Reasonably early, I got up and had breakfast at my guesthouse. They boast homemade scones, the best in the area. I can't argue. They were absolutely delicious, freshly made and warmed with some butter and jam.
Shortly after that, the tour van arrived and I was off for my tour of the area. Our guide had a really complicated name, and suggested that we all just call him Satu. Satu means 1, but it worked. He was a really good guide. He had all kinds of knowledge about all the stuff he showed us on our tour. And it was all interesting.
We began by heading up towards Mount Brinchang, the highest peak in the Cameron Highlands. On the way we passed through the Boh tea plantation. Boh tea is one of the big names in Malaysia, and the company has the largest tea fields in the country. We stopped partway up the mountain to marvel at the tea fields and to take photos. They were all right, but I wished we had gone to the tea plantation that I had seen the day before as we were arriving in town. They seemed more photogenic. But these were quite nice anyway.
These tea fields are referred to as the Great Green Carpet of the Cameron Highlands. They do look a bit like a nice shag carpet. After doing the photo thing, Satu gathered us around and told us about tea and tea harvesting. He focussed his talk on the Boh tea company as that is the plantation where we were at the moment, but I assume that the methods he described apply to all the tea plantations in the highlands. Some guy, and I forget his name, came upon the highlands and figured that the climate in the area lent itself well to farming, and tea in particular. So plantations were set up. Tea trees were planted (and they really are trees) and then tended. In the beginning it was mainly Indians who were brought from India to work in the plantations. The whole operation was done by hand. Indian women would go and pluck the leaves from the trees. Only the small, bright green leaves were taken. Larger, darker leaves were left as they had past the point of having good aroma and taste. As it happens, the new light green leaves are found on the tops of the trees. The women would pluck the leaves and place them in large burlap sacks. Then men would come along and carry the sacks down the mountain to the plant for processing. In those days, harvesting by hand, it would take a woman about 20 minutes to harvest one small section of the fields. This was a very labour intensive process and must have employed large numbers of people. Also, as a result of the inspection afforded by hand-picking of the leaves, there were a couple of grades of tea that existed. The best leaves were the shoots of the newest leaves on the trees. These made for the best grade of tea. Then there were some larger, recognizable leaves that also gave reasonable flavour. They were picked and were designated the second grade of tea.
Then in the middle part of the last century, after the wars, Boh tea started being exported to the world. Demand went up. New harvesting procedures were required in order to keep up. So harvesters were given shears. Harvesters would go in with their shears and shear off the top layer of leaves, scoop them into bags and head to the next set of trees. This drastically cut down the time taken for harvesting. What took 20 minutes to be done by hand, now took only about 3 minutes. Unfortunately, this kind of indiscriminate harvesting eradicated the old grading system of tea. All the leaves were simply scooped into the same bags. A new grading system came into play, and it was based on the output of the processing of the leaves into tea.
Then in the 90's, the world started to discover that teas could be flavoured. Mint tea, strawberry tea, lemon tea, licorice tea, watermelon tea, upside-down pound cake tea (well, maybe not that one), and all manner of other flavours of tea started to come into the market. And where before people would buy a big pack of tea all of the same kind, now people were buying smaller packets of tea with different flavours, this flavour for mom, this one for dad, this one for granddad, and so on. This sent the demand for tea up further and so even faster harvesting methods were needed. The result was a motorized shearing machine that was operated by two people. The machine would shear the tops of the tea trees and then blow the leaves into a bag. This took the harvesting time down to seconds per section.
Through all these changes, there were demographic changes as well. Where in the beginning it had been Indian workers harvesting the fields, they had begun to prosper and had moved into the towns. In their place had come cheap labour imported from other countries. In the early days, there was a sense of camaraderie, with the workers singing and enjoying their work as a team. Nowadays, as with everywhere, the workers put their Ipod earphones in and keep much more to themselves. And I wondered what happened to all the people who were put out of work because of the faster harvesting methods. It's a changing world.
One last thing Satu told us was about the different kinds of tea. I have always thought that different kinds of tea came from different plants/trees. Black tea was from black tea trees. Green tea was from green tea trees. And so on. In the words of Satu, “Thees ees bullsheet.” There were only two kinds of tea tree. All of the various varieties of tea that exist now are descended from the cross-breeding of those two kinds of tea. And any tea leaf is capable of producing black tea, green tea, and oolong tea. It is all a matter of how much fermentation is involved. Fully fermented tea leaves produce black tea. Unfermented tea leaves produce green tea. And partially fermented tea leaves yield the oolong/Chinese teas.
After our tea lesson, we climbed back into the van and headed up the rest of the way to the summit of Mount Brinchang. This is fifth highest mountain in Malaysia and stands 6666 feet high, or 2031 meters. Malaysia is a metric country, but I can understand why they use feet to talk of the height of Mount Brinchang. Despite getting to see the summit, we couldn't actually set foot at the highest point of the mountain because it was behind a fence, as it makes a great place to stick a telecommunications tower. Oh well. Nearby though, is a lookout tower, from which there is a nice view out over the entire area of the Cameron Highlands. On a clear day, the view is supposed to be spectacular. It was a bit cloudy this day, however.
I took a walk around the fence of the telecom tower, where I found a nice view over another valley. But while I was doing that, the rest of the group got ready to go and Satu didn't notice that I wasn't in one of the seats. He almost drove off without me. Yikes!
Luckily our next stop wasn't very far away, so it wouldn't have been a big problem. Maybe 400 or 500 meters from the summit was the Mossy Forest. Here is where Satu's knowledge really shone. He explained a lot of the trees in the area and their medicinal qualities. There was an antiseptic plant. There was a plant with berries that were fast-acting laxatives
There was what he called a ladies' viagra, but that was really for women after they have had a baby. It works to restore strength to the woman's body after the draining effects of labour.
And there was a man's viagra as well.
As we were on our way out of the Mossy Forest, we were lucky to get to see a snake in the wild. A rather poisonous snake that was sleeping, but poised to strike on waking if anything, or anyone, got too close. The guides figured that it was likely a female that was either about to lay eggs or had already done so and was protecting them. I asked Satu about the snake, wanting to know if it was an aggressive one. He said that normally, like most snakes, it would slither away long before anyone got near. It would 'hear' the vibrations of an approaching animal (or person) and just run away. It was just because of probably being a mother snake that it was displaying the unusual behaviour of sticking around.
And then Satu explained something that answered a question I have had for a long time. I have always wondered where water comes from on mountains. Since I was a child, I have visited the mountains near my home and seen all these big rivers with all this water in them and wondered where it all comes from, particularly when it doesn't rain for a long time. One answer is moss. At night, cool moist air curls around the trees and plants of a forest at the tops of mountains. Moss is particularly adept at capturing the water from mist and fog in the air. Moss is apparently able to soak up to 70 percent of its weight in water. The water gets drawn in by the moss and sinks to the ground. Some of it goes to trees and other plants. The excess drips down into the ground, meets up with other water from other mosses, and starts a trickle. Various trickles join together to make a stream. Streams join to form creeks and then brooks, and rivers that grow larger as you move down a mountain. And that is where water comes from on mountains. This doesn't explain springs to me, but it helps.
Our final stop was to the Bot tea processing plant. We had a little while to go into the tea shop and get some tea to sample. Then we headed into the processing plant to get the lowdown on how tea is processed. There was drying, then squeezing, then more drying and finally packaging. The different grades were separated out. The lowest grade of tea of all is the dust that is left behind once all the good grades of the leaves have been picked up and packaged. They used to use the dust as compost and fertilizer. Then someone had a brainstorm. 'Tea' could still be made out of the dust. So someone started sweeping it up and putting it in tea bags and selling it. Us mindless masses buy these tea bags and use it to make ourselves 'great' cups of tea at home. I'm not sure I will ever do that again.
Following the tour of the tea processing factory, we headed back into Tanah Rata. We arrived just in time for the rains to start. It had been a nice tour.
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