We are now doing some land travel. We have based ourselves at the secure Admiral Marina about 50 miles from Kuala Lumpur. It is part of a hotel and leisure complex so has a good pool, tennis courts, gym etc, as well as a good “yachtsman’s” bar and a nightly performance by local fish. The marina pontoons are guarded night and day by ex Ghurkhas in smart uniforms, whose main duty seems to be opening the gate for us with a salute and ensuring security.

Our first excursion was to the Cameron Highlands for 2 nights. This is an old hill station about 100 miles south of KL where the British colonialists came to escape the heat of the lowlands. They knew what they were doing; the climate is a delight after the sweaty coast. The temperatures whilst we there were like a UK summer’s day, even the fragrant roses where in abundance.

The scenery is fabulous with rain forest clothing the steep hillsides and tea plantations and horticulture occupying the valleys. The tea plantations are just as described in the geography textbooks of my youth, with plantation workers living in tied accommodation with a company shop, a company school and a company clinic all on site. Picking is all done manually either with shears and a scoop or with a simple 2 man hedge trimmer. The slopes are too steep for mechanised pickers, although they do spray occasionally …by airplane! The processing is also carried out with very simple machines that look as if they originated in Birmingham 80 years ago.

Whilst there we did a tour round some of the sights and we not only visited a beautiful working tea plantation still in the ownership of a Scottish family but also a rose farm, a strawberry farm, butterfly house and a temple. The plantations are beautiful, wonderfully landscaped with other shrubs and flowers as well as the odd tea tree that they have allowed to grow to full height around 20 feet, so graceful.

On our way back to KL we visited another much smaller hill station but passed some very intensive horticulture with crops of all kinds being grown  intensively on every scrap of suitable land, often in polytunnels. Some of the strawberries were grown hydroponically… and of course all year round.

The second hill station was Fraser’s Hill, much smaller and less interesting but seemingly modelled on an idealised version of an English village….green (and golf course), church, (and mosque), half -timbered houses, shop, boating lake, country walks and cool, cool air.