After a full English breakfast we waited at the bottom of the hill for our bus to pick us up. We'd booked a tour of the countryside, seeing as that was why we were here, and we were hoping that the man who sold us our ticket had actually meant it yesterday. We drew a lot of attention as cars went past, and people waved and beeped their horns and just stared at these two weird foreigners on the grass verge. The bus turned up only a little late, and the Indian driver was very chatty with us even though we were the only non-Malay-speakers on the bus. Our first stop was a rose garden, which looked like the hanging gardensof Babylon from the outside (trust me) and much more like a garden centre on the inside, which is what you do on a Bank Holiday, isn't it? This place was deceptively huge, with hundreds of paths and staircases and astrological statues and small rooms under corrugated plastic roofing. The Cameron Highlands are a very fertile place, the coolness and rainfall make it ideal for farming. So they grow roses. And orchids, hundreds of them hanging down in curtains from the roof, and gernaiums and just about every other variety of garden flower. Once we'd navigated through the maze of indoor passages there were another hundred outside, taking us hundreds of feet up the hillside for a weird view of corrugated plastic roofs and tall hotels nestled among ferny forest. The hotels were all trying to stay in keeping with the surroundings and had a single panel of black wooden-beam design on the front of every appartment, to look English.

We walked down through fragrant rose-fields and swathes of pink and purple flowers. Dahlias mixed with bird-of-paradise plants and orchids. It was strange but pretty.

Then a three-minute bus ride to the strawberry farms. This is another local speciality, although most farmers prefer to grow vegetables because they don't take as much money or room as fruit. The strawberry farms were enormous corrugated-plastic-covered wooden structures with tiered benches of growbags. The strawberries were really gorgeous, almost English-like, and even the strawberry milkshake was tasty. The farms only sell the fruit to tourists: most of it is made into jam. Whether that's 80 km/jam I don't know. Did you see what I did there? I made a little multi-lingual joke. Hee hee.

Three more minutes down the road was a butterfly farm where they grow the national butterfly among other things.

Can't remeber what it's called though. They also had an insect house where a few nasties dwelt with the rhinoceros beetles and tarantulas. I didn't spend too long there, but instead found some large caterpillars for a little Indian girl who was scared of all the things with wings. There were some gorgeous golden pupae too, hanging on leaves and Japanese people trying to catch the butterflies.

Then we went on to the tea plantation which was the whole point of the trip, to me. The tea factory is closed on Mondays because the tea-pickers get Sunday off so there is nothing to see, so we just gazed in awe at the massive terraces of tea plants, 75 years old and still going strong. The family of the Scotish guy who got people to plant all this still owns the company, and they are the original plants. Tea pickers (all women) can pick 500lbs of tea a day, carrying 50 pounds at a time, and get payed about 15 pence for each pound. It's quite impressive.

The tea plants, camelias, make a maze of passages over the surrounding hills, as far as you can see. The distant ones were shrouded in mist, and as the sun came out, the new shoots on the nearby bushes glowed lime-green.

Back on the bus again, this time to an apiary, and we wandered round another colourfully-planted garden, watching the bees wiggle in a Mexican wave, and found a huge glass case with a gold Buddha in it. Large cartoonish bee statues waved ice-creams at the tourists, and large flags advertised all the bee farm's honey products. Drains that smelled disturbingly of sewage running through the gardens spoiled the otherwise rather lovely summer atmosphere.

Right next to the bee farm was a busy market selling all the local produce and many things I couldn't identify. I tried all the local citrus fruit in the fruitless search for satsumas, and then the bus dropped us off back at the hotel for a late lunch.

Several plates of small triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off later, Mikey was fast asleep, the heat and humidity of Asia finally having caught up with him. I played with the local cats and looked out for the wild, show-stealing puppies that signs warned us of, but to no avail. Then I had a nap too, cos I can never get enough sleep.

When Mikey woke up, I took my camera out to try to take some pictures of the local ferns and pitcher plants unfurling, and saw some rather large spider webs containing some rather large spiders. Then we had a small supper and watched the first half-hour of a film before bed.