Since being in the Highlands, I've been a bit of a lazy bum, watching movies, screwing around on the internet, and reading a Wilbur Smith book.

However, I've taken some precious time out of my tough schedule to do some walking in the hills, the main reason people come here. Kathy and I decided to do the most common trail, affectionately known as "9A." A very inspiring name, don't you think?? Anyway, we headed out and found our trailhead.

We knew that the trail lead to a waterfall at some point but when we reached it in 10 minutes, we decided to continue on. Soon after we met some goofy older Japanese guys who made a finger gesture of an X (as in "verboten") and pointed behind him. We ignored them and continued on. We found bright blue leaves, many types of flowers, and dense jungle. After about 25 minutes, we came to a spot where there was no more trail because it had been washed away in a landslide. A 10 minute bactrack to the "treacherously steep" trail 9 was in order. It wasn't steep at all. In fact, it was pretty easy, and we got to wander through a vegetable farm. The problem with this was that we had no idea where the road to Tanah Rata was.

After wandering in the wrong direction for a few minutes, we asked directions of one of the farmers and he set us straight. We made it back to the main road and attempted to catch a local bus, of which there were none. Eventually, a one truck stopped and we hopped in.

The driver's name was Balan, and in the 10 minutes we were in his truck, we got to hear his whole life story. He was born locally and in 1979 he entered the military and he was sent to Borneo to quell communist rebellions there. In 1986, everyone was chilled out, and he spent more time serving in some city. Being he's not a city man, he resigned in 1991 and moved back to his home town. Since he had spent so much time in the jungle, one of the local travel agency's hired him to be a guide. That's what he's been doing since.

The other interesting thing about Balan was that he was so worried we would think Malaysians are terrorists. He kept repeating this over and over, and told us what a diverse country Malaysia is. He told us that Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus, all lived right next to each other and intermarried. In fact, his children always wanted to know why his nieces and nephews look different (his fam are Hindu Indians). His sister in law is Chinese and according to Balan, her children look like the color of Nescafe. Another comment he made was that all these religions can live together because all religions are like streams. Each takes there own turns and is individual, but all lead to the sea, and the same god.

Sort of deep for a 10 minute hitched ride to town I thought.

Balan offered us his guiding services and wasn't a pain about it when we didn't take him up on it. He was a cool guy and a great person to meet.