Last night I went for dinner with Liam and some random man who me, Bel and Fabio had a really random conversation with in which Bel stole his identity and car and we showed some pictures of some rather graphic suspensions, invited us out for the morning. Well, you know what they say about getting into cars with strangers, DO IT!
He picked us up at 9am on the dot, a rather early start for me but I was not missing out on this! First we had to go to Brinchang so he could go to the bank, he told us about all the hotels in the area including the one he works for as a driver and we were then off on our very own magical mystery tour... Next stop Ringlet and to a Chinese restaurant for breakfast. We got some rather strange looks, being Western and all. Ringlet is a local town, not a tourist town and they obviously weren't used to tourists popping in for noodles and chai. We sat in a little room with one table under the stairs, it looked like the ideal place to plan a revolution, shame it was far too early for talk of world domination... I offered to buy Kumaran's breakfast, realised I had no money on me so food was on Liam!
Next we went to a flower factory, it's not a tourist attraction at all and the locals working there were rather bemused as we walked through being told about how the flowers would be sent to KL to be flown out to Japan! Next we went over the road to a vegetable farm, again some strange looks from the locals followed us. We saw cauliflowers, beetroot, onions, tomatoes, chillies, lots of stuff really. One worker asked where we were from, to Liverpool I got 'Oh very nice place', to America Liam got 'Oh, right'. Back to the car and to a place where they were packing up cucumbers and eggplants to be sent to Singapore, we walked away with two free cucumbers which neither of us each but it was rather sweet all the same...
Now I would just like to reiterate the point, we were driving round with some local in his clapped out 20 year old Proton that Liam had to pull the window up on the assist the electric element of the situation and all these places are owned or staffed by Kumaran's friends and aren't tourist attractions... So next it was over to a plant nursery where Liam took some pretty pictures for me and we got yet more confused looks, we had to make sure we said thanks to the owner at this place and then we went to a chrysanthemum farm owned by another friend, it was pretty but the owner's house was well interesting, really rather sauve and some nice cars in the drive, shame he's not single!
After this we went to a shop where our 'guide' bought a ma-hoo-sive bag of rice and then back to his to see his small runner bean farm. We walked up the hill and sat in his living room having a smoke and watching some amazingly shit Hindi TV, Kumaran speaks Tamil so even he didn't have a notion what we were watching but it involved some angry dude taking off his top and throwing knives a lot and some terrible acting straight from the Joey Tribianni School of Facial Expressions! We went over the road to see his friends and he introduced us as his old friends, which is cute but scary in a small way and one of the Chinese blokes chased me bck to the car to ask about my lotus fower tattoo, not sure if he was happy or offended but I jumped in the car sharpish.
Last stop was Cameron Bharat Tea Estate which was just beautiful, I've only been to Boh Sungai Palas before so it was good to spend some time at another one. All in all a great morning, the cucumbers were given to a work mate BiBi and I'm still smiling at how amazing it was! Great fun and so bloody random that he actually came to get us! Tip to all travellers, don't underestimate the fun you can have with a local, some farms and a clapped out car!
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