Day 15.
Green indeed is the peninsula of Malaysia -and Sarawak and Sabah- with palms.
It is likely you have eaten something today that contains palm oil. It's in so much packaged or processed foodstuff bought by Mr & Mrs Joe Average that it's probably nigh-on impossible to go shopping at ...insert supermarket of choice here... without buying something laced with it. If you doubt me, or you're a bit of a purist foody and have already purged it like the pox from your life, then go take a look at your bathroom cabinet or even the cleaning products under the stairs because it's almost certainly in those too!
There are millions of acres of Malaysia now under palm oil cultivation. It had been argued by many that the bio-diversity of this ultra-biodiverse tropical region has been stultified, if not wrecked, because of this monocrop. That may be true, but the same is true for rubber plantations, or mid-west horizon-to-horizon corn production or Ukrainian or Canadian wheat and it's probably more likely there are less diverse still. Yes, there are fewer tigers and orang-utans, but that's not just down to the clearing of forests for palms. Put that down to the pressures of a human population explosion in the last 50 years. A balance must be sought, but not every farmer can establish an elephant sanctuary or butterfly farm in their back yard. Efforts are being made to reduce the use of pesticides/fertilisers and use the farming and processing by-products to make bio-fuels.
Palm oil provides much needed (and regular) income for local farmers. They certainly couldn't grow yams, coconuts or bananas and make the same money, send their kids to school and buy a fridge every now and then, something the rest of us take for granted. And as long as the consumers, ie you, keep wanting to buy this oily stuff and the middle men are giving fairly good prices then there's no reason to swap for anything else.
Palm oil is a good and cheap one for using regularly. In the region it'll be used anywhere from the cheapo breakfast at McDonalds restaurants to the wee local lady on a rickety trishaw that sets out a few stools under a single light bulb and cooks up a Thai storm at 2:30 in the morning. It may not have the kudos of extra-extra-read-all-about-it-virgin huile d'olive, or the delicate nuances of lard, but it has a very high smoke point and is pleasantly tasting for the price.
There's also an argument about the health benefits of palm oil: apparently it contains plenty of wicked saturated fat. This is certainly true, but so does the humble avocado. It's most likely the best solution to this is not to eat so much fried food. Hey Presto!
So there you have it: palm oil grows everywhere here and feeds every one of you there. Maybe it's about time we all got used to it.
Despite them being everywhere, I haven't taken a single picture of even one frond. So you'll have to be content with pictures of the walkway through the wonderful Mossy Forest atop the Cameron Highlands -and not a kilt in sight!.
Next stop, Kuala Lumpur on the Unititi Express, whatever one of those is.
