Cameron Highlands

23 Dec 2015 Wed

It is a cold start despite having no AC in the room. Brrr. Hope it is another florious day of sunshine!

CS travels came 15 minutes late to Century Pines. Along the way, it picked up some more tourists at Brinchang and Copthorne Kea Farm.

1^st stop – Beefarm. It was OK, more of  a sales stop with time to roam the garden where bees are kept.  It was not pretty and the place was not well kept and definitely not for the old and very young.

2^nd stop – Butterfly farm.  RM 5 entry. We made a short stop to oogle at the butterflies – which were pretty. The back garden was rows and rows of potted plants. The floor was soggy and difficult to walk around. I liked the fluttering creatures best.

3^rd stop – tea plantation. It was the best stop because Pat and I got to roam the tea place after a ‘compulsory’  tour. It was another place that tried to be educational but wasn’t doing it too well. The food place was bursting to the seams with people eating and photo taking, it was insane. Pat and I walked a bit among the tea bushes and looted back a couple of tins of tea. It was my favorite stop because of the space the plantation offered.

4^th stop – strawberry farm. Ever fancy a tour to a strawberry farm that has no strawberries for eating, buying or harvesting. There we have it – no thanks to CS Travels. What a lousy partner they have. All of us were unhappy.

5^th stop – Rose Garden. RM 5. Again, we were made to donate RM5 for a rose garden that was not at all educational or entertaining. It was smart of CS Travel to exclude the entry of the butterfly and rose places. It appeared cheaper but what a waste of time. 45 minutes in the middle of nowhere without a guide and a market place that had already closed for the day. What market place tour are they talking about ? By this time, I was getting impatient with the quality of the tour, never mind that it was cheap.

There was a jam on the way to Brinchang and Tanah Rata. We looked longingly at the bustling market place outside the bus, trapped with a tour that was a waste of time.

Back at TR, we ‘feasted’ at Sri Brinchang, a nasi goreng place. 2 rice, 2 drinks at RM 18. It was not great and better than Kougen but it still disappoints.  It looks like we are not having much luck with food in CH so far.

Totally exhausted by the heat and the knee busted by climbing up and down the steep bus steps. We rested in the hotel watching Kdramas that Pat tried to download. It was a good 2 hours of video binging until the sun sets. Only when the air cooled down did we venture out to forage for food.

Sheng Li restoran at the main street is the penultimate moms-and-pops eating place that folks love because it brings back nostalgia and old school cooking. At least the slowness serving the food was old school, with the efficiency of my mum!

Food tasted healty , almost home cooked. It we have to taste it blindfolded, I will award it a decent 70marks. 2 rice, 1 sweet sour pork, 1 plate of watercress sambal,  1 bowl of bittergourd soup for RM35 is really cheap. It wasn’t delicious nor was it awesome. Like I said, it tasted like what mum used to cook.

8.30 pm. We were being naughty, buying snacks immediately after dinner. There was a long queue at MaryBrown Chicken and by the end when Pat placed his orders, it was really time for supper! ( 5 pieces of chicken, coleslaw – RM 25 ).

Cameron Highlands is slow moving with our type of program, but we liked the speed of things. Any faster would have negated the health benefits of that holiday!