Driving from Georgetown to the Cameron Highlands; from city to nature, from urbanisation to agriculture. Two distinct worlds, but the road between them is tremendous.

At first, I feel amazed. Albeit just touching it at the surface, on a long bus drive – 8 hours eventually which should have been about 4 – I am grateful to catch a glance of the beautiful nature of Malaysia.

All varieties of green pass by while I stare out of the window, it is astonishing. Until I take a closer look, there is something going on here. Which is called urbanisation, industrialisation and agriculturalization.

The first thing that catches my attention are the hills popping up in the scenery, like fountains of soil and nature. They are beautiful, until you have a closer look and see how they are cut short, as trees. Amputated. Where I suppose the hill stretched out before, I can only see houses, or crop fields, or roads. The same road I am on frankly.

The road goes on and on, from astonishing nature to amputated nature.

Rising Star

This must be a growing country. Several acres of land are taken by newly build construction sites, rows of the same houses, one after another, row behind row. Other acres are taken by industrial activities, or desolated territories waited to be converted in a new scenery. This is the Anthropocene: the era of history which is shaped by men. It cannot be more obvious than here where so much nature is still presented but is converted gradually into human serving facilities.

It is tremendous to see the pace of growth in Malaysia, I bet in but a couple of years Malaysia will be a totally different country, more people, more urbanisation, and hence, more need for visionary sustainable city development. Here is the good news, it looks like Malaysia does have a vision on city development, moreover when I will head to Kuala Lumpur, Puttrajaya and Cyberjaya, but those are stories for later.

First I have to tell you more about something else that catches my attention on the road.  Fields of African palms. The palm fields dominate the scenery for miles and miles, this road and any other road I will be on the next couple of weeks.

Let me tell you more on that in the next post.