Cameron Highlands Tour
Trip Start
May 18, 2003
1
16
272
Trip End
Ongoing
Cameron Highlands,
Malaysia
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
It started with a visit to a Rose Garden, which I had envisaged as being a simple garden centre. Spread out on many levels this place was actually quite magical. As I walked amongst the variety of roses and other flowers that seem to thrive in this climate, the path led me towards steps and further levels up the hillside. As each level presented other varieties of plants and flowers the views of the valley below became more and more impressive. Eventually at the top of the garden was a beautiful open air display of flowers set against stunning rolling hills of the nearby tea plantations.
The next stop was the Strawberry Farm, another crop that does quite well at this altitude in Malaysia. The guide informed us that there is not much call for Strawberries in local cuisine and that this complex exists only for tourists. We all bought some to try (RM5 per tray) and they were nice and juicy. The Swedes on the tour commented that they had missed the food from back home and eating fresh strawberries was a nice reminder of what they had been missing.
Cameron Highlands is famous for its tea, and the tour now took us to a mountainside to wander around the tea plantation and take in the scenery. The tea pickers only get 20 sen (less than four pence) per kilo of tealeaves they collect, but the average worker can collect 200kgs in a single day.
Atlas beetle at the insect and butterfly farm
It's all still done by hand using modified clippers and the narrow gaps between the bushes are very steep. When I think about the cost of tea back in England it is easy to see that the workers in the field are still not getting their fair share of the profits. The bushes that we were standing around were over seventy years old and our guide informed us that you could still pick leaves from them when they are over a hundred!Next it was off to the BOH tea factory where all the processing takes place. Although quite a small factory it was very busy and not just for show. Although I'm not a tea drinker I tried a cup of their premium tea made with the smallest tealeaves from the bushes at the highest point on the plantation. It tasted quite strong but I had nothing to compare it with. Apart from a raw leaf I chewed on when we were by the bushes.
The Butterfly and Insect Farm was fun, I held a large rhino beetle and when I tried to hand it back to the keeper the beetle didn't really want to let go. The butterflies were quite stunning, and some were huge! Ajay (from England), Kim (from Holland) and I kept trying to take photographs of them but they seemed to fly away just at the wrong moment.
Onto flying insects of a different kind at the Honeybee Farm, where you could buy pure honey (RM10 for a small jar) which according to the woman at the counter cured a myriad of ailments. Well, I had to try some and it did taste pretty good [my tour of Malaysia seems to be one big taste sensation]. A little further up from the Honeybee Farm was the local fruit and veg market (where they seemed to be impervious to a good haggle). Kim and I decided to go halves on a 1kg bag of mixed fruit: mangos, some weird green citrus fruit that tasted quite good and something else that looked very strange indeed!
After the customary stop at a Buddhist temple is was back to Tanah Rata for lunch with Ajay and Kim at the Indian restaurant that Daniel recommended to me back in KL.
