Anyone for a spot of TEA???

The ride up to the Cameron Highlands was a delight for a biker, Ronnie and Trev lost themselves as they rode the 50-60km winding road that climbs up to reach the tea plantations, I only had to give Trev a squeeze once to `slow down``, at times we couldn't even catch Ronnie, it felt like he was Harry Potter on the broomstick, invincible!  

This is the time when the guys tend to forget about anything else in the world but what they are doing in that very moment, and thank god for that because otherwise we might be eating dirt and that would not be good!  They wanted to turn around and do it all over again, highly recommend any biker reading this who comes to Malaysia to check this road out.

A clip from Ronnie's blog shows the amazing
 ride into the highlands

I was happy Phil decided to join us up into the highlands of the tea plantations, as he knew but I didnt, that it was Mother Day that Sunday.

What a great Smile
Ronnie's sister saw photos of Phil and said he should be
 advertising Tooth Paste

Ok so this was a perfect day for me and something fun to do on Mothers Day and here i was in the hills of the Cameron Highlands, it really is this beautiful green, this is not filters on the camera!  Phil took me for a spa foot treatment, he came with me, so fun, what a guy, and we got to be here in this clean environment far away from the cities.  Too much time around cities just gets me all clogged up i love the countryside and the cool air and beauty that it provides! It was a great day.

The rolling hills of the Cameron Highlands

Chenty checks out the quality of the tea leaves

I was fascinated to learn that green tea and black tea come from the same plant but green tea leaves are less processed than black tea.  Black tea is fermented but green tea is not, green tea retains many nutrients of the fresh leaf thats why it is supposed to be better for you.

So perfectly trimmed

Like seeing vineyards for the first time, this is even more unbelievable they are set in perfect formation, these tea bushes are very old, planted in the 1940`s and get this, still belongs to the same family and still producing.

Its actually a tree and left to grow will get to heights of  50-60`, but for harvesting tea they cut them down to about 3`high, they will only snip the first 4 inches every few weeks and because of the climate can do so all year round.

The most sought after tea comes from that which is made from the very young shoots out of the top of the plants, these are bright green leaves.  They harvest the leaves using a motorized clipper where two people walk each side of the bush and the top 4 inches gets chucked into a bag and hand sorted once back at the bottom of the hill, still very labour intensive.

I could have spent a lot of time here taking photos

Everything is so green

A bit like the rice fields in Bali (but different)

This picture looks like its a scene out of Lord of the Rings, magical, its unusual to see so much of the same color green in such a large area.

Like the rice fields of Bali where i remember spending hours watching the ducks do their thing, mesmorized, i too could have sat in these mountains amongst the beauty of these tea plants, just beautiful, it was a perfect day for it as the sun shone across them encouraging them to look up and grow some more.

They threatened to take my camera of me :-(Trev)

These tea bushes create a unique pattern on the hillsides, we have not seen this before.