Travel sickness.....

I wanted to write this entry on the Perhentian islands where we have just been staying. It would have gone a little like this:

As i write this my feet are resting on the white sand of an isolated white sandy beach. I can hear the small waves repetitively relaxing my subconscious and in fact i can see the sea only 5 meters away as the 'Internet cafe' i find myself in has no walls and nothing more than a corrugated iron roof to protect the three laptops clustered on a table on the sand from the glare of the sun, and the rain. The sand here is idyllically soft, but annoyingly so, as it is as fine as dust and has many dust like qualities, most notably being hard to get off towels and bodies wet with sea, suntan lotion, rain or sweat (so there is never a moment that we are not intimately acquainted with it). There are several shacks of hotels (5) and restaurants (also 5) along the beach, and not much else as this island is part of a protected marine park. Despite the fact that it has rained heavily for half our time here, it has not made the place any less beautiful and i would be tempted to hide away here for months if we were not due on our next project in Cambodia imminently.

However, i did not write this yesterday as the laptop stopped working, and now i am writing in the Cameron Highlands, in a town that looked grim as we pulled in and as we took our first breath of highlands air thought, this is not a good place to be (THE GUIDE BOOK LIED). We took a walk immediately and it was neither scenic nor quaint as it was implied. All food places have tables with sticky plastic table clothes on with garish fruits and faded yellow implements that scream of food sickness or blandness. There are a million hotels and restaurants clustered along a busy road, swamped by a village of fruit and veg growers who have covered the lovely mountains with poly tunnels, large farm shops and plastic strawberries as big as a car. To think we left the Island for this. The only reason was to see a tea plantation; we will do that tomorrow and then leave.

I'm not really home sick, although i miss some things and people from home, but i am travel sick. I yearn to go to places i know, eat food i can identify and not be always preoccupied with who is ripping us off the least. I don't want to seem ungrateful for this wonderful opportunity Ive been given, but some evenness in this weird weird world would be great. Luckily for me, there is a Starbucks in the Cameron Highlands!!