Cameron Highlands

2 years, 4 months & 2 days old.....

Since my parents-in-law were in town for a week, we made a short trip to Cameron Highlands on 18-19 Sep. I searched for a few hotels online and shortlisted The Lake House, Equatorial and Strawberry Park. Checked on a forum at www.cameronhighlands.com especially on the reviews about the hotels there. You can find almost all information about the place from this website. In the end, we decided to stay at the Strawberry Park and booked a 3+1-rooms apartment at RM483 as my mum, sis and niece wanted to join as well. It's inclusive of RM120 worth of cash voucher and we spent it on the breakfast, which costs RM32+ per adult.

Now, here is my review about the place. The price is about the same as The Lake House and Equatorial and I've not been to any of those. We got an apartment with 4 rooms, 2 rooms with queen-size bed and two rooms with single bed. There is no kitchen in there hence we can't even heat up food. Luckily we didn't plan to cook. The floor is dusty but we didn't bother to ask them to clean up. I don't know how long it will take them to clean up the floor and I don't want to spoil my mood thus just ignore the issue. Furniture are a bit old but no funny smell on the bed nor pillows, thank goodness. Breakfast is only so-so.

The only thing I like about this place is the environment, which is surrounded by greens and is located quite high above the sea level. The Lake House is facing a lake but separated by a main road and the surrounding is quite bare, no trees or forest around. Equatorial is located higher than the Strawberry Park but surrounded by buildings and farms.

18 September 2008
Our journey started at around 8.30 a.am. and we reached the Tapah exit at around 10.30 a.m. Ethan and my niece didn't sleep until we made the journey up the hill. Thank goodness they slept while we went through the curves and turns, otherwise someone will surely puke in the car. Then we stopped for lunch at Tanah Rata at almost 12 p.m. We then proceeded to the Boh Plantation Visitors Centre at Sungai Palas. I found this place on the website (mentioned above). We took a rest there, had a cup of tea and visited the centre (mainly posters) but didn't visit the factory as we have kids tagging along.

Love the view from here

The second stop was the strawberry farm (don't know the name) which is near the Boh Plantation Visitors Centre. We saw the big sign board on the road side before we turn off to the Visitors Centre and decided to check it out on the way down. We had fun plucking strawberries at the farm. I remember the last two times I went there (years ago), we can only buy pre-packed strawberries and not allowed to pluck it ourselves. Everyone got so excited with the big red strawberries and ended up with 7 packs of them. Every 100g costs RM3, if I'm not mistaken and I don't how much all the 7 packs cost.

Then we bought some fresh vegetables from the farm and the kids visited the small animal farm there. There are some rabbits, tortoise and geese at the farm but the place is full of animal droppings.

We were told that this is Cameron's apple but it doesn't taste like apple at all.

Carrot fresh from the farm.

When we finished visiting the farm, it was almost 4 p.m. and we went to check-in at the hotel. The weather was quite chilly at that time. Everyone rested for a while, took a shower and headed for dinner at Brinchang. As it's a weekday, there was no night market and after dinner, we took short walk before going back to the hotel. Ethan and my niece, Tessa had lots of fun running around, climbing the sofas and beds. The adults had a bottel of wine and the fresh strawberries we plucked few hoours ago. At around 11+p.m., everyone konked off.

19 September 2008
The morning weather was really cold and we slept with almost all windows closed. There was no mosquitoes attack too. As soon as Ethan opened his eyes at around 9a.m., he was all fresh and active and woke everyone else up. After breakfast, we packed everything up and checked-out right at 12p.m.

We wanted to visit the bee farm but couldn't locate the one given in the map but we managed to find another one. Nothing impressive as there were only a few boxes of bees and some exhibits on bees. We didn't buy any honey but I spotted the strawberry ice at a stall nearby. It's made of fresh strawberries and cost RM1 each. I bought 10 sticks.

The second stop we made was at the Kea Farm to buy some fresh and cheap vegetables. The must buy item is the sweet corn (known as 'Jan Ju Bao' in chinese??), the one that you can eat fresh without steaming. It is really sweet and crunchy. The bigger one was selling at RM10 for 5 pcs while the smaller one at RM 10 for 8 pcs. I bought the small ones at RM10 for 3 pcs in KL. We bought so much corns that I had corns everyday for 4 days straight. No, I'm not scared of it and wouldn't mind to have more...hehe...

The last stop we made was for lunch at Brinchang, the same restaurant we had dinner the night before. From there, we headed straight back to KL at around 2-3p.m. Ethan slept for 2 hours in the car until we stopped for dinner in KL. Lucky me.

I think everyone enjoyed the trip especially the kids. Oh...and Ethan learnt a new trick from this trip....faking a smile for the camera!