Tea Glorious Tea

The woman we booked with said “Call this number when you get dropped off at the main road and we’ll come and pick you up as it’s a long way to reception.” We called but no-one came. So we walked for half an hour all the way up the hill with our bags in the Sun (did I mention we JUST WALKED UP A MOUNTAIN?!!).

Dripping with sweat we arrived at reception to be told there was no booking. Fab. Thankfully they had a room spare.

We asked them when we could do our night walk as promised by the woman we booked with. We were told they weren’t doing night walks ‘because of the weather’ (which was the same weather they have every day in Borneo).  

So after a rather dubious start, we found ourselves tucked away in a basic but cosy room in a traditional Longhouse at Sabah Tea Plantation.

We paid for a tour of the tea museum which turned out to be a 15 minute promotional video (which boasted of an amazing night walk we could all enjoy) followed by a 20 minute tour of the tea factory, in which I couldn’t hear a word the man said, so spent the whole thing nodding at what I guessed were appropriate moments. It looked interesting though, and it smelt amazing, and I read about how you make tea in a leaflet afterwards, so all good.

The only thing was, the tour was late morning, and there was nothing else to do all day. So we’d woken up at 5am, got a bus, a coach, walked up a huge hill, walked around a factory, read some appropriate literature, then found ourselves stuck in a tea plantation in the middle of nowhere in the rain, with nothing to do. Thankfully it had a restaurant with an incredible view of Mount Kinabalu and the surrounding mountains, and there was lots of tea to drink, so we sat and watched the view, drank tea, and took occasional photos of weird insects that waddled into our vicinity which actually turned into a rather satisfying day. When the rain stopped we also had a lovely walk through the tea fields and even guilted the guy in reception to take us on a sunrise walk the next morning so we actually had rather a jolly time!