters still pouncing on passers by fluttering menus in their face and reeling off a list of dishes. Their sarongs, or kain pelicat, now replaced with trousers.
KFC hasn’t made it here yet, although there is a KLC with remarkably similar colours, logos and menu. Across the road and at the other end of town there is a would be McDonalds, again with all the right packaging, colours and menu items.
I ate roti canai with a group of Malay teachers who were in town for an English and Art ‘expedition’ with their students before repairing to a Japanese (!) restaurant for coffee, cheesecake and their free internet connection. Internet! Last time I was here, I hadn’t even heard of it. Now I can email from my laptop from the middle of the jungle. Well, almost.
Daniel’s lodge has one redeeming feature. A bar in the garden. It is difficult to get beer as the bar girl, Dutch unless I am mistaken, keeps wondering off to sit by the fire and chat with her friends.
I titled this entry “Why do we go back to places?” and it occurs to me that I have yet to answer my own question. I have been thinking about it all evening. I think that it is an attempt to recapture a feeling or a mood that we enjoyed. I was happy when I visited the Cameron Highlands in the early 1990s. I was free, either traveling or at university or both. I was busy studying Malay and anthropology and loving every minute of it. I had a clear vision of where I wanted to do with my life and the belief that I could make it. The Cameron Highlands were a cool place to be, literally and socially. I had work to do and the time available. Father’s guest house was a great place to study and to relax. Times change and I never realized those ambitions. . To recapture the mood by returning here was folly, but I needed to come here, to see it once again, to realize that. I can go now.
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