Cameron Highlands 金馬崙高原, fresh air, tea, and strawberries! – part 1 « lookat.my

Cameron Highlands 金馬崙高原, fresh air, tea, and strawberries! – part 1

posted by look.eye on 2010.01.12, under Adventure, Event, Friends, Outdoor, Outing, Photography

Jan

After the screaming and ouching new year celebration from Skytrex, we went to a more serene and relaxing trip at Cameron Highlands, Pahang, on the 9th of January 2010. Thanks to Siewmei and Hamyu for planning the trip. 12 of us, Siewmei, Hamyu, Jacque, Leslie, Sue-ann, Brian, Jook, Shyng, Justine, Dawn, Yippie, and me, in 3 cars, woke up too early at 5 in the morning, started out journey to Cameron Highlands.

After some stops and makans, we reached Tanah Rata at around 11:30am. Went to find the owner of our apartment, took the key, put our stuffs in the apartment, off we go to explore Cameron Highlands for our first day trip.

Went to look for this Bala’s place cos we heard it’s quite nice. The houses in the picture are not Bala’s place, we took a wrong turn and ended up at someone’s porch, manage to snap some shots of the view from their porch.

Found! Bala’s place. It’s a hotel that looks like those old British houses.

A lot of plants around and over surrounding the hotel.

Old-skool swing at the little garden.

In case you got lost.

Loving the bokeh in this photo. We stayed for a while to do some shooting outside the hotel, saw the clouds and thought it might rain, so hurry to our next destination to get some strawberries!

Raju’s Hill Strawberry, a place we had our first taste of strawberries, the fat style! Haha.

There’s a little strawberry farm here for people to visit.

Strawberries with icing sugar on top. Leslie is enjoying it.

More strawberries with icing sugar! Shyng promoting it.

Justine is holding the strawberries with whipped cream. She just re-dyed her hair days before coming up to Cameron Highlands, just to blend in.

If strawberries with whipped cream is not enough, you can always add honey on top. Yummy~

After having those special strawberries, we moved to our next location, we always heard people visiting butterfly farm / garden, so we decided to visit the neglected bee farm. Siewmei and Shyng on the way down to the bee farm.

Worker bee busy gathering honey… just to be sold in pasar malam! I’ve supported the colony by buying them to eat later that night.

Artificial beehives fore honey gathering. As you can see one of the bee at the top right of the photo is working happily gathering honey.

A lot of flowers around the bee farm so the bees doesn’t have to fly too far to gather their honey.

Steps going back up to the exit of the bee farm.

After the bee farm visit, our next stop will be the famous ‘BOH’ Tea Centre at Sungei Palas. This tea plantation destination is one of the must visits in Cameron Highlands. On the way going to the ‘BOH’ Tea Centre, you’ll see hills and more hills of tea plants. Very very beautiful. In the photo is the common transport they use to transport goods such as tea leaves in within Cameron Highlands, very very cool. Can you spot the car’s number plate?

Reached. The ‘BOH” Tea Centre. There’s a factory here where you can visit and the cafe.

Here’s how the cafe looks like. A bit hanging over the hill.

So you’ll have your tea and scones while having a very nice view looking at the tea plantation.

This is the view looking out the balcony of the cafe.

Rows and rows of tea leaves. Respect those tea farmers / pluckers that go through here and pluck those tea leaves.

Trying to shoot some Microsoft Windows default wallpaper here.

A funny shot of Siewmei and Shyng shooting their own shoes.

Done shooting their shoes.

Strawberry in a tea plantation.

The couple enjoying the view out here after Jook had his tea and “scones”.

Tea and flowers.

Sue-ann and Jacque.

After the drinking and eating session at the cafe, we walked down the the tea plantation to snap some close-ups with the tea themselves. In the photo Hamyu and Siewmei’s random poses.

Solo time! Siewmei very happy to be with the tea.

Jacque and Leslie. ‘BOH’, ada Ummph…

Sue and Brian. In search of the Ummph-est tea leaves.

Yippie or tea?

Shyng popping out from the leaves.

Shyng’s fashion is in tune with the nature!

Jook is not prepared. But this photo is cool.

Dawn trying to blend in. I think her face expression trying to imitate the newly grow tea leaves.

Sue: “Ummph-est tea leaves, are you there?”

Spokesperson for ‘BOH’ Tea. Just ignore the t-shirt’s “Canon Expo 2007″.

Finally, me.

The path to where we park our car after the tea plantation.

Along the way there are bushes and there are a lot of spiders there. Can’t imagine if you fell in.

On the way out, found a spot for shooting, but ended up this shot I like the most. Volvo, reliable.

Cactus Point. A place where you can see and buy a lot of different kinda cactus and plants here.

Assorted cactuses.

This plant looks like those communication tower.

Have you been to Pandora lately?

This hibiscus is bigger than Justine’s face!

Some kinda cactus. Looks damn cute.

I named this the bloody flower.

Not sure if this is some desert type of plant or what.

Yippie communicating with the flowers.

Got strawberries there too. 3 different colour straberries here. S, M, and L size.

The word is “vibrant”.

Very complicated small cactus, but very nice.

Cactus shooting. Look at the cactus behind Siewmei, damn tall!

After Cactus Point. We went dinner! How can a visit to Cameron Highlands without Steamboat! Kapal Berstim!

The gang dinnering! The price here is quite reasonable. The vegetables are like unlimited!

After dinner we went walking at the Cameron’s pasar malam. Waihoong mentioned to use there’s the Beer Ice-cream somewhere here. But it’s no where to be seen. Some of them quite disappointed.

First time see-ing this kinda fruit! Actually it’s guava, just that the skin is peeled and it’s marinated. The colour looks very artificial.

Chocolate coated strawberries.

Cut Comb. My throat was having some problem that few days before i went up Cameron. Leslie recommended me to have this as it is very good for the throat. So I bought and ate it. Very very sweet. But it works!

Souvenirs for tourists.

Bought some Apam Balek back to the apartment just in case. To our surprise a lot of malay people in Cameron Highlands know how to speak mandarin.

Back to the crib after waking up too early in the morning and walked whole day. All lazying around and it’s only 9:15pm. But we have to rest early for the night, because some of us will be going sunrise shooting the next morning which we have to wake up at 4am.