Malay life - Jungle treks, Diving, and lazing on the beach!!!

We are now in Malaysia - a beautiful country with progressive cities, gorgeous beaches, excellent dive sites, cool hill station retreats, and ancient humid jungle.
The past month has been spent celebrating my birthday on the island of Pulau Perenthian Kecil, diving on some coral reefs teaming with colourful marine life, the occaisional turtle (what beautiful creatures!), shark, and other tropical wonders; a brief visit to Singapore to marvel at the ever changing face of this high rise business hub, visit my Uncle Stuart and Auntie Chantal for some marvellous cooking and home comforts (most comfortable bed I have slept in for months!!!), and sip Singapore Slings in Raffles (it was also a great experience to be the scruffiest looking people in this very posh bar!!!); and back to Malaysia to trek in the worlds oldest rainforest, cool down in the highlands, and fall in a river.
We have spent the past week in the Cameron Highlands (tea plantations, hills, cool air etc) and Tama Negara (163 million year old jungle - very sweaty, many bugs and leeches, long river etc...) where communication is sparse and expensive. You may be glad to know that if anything was medically wrong with my feet, then the leeces will by now have sorted them out. Sadly, they did seem to ignore my still sprained ankle, so not much improvement there.
The Cameron Highlands were stunning, although tourism has tranformed the pretty little town of Tama Rata into a growing building site in the middle of the hills to cater for the tourists. Activities on offer were small(ish) jungle treks, learning about the plants and resources to keep you going if you get stuck in the jungle; Visits to the 'Boh' Tea plantation (malaysia's biggest tea producer); butterfly farms; chrysanthamum plantations; strawberry plantations; waterfalls and caves.
We deceided to book ourselves on a tour that comprised of the jungle trek, a visit to a massive cave temple, and a visit to a crystal clear waterfall. We weren't really interested in the tea plantation, as the visit to the Happy Valley plantation in Darjeeling could not really be beaten, and as you know - once you have seen one tea plantation, youhave seen them all... After booking the package, excitement grew - we had not yet visited any caves, or the jungle, so it was going to be a real treat!!!
Sadly, the language barrier, we realised too late, once again played its hand,and half way to the tea plantation we were both beginning to think wemay be on the wrong tour.Not all was lost, though - as we expected, the tea plantation visit wasn't up to much, and the grade of tea or the care in making it was by no means up to the standard in Darjeeling - machines cut the leaves, instead of hands plucking the leaves; and harvesting was done every 15 days instead of 3 times a year. It also really shows in the taste, too. A real tea connoisseur, huh? (Travelling isn't a waste oftime after all!!!) Thankfully, the jungle trek was still a part of the package, and Balam (our guide) was an expert in the jungle after spending 12 years in one of the Malaysian Army's specialist Jungle squads. He was a real animated bloke, whose english was excellent. We tasted flower buds that are used as local anasthetic; smelled the roots of the tiger balm plant, and rubbed it on to our skin for aching muscles; drank from cut vines that stored pure, clean water; and chewed roots from the 'power plant' that supposedly gives men long term virility.
The waterfall was beautiful, and having forgot our swimming cossies,we didn't get a chance to swim the heat and sweat off in the crystal clear water, which was disappointing, but we did managed to get just as wet on the way home when the heavens opened and the heavy rain got us. Typical.
So, after a couple of days in the Cameron Highlands, we travelled down to the jungle national park of Tama Negara. 7 Hours in 3 buses doesn't do much for a good mood, so a quick look for accomodation (we ended up in a very expensive place, but with the luxury of a hot water shower!!!) and we setlled down for the night in a resort by the river. As the village was very expensive (a cornered market), we decided to only stay for one night, and so we packed the activities in the next day to do the canopy walk and a 4 hour jungle trek. The canopy walk was excellent and very exciting (very high up, great views, and swaying rope bridges), and the jungle trek was an excercise in patience, and endurance, but great fun. A few 'ticks in boxes' were achieved that day, including: Eating a large bug (well, involutarily tasting as it flew into my mouth); getting sucked by leeches (again, not really planned, but unavoidable); slipping down a muddy hill deep in the rainforest; and falling into the river during a rainstorm. Successful day, by all accounts.
Our exit from the jungle the next day was by means of a 2 hour boat down the river - a wonderful experience, and truly magical. Apart from the beautiful scenery, we saw wild water buffalo grazing at the dense jungle at the banks of the river and all manner of weird and wonderful jungle plantation and life, including massive ancient Malaysian trees (ok, I have forgotten the name) which are the biggest in South East Asia...
We have now booked our tickets to Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, where we hope to mix it with the wild Orang-Utans (Borneo is one of the only countries where Orang-Utans still live out side of captivity) and dive off Pulau Sipidan - one of the worlds foremost dive sites (here is a little excerpt from the guide book on Sipidan: Pulau Sipidan is the tip of a limestone pinnicle that rises 600m from the sea bed. Within 25m of the eastern side of the island you can float over a near vertical 'wall' and gaze into the inky depths. Whale Shark, barracuda, tuna and friendly hammerheads can all be seen from this dive site...Cool huh?All sounds the perfect way to round of an excellent visit to Malaysia,before heading to Indonesia for 3 weeks...