Fraser's Hills despite the monsoon apparent

For a long time now I have not had the kind of nostalgia that I used to feel about a place, and Fraser's Hills is certainly one of those special places...not that  it's about the nearest holiday spot to Raub, it's more like the colonial charm that the place exuded few decades ago when I was much younger and didn't understand any better the world but, when the mind was young and lack devices to record and map, the readily available sensory tools played a big part (mine was visual, and smell)...bref, bad management coupled with bad taste certainly killed the place from the 80s till just about present...gone were the smell of lilies, roses and dahlias from the very English gardens that flanked every road and bungalows, cold chilly air and English breakfast, not to mention the very colonial Hainanese restaurants in mock tudor buildings...somehow, at present, someone in the management partially snapped out of that vicious cycle of misguided modernity and made some effort to rehabilitate Fraser's Hills to her former glory, well almost an effort. The effect can be seen now with better managed public gardens and better choice of flowering shrubs! Left now are efforts of local tourists (STOP the littering!) and perhaps if the locals wise up, they might see their jewel shine again...

 Wild raspberry growing in the shades of a roadside  from Raub to Gap...

 Medinella spp in the shades...

 The Scott, used to be an English pub...now a restaurant with poor quality food despite efforts to relive its past...

 Finally, some real efforts to grow Dahlias, once iconic blooms of this mountain resort. They might want to extend their colour range beyond pink and yellow no?

 A patch of Busy Lizzie (Impatiens) managed to find its way atop an old juniper tree.

 A female spider hunter on a pergola with scrambling Thunbergia and passion flowers.

 A tiny fig.

Brinchang Bungalow has one of the most spectacular vista whole of Fraser's Hills.

View of the Main Range from Brinchang Bungalow. Because of frequent and heavy precipitation, the cloud line remains low and visible throughout the day. We even experience mist from the way up, just after Bukit Telaga.

Suddenly, the clouds came over and covered up everything...

 Jardin d'antan (old fashioned garden), just the way I like it...

The valley below is the state of Selangor, visible through some bright spots...

Fauna of Chenua during the Wet season

This year, all meteorological reports tend to point to a very wet affair, which is true compared to the past few years. Flashback to my childhood days, November-December-January had always been extremely wet and cold. I remembered wearing sweater to sleep when I was a child, and there weren't any air-conditioning in existence those days...anyhow, I went for a short trip to Chenua village accompanying my wife to her school and took advantage of the short burst of intense morning sun to go bird watching. The river has totally swollen up and everywhere was wet, so there goes the birds. However, small insects and a few birds did turn up...including the rare Hill Myna with its distinctive metallic whistle (there was a pair) and I could hear barbets and Woodpeckers eventhough I couldn't perceive them visually...

Skipper butterflies seem to be in abundance, sunning themselves in sunny spots...

Damselflies and Dragonflies too...

Lantana bushes like this one attract insects and butterflies

Looming sky...

A Hill Myna

and a Dollar Bird nearby (actually also a pair)...

some colourful insects...

Cameron Highlands Touch `N` Go

Out of caprice and adventure, we went for an afternoon's drive to the Cameron Highlands (about 135 KM from Raub) and came back the same evening...it was Aidil Adha holidays and surprisingly, the crowd was slightly below expectation in the mountains (compare to normal weekends). First of all, we actually wanted to drive there just for tea at BOH's estate in Habu but seeing that the journey took a bit longer than usual, having arrived at about 4.30 p.m., we decided to instead visit an organic strawberry farm at Brinchang and later KEA farm nearby to buy some cut flowers for the house (just to have a change from the usual chrysanthemums and roses from the florist in Raub, or the anthuriums used sparingly from my own garden...)...

Rhododendron scortechinii, hiding between rambling ferns. As we were walking towards the farm, I spotted this stunner on a laterite slope...

Cameron Bharat Tea Plantation. Because it was almost always overflowing with tourists, we would give it a miss but this time, we decided, out of convenience, to drop by. While the plantation does have stunning vistas, the development of its products and services still have much room for improvement...

close up of the tea plants...

As it was already the onset of the monsoon season, the sky was either pluvial or just simply overcast and quite sombre the whole afternoon. Not wanting to really drive through 70 or so kilometers of road through the Main Range in darkness, we decided to leave just about 6 p.m., right after a cuppa at the Cameron Bharat Tea Plantation. The view along our way home was spectacular despite the fast approaching twilight because mist was starting to form in the Betau Valley...

looks like a Chinese ink brush painting...

The white bouquet of Cymbidium orchids for the house...

Aquatic Cockerels

When I was younger, I used to keep fishes - spillover effect from my childhood days of catching fishes in brooks and rivers. It got so overboard that I had more than a dozen aquariums at one time, the largest measuring 8 x 3 feet ( about 2.5 x 1 M). I kept everything that I could ever possibly catch in the Malaysian rivers, among others a Kelah (Tor tambroides) weighing almost 8 kilos! That was in the 90s. Things got tiring and expensive and I gather putting a hook in the fish's mouth is bad for karma...so I sold off everything and had nothing more to do with it, until recently when my wife got interested in keeping fighting fishes for pets (Betta splendens). Well, these are definitely more manageable and they don't hog space! No oxygenation required, hardy and best of all, no water treatment. The most apt description for them is a cockerel, only a tiny aquatic one...They come in an impressive range of fin shapes and colours and what makes them enduring is their 'face off' behaviour when confronted with another male fish. Here's a few snaps of our tiny ménagerie...