Cameron Highlands 14-16 Dec 2007

"How was your trip?"

"Great!"

"What did you do?"

Well, it's really not about what we did, but how we made our trip fun. This was the best trip I've ever had. Baozhu was a very comfortable companion.

"Comfortable? That's a strange description."

She never complained that I took a long time to shower. She never complained that I took forever to take photos. She ate whatever I wanted to eat with me. Yup, so she was a very comfortable travel mate.

We reached Cameron Highlands at around 7.30am last Friday. Without going to the hotel, we signed up for 2 tours: a Nature Tour to take place at 9.30 am the very day, and an Agro Tour at 2.30pm the next day.

Our First Meal

Breakfast of prawn mee and wanton noodles. Quite nice actually.

Me taking my first look of Brinchang town.

Around Brinchang

Cameron Highlands is well known for strawberries, but I think they are a bit overdoing it...

Our Favourite Pastime #1

To take photos of overselves!

On the 4WD when our Nature Tour commenced; at the hotel lobby waiting for the hotel shuttle; while waiting for the hotel shuttle to pick us up from Tanah Rata; view from outside the hotel; after we bought flowers from the day market near the hotel; further away from the day market with the hotel as backdrop; at the watercress farm; at the flower nursery; at the hydroponics farm; at cactus valley; at the balcony of the hotel coffee shop.

All our 大头照 taken by Baozhu using her Canon IXUS 860 IS.

Our Favourite Pastime #2

To take photos of the view from our room, and to take photos of ourselves with the view from our room!

View From Our Room (when it's not misty)

Around The Hotel

Nature Tour - Boh Tea Plantation
Nature Tour - Gunung Brinchang

Gunung Brinchang is the highest mountain in the Cameron Highlands area. It is situated at the Perak-Pahang border in Malaysia.

I think we spent a good half hour at the viewing tower, probably to the exasperation of Bob, our tour guide. He thought I was mad to be taking photos of the leaves and flowers in the area. Haha!

Nature Tour - Mossy Forest

The ground was squishy and my feet and sandals were totally sunk into the mud, but it was fun! Once in a while, ok lah.

Nature Tour - Sungei Palas Tea Centre

We seemed to be having an idyllic time enjoying our tea, right? Actually we only had 20 mins to buy, drink and use toilet. Haha! Photos are deceiving. It would have been great to spend an afternoon relaxing at the tea house though, the scenery was simply fantastic!

Nature Tour - Native Resettlement


Our Favourite Pastime #3

Pig out!

Our lunch at around 3.30pm when the Nature Tour finally ended and we were in-between washing our footwear and cleaning ourselves after the messy mossy forest walk. The goreng pisang and fried whatever were fantastic! The Malay rice packs were quite yummy too.


Tanah Rata
We only had 3 hours between 6.30pm and 9.30pm to cover all the food places that we aimed to visit in Tanah Rata. So we had to cram our "tea" together with our "dinner".

First stop: T-Cafe. This small place had a very homely feel to it. Even the decor was a juxtaposition of East and West, not unlike a home owner trying to display all his art and furniture collections. The scone and strawberry cheesecake had the home-made taste. But we only had one hour to indulge in the simple ambience before we rushed off to cover the other food destinations on our "itinerary".

Before we reached Restoran Kumar where we wanted to try the Indian food, we got ourselves hijacked to the Gerai Zainab Sam food centre where we just had to have the satay! Yummy!

Finally, we got to Restoran Kumar which was just across the street from Gerai Zainab Sam. Actually Tanah Rata is a very small town, so every place was within walking distance from everywhere else. Hehe. The thosai and naan at Restoran Kumar were yummy too, but we were already so stuffed we couldn't finish all the food. I felt that the teh tarik here was better than the one that we had at BOH Tea Centre.

Some obiang lightings around Tanah Rata.

Day Market Near Hotel Equatorial

They have purple cauliflower!

Our Favourite Pastime #4

Eating by the window.

We bought one crystal jambu from the day market, got the seller to cut it for us and ate it when we got back to the hotel. It was very sweet! The only downside was that there were so many seeds! Bite, chew, pui! Bite, chew, pui!

After we're done with the fruit, we went out to eat again! This time, we went to Raaju Strawberry Farm which was just outside our hotel. The Belgian waffle was yummy! The strawberries were sour though. In the end, I scooped the strawberry ice cream and topped it on the waffle. Yum!

Agro Tour - Traditional Farm

Agro Tour - Watercress Farm

Agro Tour - Flower Nursery

Agro Tour - Strawberry Farm

Agro Tour - Hydroponics Farm

Agro Tour - Cactus Valley

Agro Tour - Steamboat

Brinchang Night Market

Giant lemons!

We packed fried carrot cake and char kuay teow and feasted again while watching Polar Express when we got back to the hotel. The fried carrot cake was GOOD! The bean sprouts were oh-so-crunchy!

Ok, how shall I end this? The next day, we had breakfast at the hotel, went for a morning walk, then took the coach back. The end. Haha.

Baozhu liked this photo very much as it seemed like we were at a winter place. This was taken at the balcony outside the hotel coffee shop where we had breakfast. We purposely waited for the mist to come back. The other diners probably thought we were crazy!

My favourite is this. This was not taken at Cameron Highlands. It was somewhere north of KL, where we stopped over for lunch on the way back to Singapore. Nice view, right?

The flowers I bought, I came home and asked my mum to arrange them. Tada!

All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip for me. I was happy all the time, no matter that it rained sometimes, no matter that my sandals got all muddy, no matter that the famed strawberries were actually sour.