On departure day we got up late, the alarm clock having failed to
function and the curtains doing their job extra well, so there was
no time to go to someplace fancy for breakfast (I had in mind the
famous Foh San), but along the way I'd noticed a neighborhoody
dim summery with the intriguing name Chef Fatt, which looked
respectable and busy but not crowded, so we decided to give that
a try.

For me I ordered an order of har gow, which were tasty enough but
made with chopped shrimp in a very thick cornstarch substrate; all
the rest of the things to share -

fried rolls with cabbage, pork, and ham were something I'd not had
before, quite tasty though heavy on the salt;

taro balls with pork were the usual delicious things;

garlic spare ribs tasted pretty good but were more detritus than
rib, sad to say, so lili didn't eat much of the dish even after
I dissected out the objectionable bits for her;

char siu bao of a good standard, thank goodness, otherwise I'd
have had a good meal and lili a bad one, which is no way to
start the day.

The prices were somewhat lower (not by much) than at the more
famous place, but the main thing was we were in and out in
a jiffy.

The previous day, I'd taken a detour from our walking adventure
and gone to the city bus station, where I'd booked us a ride to
Cameron Highlands. The little old guy manning the booth gave us
detailed instructions - this used to leave downtown, but now since
the building of the fancy new out-of-town depot 16 km north of
here you take the city bus (free with an onward ticket, otherwise
2 ringgit and change) to the new station. So we had the hotel desk
call us a taxi; the Chinese driver charged us 12, an only mild
extortion.

This system is actually pretty efficient, and the city bus, at
least the one we got, is air-conditioned and lets one off directly
above the intercity bus gates. We made our way to the checkin
kiosk, where, lo and behold, our little old guy was waiting for us.
Apparently he's the personnel for both offices, and why not, as
he rides the bus between the two stations for free, relaxing or
doing the accounts en route, whatever.

The intercity to Tanah Rata takes 2 hours even and is a bargain
at 18.50; it's a scenic ride on comfy air-conditioned equipment
that, however, lacks a restroom, so there's a pee stop halfway.
It let us off right in the middle of town, but Google got either
the bus stop or the hospital (the other main landmark) on the
wrong side of the road, and depending on where the hospital was
perceived to be, one would go one way or the other on the main
drag. I guessed wrong and ended up having to ask a cop, who gave
us pretty good directions except at the end, when at the last
left turn, the trail turned cold and we ended up at Father's Guest
House, where the friendly front desk person cheerfully put us right
and sold me a Tiger for 7 and a Minute Maid More Pulp for the lady
for 3. As we were sitting there refreshing ourselves some kid working
at the hotel practiced his English on us, which was kind of fun.

It was only a quarter mile detour - the Arundina was actually
almost within sight of where we'd stopped. It is a very pleasant
facility, somewhere between the guest house it purports to be and
the hotel that it disclaims. We had reserved a deluxe triple,
with queen and single beds. The room was spare but spacious and
very high-ceilinged; there was a nice little balcony that
potentially unfortunately was easily accessible from the corridor
(but to our knowledge was not during our stay). An adequate
bathroom, though it turns out that in order to get hot water, you
had to take the handheld and dangle it below the heating unit, for
siphoning reasons, something that took the front desk clerk two
tries to get us to understand.