30th birthday and jungle treks

Today Maggie and I went trekking in the jungle for my birthday and it was great. We hiked up in overcast skies with slick moss, slimy ropes, and wet roots that were riddicoulus to climb over. As we made it up to the top, the skies opened up and it started downpouring.

we laughed and enjoyed the rain while we started hiking down to the main road. The rain however, got stronger and harder, and as we were soaked to the bone and starting to get a little chilly, an old, 1950's pickup truck came down the hill behind us.

we stepped to the side of the road to let the truck pass, and the driver pulled over and waved at us to see if we wanted to get in the truck, he spoke no English and we spoke virtually no Malaysian but we were able to communicate enough to all get on the same page with hand gestures and smiles.

maggie rode up front and I was in the back with the vegetables, we picked up two other Germans that were hiking down the road as well and they road in the back with me. The driver gave us a ride all the way up to tanah rata and wouldn't take any money from us. It was such a fun ride back up to the town where we were staying.

After we made it back to the guesthouse and got hot showers, some dry clothes, and a cup of tea, we relaxed in the guesthouse lounge ( fathers guesthouse, Cameron highlands awesome place to stay) and chatted with some other travelers.

Maggie had made dinner reservations somewhere and we headed out in a taxi, I had no idea where we were going and we arrived at the Cameron highlands resort, which was the fancy of the fancy restaurants around.

We has an amazing meal with beef ribs carved for us at our table and an amazing lava cake dessert.

afterwards we made it back to our guesthouse, has a cup of tea with the owner, who shared with us something called miracle fruit.

this fruit was so cool, you chew it for a minute and the. Sour things, like lemons or limes, taste sweet, like candy, it coats your flavor receptors on your toungue and fools them to think of sour things as sweet.

This morning we left the guesthouse and headed for the bus station.

(BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!)

bags flying out of the side of the bus as we go down the switchback roads to kuala lumpur !! We scream for the bus driver to stop the bid and I go running back up the hill to get the 2 bags that fell out on the last turn whe the underbid storage area flew open. We resolved that problem and got back on the road.

now......



Here we are in a broken bus graveyard trying to fix the brakes after making down the rest of the hills.





Maggie is embracing her inner muslim and wrapping her scarf as a headwrap as we wait for these mechanics to hopefully resolve the issue soon.

Have a great day and happy holidays



-Samuel Jacob Kachmar