We took a bus from Penang to the Cameron Highlands on 9th. After a seven hour bumpy ride we were pretty much exhausted when arriving to our hostel. We stayed at Gerard's place, a nice and modern hostel which was located on a small hill overlooking the Tanah Rata town centre. That night we didn't do much as we were so tired. We only had dinner in town and then it was time for bed.
Next morning we crawled out of our seriously damp bed and headed to the town centre again, this time to rent a moped for exploring the surroundings of the town. To our surprise all the mopeds had manual gears and neither of us had ever driven one that wasn't automatic. Well, there was no time to waste so Oliver tried it out for a while on the parking lot and then off we went. We stopped first at a tea plantation near the town centre called the Cameron Valley. The view was breathtaking! We wondered around the plantation a bit and enjoyed some tea before hopping back on the bike.
Next stop was another tea plantation a bit further away called the Boh. They had a nice viewpoint up on a hill which also had magnificent views over the plantations.
After drinking some more tea we drove to a strawberry farm nearby and picked some strawberries. Not as good as the Finnish ones, unfortunately.
We still had an hour left before returning the moped so we decided to go and have a look at a Chinese temple called Sam Poh.
After returning our moped we had lunch, which was not a great success... All-in-all the food turned out to be a bit of a disappointment in Cameron Highlands. Later that evening we headed to the centre for some drinks and dinner. Our expectations were already low when searching for another place to eat. Luckily we chose a Chinese restaurant and had a "Steamboat", which was actually quite nice.
Cameron Highlands was high on our wish list when we were planning our itinerary. After visiting it, we could have done without it. It's true, that the views over the tea plantations were incredible but the strawberry farms were a big disappointment. They looked almost grotesque in the middle of the nature as they were rows of tables covered with ugly tarpaulin and dominated the landscape. We didn't really get why they don't grow the strawberries in the ground like in Finland.
Also the town was quite depressing and the food was one of the worst we've had during our trip. We didn't do any trekking which is supposed to be really nice in Cameron Highlands and for many the sole reason to go there. Our opinion might have been different if we'd done some, but we had to carry on towards Kuala Lumpur.
No comments:
Post a Comment