She'll be Comin Around the Mountain...IF she comes

'When does the bus leave?' We asked the lady behind the counter at the bus station who seemed to be there to unhappily answer your bus related questions regardless of what time of day it was. Yesterday we had stopped by in the morning to inquire about a bus timetable and then stopped back in after dinner with another question, and she was still there. I guess maybe when you work all day, every day, you are allowed to be a little disgruntled. 'At 11am,' she grunted. It was 10am. 'So we will come back at 10:45' we told her. Through past experience, we have learned that practically the only way to catch one of these elusive public buses is to make a personal appointment with the 'Queen of the Bus Station.' The other day we had stopped by to ask when the public bus made the 5km uphill journey to the next town. 'Every two hours' the Queen had told us, without looking up from the newspaper. 'And which hours are those?' Jonathan asked. She sighed and rolled her eyes like we had just asked what time they turn the Falls off at. (Which, by the way, we have been asked multiple times by people in the last few weeks. As soon as they find out that we are from Niagara Falls they say, in this order: 'Oh! Wow! I have been to Niagara Falls. I didn't know people actually LIVED there.' And then. 'Didn't they just turn off the Falls recently? I just saw a picture.' Apparently the one photo taken pretty much the only time the Falls had ever been 'shut off' in like 1970 has been circulating around the world and this is the first picture that, oddly, pops into people's heads when they think about the Falls. The Queen of the bus station glared at us as she started rhyming off the times the bus would run to the next town, '8:30, 10:30, 12:30....' 'Ok, we get the idea. Thanks. So, the bus will leave here at 4:30pm for the night market in Brinchang?' We confirmed. Now she was really annoyed. 'Yes!' she exclaimed. Great. We returned to the bus station at about 4:15 and went to the window to buy our tickets. 'Can we get two tickets for the 4:30 bus?' we asked. The Queen's hands flew in the air in exasperation. 'You just missed it!' She yelled. We looked at the clock right behind her. It read 4:25, even though it was actually only 4:15. 'It left 5 minutes early because of a traffic jam!' She told us. This confused us. First, it must have left much earlier than '5min' and second, how could there possibly be a traffic jam between this tiny village and the next tiny village, merely 5 km away?' We gave in and took a taxi into Brinchang. The bus would have been 3RM and the taxi was only 6RM, so really, it was the difference of $1 Cdn. We waited faithfully at the bus station in Brinchang for the return bus to Tanah Rata, where we were staying. We arrived half an hour early, to be on the safe side. Sure enough, there came the 7:30 bus, rumbling down the street in a cloud of thick black smoke at precisely 7:10. Ha!

We have been determined to get a handle on this public bus situation though, if only for vast accomplishment it would be.... and because with that extra 3RM we would save not taking the taxi, I can buy a delicious chocolate and peanut butter pancake. I am highly motivated by food, if you didn't get that already. This brings us back to what I was originally going to talk about before I got sidetracked by all that background bus babble. So we arrived back at the bus station at 10:30 for our 11am bus. 'How much is the ticket?' I asked. 'One ringget(RM)' The Queen's Assistant told me. 'You can buy it on the bus.' Great. We boarded the super stuffy bus and found a seat. This bus was not going to leave without us. We settled on practically the only bright blue, sticky vinyl seat that was more than less, intact. at least there were more chunks of vinyl there than not, which wasn't the case for the majority of the seats. Looking around, I was just content to be in a seat that was still upright, as the pair right across from us had somehow become so rusted that the bolts holding the seats upright had given out and the seats now lay on their back on the floor of the bus.

The Queen's Assistant started yelling and people started boarding. It was 10:35. Then the bus driver got on and the bus grumbled to 'life.' Then the bus driver got off and had a cigarette. Then the Assistant ran around the bus station yelling some more. At 11 o'clock, on the dot, the bus driver got back on the bus, followed by the Assistant and another bus employee, the bus door slammed shut and we started to move. As soon as the bus left the confines of the bus station, the Assistant, whose voice only comes in two volumes: Loud and Ear piercing came through the bus collecting money for the tickets. '1.50 RM' she declared, holding out her hand. 'But, YOU just told us 1.20RM at the bus station!' I protested. 'Ohhhh' yelled the Assistant, 'But this is the NICE bus.' Jonathan couldn't help himself and burst out laughing. I sent a sharp elbow this way. Another outburst like that and this ticket would surely become 2RM. 'And how is this the nice bus?' I asked politely. She waved her hand around like she was Vanna White. 'This bus has air-conditioning! The other bus you have to open the windows!' She frowned. I could use an open window right about now. 'This bus has air-conditioning?' Jonathan asked doubtfully. I looked up at the gaping holes above our head that probably did house some sort of ancient air conditioning, back before they were ripped out....like in 1901. 'Sooo this is the nice bus?' I made sure I had heard correctly. Jonathan was still laughing as he handed over the 3RM for our tickets. I looked around to admire the nice-ness. Exposed wires were hanging everywhere. The dash had been ripped out and all that was left was reminents of the glue that had once held the dashboard in place. The material on the walls was slashed and the vinyl chairs that still managed to be somewhat vinyl-y had people's names carved into them. There was no ceiling. The tiny shards of tile lined the centre isle were black with decades of dirt. The Assistant ripped off two tiny tickets from her pile, handed them to Jonathan and then stood behind our seats. 'AIR CONDITIONING!!!' She bellowed to the driver. There was a disturbing noise followed by a steady stream of smelly, stale air pouring out from the hole above. So, she wasn't lying about the air-conditioning.. Then, much to our delight, the second bus employee started making his way down the isle, checking to make sure everyone had a ticket and then ripping the tickets that the Assistant had just dolled out. I counted, the employee to bus rider ratio was 1:2. No wonder they had to charge so much more to ride the 'nice' bus! We had the tickets in our hands for not even 10 seconds, no exaggeration, before the Official Ticket Ripper' took them back from us and ripped them in half. Darn. They would have been good souvenirs. Both the Assistant and Ticket Ripper were now beside us. 'So what time should we be outside waiting for a bus back town?' We asked. The Assistant yelled at the Official Ticket Ripper and he mumbled back, apparently discussing what time would be the most entertaining for them to tell us to be standing on the side of the highway awaiting the non-existent return bus. '2:45!' Yelled the Assistant at the same time as the Official Ticket Ripper stated '3 o'clock! The bus made a sharp turn and the poor belly-heavy Ticket Ripper tumbled back onto the broken seats parallel to us with a thump. Either that or the sheer force of the Assistant's booming voice knocked him off his feet. Both are equally likely. 'Ohhh this is SO blog-able, ' Jonathan mused.

When we arrived at the Barhat Tea House and Plantation a very short time later we were so happy we had made the trip. Other than the tea being (relatively) expensive, the teahouse itself sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking, and surrounded by the lush, green, rolling hills of the tea plantation. It was nothing short of spectacular and a backdrop we had never seen before. We spent the whole day sipping tea, hiking through (and over) the paths between the tea bushes and sipping more tea. The tea company had very thoughtfully biult a second tea house about a kilometre up the road and made it so you could walk through the tea plants in between cups of tea. So, we sat and had another cup of tea. If possible, the view from the second teahouse was even more breathtaking than the first. At about 2 o'clock, a full 45min-1 hour before the bus was scheduled to arrive for our pickup (depending on whether you believed the Assistant or the Official Ticket Ripper) we started watching out for the bus. Luckily for us, the road through the highlands was so twisty curvy that we could see the cars 'comin round the mountain' a good minute or so before they would arrive in front of teahouse. This, in theory, would give us more than enough time to jump from our tea table on the patio and scamper out to the parking lot in time to flag down the bus. Watching for the bus turned out to be a little more cumbersom than we expected, however, because keeping our eyes on the road meant that we couldn't look out at the gorgeous hills, which were significantly more pleasing than a bunch of old rusty trucks spurting out black gunk. We waited and waited at the edge of our seats, poised, ready to leap into action. We waited. And waited some more. In theory, we weren't that far from town. Five or six kilometers, maybe. Unfortunately, every single one of those kilometers was uphill. At 3 o'clock we went and stood on the side of the highway, just in case. At 3:10 we started waving down every bus that passed. On the off chance that our 'nice' bus had actually transformed into a 'nice' bus. It hadn't. None stopped. They all waved apologetically though. I was contemplating jumping out in front of the next bus that passed and demanding to be driven into town. Jonathan suggested we just start walking instead. How boring. That thought hadn't really crossed my mind. Deciding that filling out a claim with our travel insurance after getting smoked by an oncoming bus would probably be even more painful than huffing it uphill to the village, we started to walk. It was about 3:30. We had been sweating it out for almost 15min when we heard the familiar groan of the ancient engine belonging to our 'nice bus' coming from behind us. We flagged it down. It was the exact bus that had dropped us off. The same driver sat behind the wheel. The same Assistant sat in the front seat. 'Why are you walking!?' The Assistant yelled at us as we climbed the steps. 'Never mind. The ticket is 1.20RM now.'

Cameron Highlands Fact: Did you know that there are more Land Rovers in the Highlands than any where else in the whole world? Don't get too excited though, most appear to be from the very first batch ever manufactured...