Lee Chin's Secret Garden: Family Day at Cameron Highland

Update on **14-15 January 2017**

Joining family impromptu trip to Cameron Highland.

In TBS and waited for almost 1 hour. Our laziness buying tickets in advance caused the tickets sold out.

Hotel:

Rainbow Hotel, Brinchang

No room service however nearby supermarket is 2 minutes’ walk-by. At the supermarket, I could found everything I needed ranging from junk foods, instant noodles, mineral waters and menstrual pads.

Besides that, Chinese restaurants also in close proximity. Visitors able to enjoy the local cuisines especially fresh vegetables of Cameron Highlands.

Moreover, there’s nearby halal restaurants that cater for the needs of the Muslim visitors too. If these restaurants were inadequate, nearby night market that operated on Friday and Saturday was available.

Furthermore, the room was spacious which my parents quite grateful. The beds were firm. I had the good sleep.

The linens were soft and clean. I lied on the bed while watching television. It had mini refrigerator in the guest room too. We stored the fresh fruits from the Brinchang Night market.

On the other hand, the hotel did not offered complimentary mineral waters, tea sachets, instant coffees, hair dryer and kettle except thermos. It forced us to buy 5 littles mineral water from the nearby supermarket.

Carrying it up had problem as I passed through the staircases in the hotel lobby. To make matters worse, I extremely needed hot waters since my Papa had severe coughing. I even waited for 1 hour for the hot waters. I also claimed hair dryer from the front desk staff and luckily the hotel was willing to offer.

Foods:

Obsession in Cameron Highland was dragon beard veggies.

Tour:

Titiwangsa Tours & Travel- leisure and Agro Delight tour

We joined leisure and agro delight tour (RM 85) of Titiwangsa Tours & Travel for whole day. This is due to 1 girl jumped on us to promote the tour packages.

We chose these tours at the end when I forgot to remind them to take note on the famous attractions such as Boh Tea plantation and lavender farm in the tour itineraries.

The girl had good marketing talks and strategies too. She was not only gave us the discounts for the return bus fares to Kuala Lumpur but also promised the picked-up service at the hotel we stayed.

When speaking about the tour, each tour lasts for 5 hours.

Like title referred, leisure tour purely brought leisure, relax and slow pace type of travelling for me. Totally hassle free.

This tour was guided by Ali, a friendly guy but he never ever introduced the history or stories of the attractions. No idea whether he had limited knowledge of the attractions or he felt lazy to do so.

I believed this was the greatest weakness of a tour guide. Hopefully he improved in the future.

Attractions:

1) Rose center kea farm

Entrance ticket-RM 6 per adult.

Let Pa Pa started to explore Rose Center Kea Farm

Vintage car. Pa Pa not reluctant to take photo with it because it's too old. Lol

colorful stones and Mickey

obligatory family portrait

Mama: don’t smell the roses

Mickey: why? Everyone do so.

Mama: It is bad for your nose.

(The rest of us pretended never listen and continuously smelled them) #thingsmamasays

Red, white & yellow roses

Cutie JoJo

Spongebob read book, Naruto play smartphone.

Mickey closed her ears, Papa closed his mouth, Mama closed her eyes. They acted so cool, don't you agree?

Capricorn

& Libra

I personally din't thought rose center kea farm worth to visit. I strongly recommended to remove this attraction from itineraries.

The main reason was it lacked of rose varieties. Only several types of roses for taking photo. I could learned better about the roses if more roses varieties.

On top of that, roses' processing methods were not described. The guide did not explained how the roses planted, grown, changed it's colors and shapes.

2) Kea Farm Town's Morning Market

Google image

It operated daily from 7am-7pm.

It was found that majority visitors bought Cameron’s sweet corns, sweet potatoes and vegetables.

However, the tour guide reminded us some sweet corn stalls NOT sold Cameron Highland’s sweet corns, which were white and yellow colors.

They sold the corns that planted in Ipoh. They were not earned much if sold in Ipoh. On the other hand, they preferred sold in Cameron Highland because it was very famous for sweet corns.

Many tourists demanded for it. Needless to say, the sweet corn stalls wouldn’t tell the tourists their sweet corns were planted in Ipoh. Otherwise, their sales surely dropped.

Hence, as a smart user, it was necessary to differentiate sweet corns. Here're some TIPS:

1. Normally a bag of Cameron Highland’s sweet corns had 4 or 5 sweet corns. If the stalls offered 10 or 15 sweet corns, then it was Ipoh’s sweet corns.

2. If the sweet corn in the stalls were like the hill, this meant the corns were planted in Ipoh. Cameron Highland’s sweet corns were not much. It was due to the small sizes of the sweet corn farms and most of the sweet corn farms located in the uphill.

Moreover, Kea Farm’s morning market was same with Brinchang night market. The only difference was former in the morning session everyday while latter in the night times during Friday and Saturday.

If you visit both of them, you will notice exactly the same stall owners appeared. So, it was advisable to visit either one of them in order to save the times and energy.

3) Ee Feng Gu Bee Farm

Nothing special and new features in the bee farm. It was similar with my previous visit.

Truth to be told, I mistakenly thought this place was souvenirs or gift center. There was a lot of souvenirs or gift such as Cameron's tea, soaps and fresh honey related products.

This bee farm didn't has staff to explain the bee behaviors. Also, bee farm was very smelly too. I wanted to run away during half way.

Besides that, it's not easy to access because no clear sign boards and lots of stairs. This bee farm was poor in maintenance.

Not worth to visit!

4) Butterfly Farm

I didn’t entered butterfly farm. I had been there few times, felt bored already and refused to visit anymore.

But, I surprisingly found that all the pictures took in the butterfly farm turned out nice. Papa, Mama, JoJo and Mickey had the wonderful smiles. It included great times too.

I concluded butterfly farm still well-maintained and able to view more varieties of butterflies based on the sisters’ descriptions.

Hehehehe. Papa damn funny in the picture frame. And Mama did the good job!

5) Raju Hill Strawberry Farm

Ali, the tour guide told us the strawberry farm still offered self-picking strawberry activities. Right now, visitors discouraged to do so since half kilograms self-picking strawberries costed RM30.

Owners of the strawberry farm forced to impose the price when more and more visitors self-picked and left the strawberry farm.

However, visitors were welcomed to visit the strawberry farm. My parents did that too. They able to see how the strawberries were grown. A very good educational tour.

Besides strawberry farm, café could found there too. The foods and drinks ranged from strawberry scones, waffles, ice-creams, teh tarik.

We tried these four. All pretty yummy and tasty.

6) Sam Poh Buddhist Temple

It's the final sightseeing point. Like other Buddhist temples, this temple was pretty serene and peaceful too.

It reminded me Year of Rooster was approaching.

Leisure tour ended on 1.30 pm. We were back to hotel for resting and took lunch. Around 2.30 pm, Agro Delight tour guide, Ganesh came to pick us up.

7) Water Cress Farm

Water cress farm was the first attraction for Agro Delight Tour. It was the water cress from China and the farm was managed by Bangladesh.

Different ethnic groups had different cooking style of water cress (西洋菜). Chinese mostly in “soup” while Malay and India in “sambal belacan”.

I personally thought this visit was not worth it because we didn’t go down to the water cress farm for close-up observation. The exploration and discovery of water cress was impeded.

I even remembered JoJo commented “never expect the tour van stop right in the uphill whereby water cress farm was located down the hill, then Ganesh just explained, pointed his fingers here and there”.

8) Vegetables Farm

Getting cooler when visiting vegetable farm. It’s drizzling. Not attracted by the vegetables farm. It’s just the ordinary farm with the crops, vegetables and fruits we had been seen in the morning or night market.

But Ganesh seemed excited to introduce several types of vegetables and also how they planted. The two guys in our tour from Singapore and Hong Kong paid attention to all the vegetable introduction of Ganesh. They had the authentic connection with the vegetable farms.

Meanwhile, my family especially Mama consistently said “Aiya, it same with our farm in Roban. Not nice, not nice”

Hehehehe

9) Hydroponic Farming

Big and quite organized farm with wide varieties of lettuces.

Self-service bar with hydroponic grown lettuces and tomatoes in the farm.

So fresh and crunchy. Yummy!

10) Flower nursery

Flowers like carnation,, roses flourished everywhere in here.

Mama took photo with flowers, Papa imitated too

11) Time Tunnel Museum

Entrance ticket: RM 6 per adult.

This type of coin box had been appeared in my living room when I was around 7 or 8 years old.

Cock bowl.

Water tank. Not sure if Jiu Jiu had discarded ?

Hate this measurement because Ah Gong loved to ask me to measure 10kg or 20kg of fertilizers. Damn heavy for a girl like me and not fun while taking care the sundry shop with Ah Gong.

Kuih bangkit's molds. Mama proudly told us she had it too. Making kuih bangkit was one of her favorite passtime during young ages.

Looked like Mama's sewing table. We joked with Mama by suggesting her sewing table could be considered to exhibit at here.

Old luggages

Old TV

12) Steamboat Dinner, Hotel Titiwangsa

The tour arranged us 1 hour steamboat dinner in Hotel Titiwangsa.

Well, I liked the steamboat dinner in Cameron Highland especially it provided free-flow of fresh vegetables. The vegetables were like picked from the farms. It tasted perfect with the chicken soup.

Besides that, the service was good. The waiters engaged eye contacts and smiled with us. They served us promptly. They did the good job in keeping the service running smoothly.