Nice air, nice environment and nice people.
DAY1.
It was about the second last week of December which i does not want my holiday to get wasted, so follow a trip with my drama pals, to Cameron. Where in weather is cool and the people are good*1.
We did some of our research, which found some pretty interesting things on the web, which also one of the reason why i love/hate the internet
We got ourselves a map which basically serves as a guide for the whole trip.
A map, sort of map which is not scaled and most*2 of the roads are interconnected.
We gather at Solona house by 7am, which later depart by 8. We went up from the Tapah road, which is the nearest road up to Cameron. To enter to Tapah, you may take the Tapah exit in North-South Highway, turn left after the tol, and just follow the signboards, which they will lead you to Cameron.
Going uphill estimated time is 1hour, with a good traffic condition and a good set of wheel. The whole journey up to Cameron takes about 2++ hour, with a stop in the highway. We skipped the breakfast in Tapah, since everyone took theirs' before we head off.
A shot before the journey starts.
A shot upon reaching Berinchang.
Some view that you may expect to see when you were on the way up.
When we reach up there, we thought we are going to stay in the Strawberry park, which is at one of the few high points in Cameron, which has a nice environment that is far from the main road. The interior design that is available in Strawberry does make it looks wonderful when you compare it with other places that is at level with its price range.
Yeah.. Strawberry Park Resort..
Woo Hoo.. Fooddddd....
Not forget one thing as well, good looking things are also expensive.
They even have a BBQ stove!
But the truth is, NO. We ain't staying there, instead of staying in Strawberry, we stay in some apartment that is at the entrance of Strawberry Park, I mean, what!? We are being mislead*3 here.
So off go we from Strawberry, we went down for a rest or some to relief their ache since the long winding road. We got down, took some noodles from a stall that has no name,
Hainan Chicken Rice anyone?
Jia Yi here giving some of her discharge
OMG .. We park right in front of the cut throat restaurant
Feed ourselves with something that looks alike in KL we went to check in to the apartment.
A 3 room apartment, with 3 bathroom, 1 living room, 1 dinning hall, 1 kitchen and 1 balcony. I do admit that it is wasted that only 5 of us were here for a place this big (which can actually holds about 16-18 person).
The living room, with 3 piece sofa set, shot taken from balcony
The living room, shot taken from the front door
The walkway to the smallest room which can fit 3 person.
View of living room from the walkway
The kitchen with one fridge, a steamboat pot and other utensils
The dinning hall, which later become the drying area.
One of the two identical sleeping room that can fits up to 8 or 9 person
The last smallest room, that has a queen size bed and a mirror.
After trashing the place as we usually do, we sat down and started to plan a new heading, the best choice seems to be to be those holy place of temple or church. We decided to go to Sam Poh Temple, got a tip from the local that you can go there without a car, we follow the direction, and head towards a end of the shop lots and found the path.
The shorter route to Sam Poh Temple which is about 5 to 10 minutes away from the Berinchang pasar malam.
You will pass this river, which will give you a very good reason of why you prefer bottled water than natural ones.
After the bridge, you will see this curve road on your right, follow it and you reach up to the temple.
You will be seeing flowers most of the time and by any luck bees as well.
Looking back to where we start, which you will see other routes that can reach up to the temple.
The Sam Poh Temple
The outer temple
Statue of gods that tell reminds you of how small you are.
Some fish that looks big, and there are bigger ones.
A size comparison of how big the flowers are up there. That is the average they have up there, wonder what are our local DB-KL is doing.
The inner temple, that has twice the hight of the outer temple, beside it has 4 more halls, that 3 sits different Buddha, and 1 as a living quarters.
A foreign visitor praying for well being.
Coming out from the temple, there will be a stairs that leads up to the hill that is beside the temple.
From here you can see there is more on going renovation to increase the quarters in the temple.
Up the hill, there is also a library, which i did not see any books there. Could be possible that they are using e-books.
A small pagoda that is on the hill, with sign that reads "here lies the founder of Sam Poh Temple ..."
Behind the pagoda is the jungle trail, one of many that can be found in the map, so basically you wont get lost, although you would.
View top most level of the pagoda.
Going behind to the track you will see some other vegetables farm that are not on the main road.
Our visit to Sam Poh Temple was short as they is not much things to do there. We head off for our tea break at T-cafe. T-cafe is in Tanah Rata, which is at some distance from Berinchang, T-Cafe is above Mary Brown, and the entrance is left beside of Mary Brown which is direct opposite of the Tanah Rata bus station.
The design in T-cafe was old, which makes it looks downgrade, but non the less, it still lives up to its name as a cafe, cozy environment which you need not worry about bumping to others in Starbucks, a bookshelves which promote book exchange.
Meals that serve in T-cafe is consider value for the price, except the drinks, which I felt that it should not be charge at that high price. We order quite a number of food, apple pie, scone, cheese cake, lasagna, tarts and a soup. The meal was supercilious and made us lazy to move around anymore.
Marybrown (I wonder why they would like to degrade themselves?), go to the left, there will be a stairs leading up.
T-cafe's display board, wonder if they will ever held a eat-a-lot competition?
Once in T-cafe, look at the right side and you find this. :)
Tea, yea, if you don't drink tea, why on earth do you come up to Cameron for?
Two different milk that can goes along with the tea, a skim milk and a fresh milk. Mix both and prepare for a blast off in the washroom.
After finish our meals, there seems to be some misunderstanding, which gives in to Solona vs JiaYi
JiaYi find that she is wrong at the end and then bribe Solona with 10 packs of sugar for her to forget what actually happen.
Once pack our tummy, we headed downhill to Beefarm, where the most of the honey that you will be buying came from here. The bee farm is near Ringlet, where you will see if on the way up to Cameron if you are using the Tapah exit. In the bee farm, there is a display panel on how the bee make their nest, and you will be able to see which part of it does the honey you buy coming from.
I does not know if there is any open visit to the farm is available, but once you step in to the bee farm, don't be surprise that the flowers there are dead when you reach the pool, flowers are not in their business, so there is nothing much flower for you to see. Once reach the shop, the shopkeeper will be very friendly to show you everything that the shop has and will give you every bits and pieces of information that you would ask for*4. We spend sometime shopping for the honey, bought about 10 bottles in total, and head up back to the town.
The bee display panel, with additional files at no cost.
The bee farm.
A view down to the garden from the shop.
Scare? Or does it look familiar? Look again.
The road up was pretty bad, given that most of the time it is a single lane and the amount of cars up that you will see in a day will not be less compare to sitting in front of a coffee shop. We decide to stop on the Cameron tea valley. Where I meet a bunch of high school backpackers from singapore, and indeed there is a lot of singaporeans and johoreans coming up to Cameron. The day came to an end, when we decided to went back to Berinchang for dinner, too my camera space came to and end. We went for a big fried dinner (Dai Chao), which the food seems to finish extremely fast, the pricing was about the same as in KL, expensive for Chinese food. Finish licking every drops of sauce on the plates, we move on wards to the Pasar Malam, which normally open during weekends, but open everyday if its a public holiday.
Choice in the night market was not much, it seems that people there lack of innovation, or they just like it simple. The food choice was less, and the drink choice was even worst. We went walk around, shop some and headed back to the apartment. looking at the second day event, which is hike G. Berinchang, We call an end and give ourselves some good rest.
DAY2.
Rise and shine, it seems that the air is so cool, that we slept until 10 in the morning. As its too late to go for Berinchang, we skipped the mountain hiking part to brunch. Went to the shop with no name. We order HarMee and WonTonMee, which taste pretty good. We head north after meal for Kea farm and Rose Garden.
Our first stop was rose garden, if you are looking for roses to give to your love ones, this is not the place that you would look up to. Rose garden is one of the tourism spot that you might not want to miss. There is a long list of roses that you can find there, with great aroma that reminds you about sirap bandung that you drink in mamak. The flower there varies in size and some grow as large as an adult feet. If you don't like flower, you may go watch a dead fish floating around in the pond. Fishes in the pond are not really big, except for the bandaraya fish that reaches an arm length. Fish does not excite you? Maybe peacock, some turkey and cactus do? Still not happy? Move up to the ladder and you will see the exit.
Nothing seems worth buying around there, other than some baby tomatoes that is extremely sweet. We headed down to Kea farm, which is a farm open for visit all day long. The farm is just behind the market, so you will need to walk all the way in, if you are not in for vegetables and fertilizer smell do turn back of you will regret. Kea farm is the wet market of Cameron, you can park beside the road and walk in to do your shopping, fruits, vegetables, plants, food, clothings, toys and hats can be found here. They even sell drinks that is manufacture in johore (WOW!!!!)
Moving along, we went to a hillside cafe (which i forgot the name) for a ice cream that cost us RM6. Taste extremely sweet and there is nothing here for you too see other than some visitors who went to the nearby strawberry farm looking at empty strawberry plants. Going up to north was not hard as coming down as the traffic is superb, coming down was the hard part where every meter seems like ages to reach. Yet all because of the slow moving traffic, we manage to stop by at every shop that we can find to kill time.
Cactus farm, was the first one that we manage to reach to after stuck in the traffic for half an hour. You might see a cactus farm in Berinchang that cost RM5 for entry, but the farms around here is free. The variety of cactus here is not many, but they are all well maintained. 6 for RM10, which is a standard price in Cameron. The cactus farm has its own cafeteria which serves steamboat if you are in for it.
Moving along is a flower farm, The flower farm is about twenty minutes away from the cactus farm. The variety here is a lot, or more. And you are free to move around them, putting your nose in to everything that you see. The shop keeper here seems much more friendly than those in the rose farm or those in Kea farm.
As daylight no longer permits we moved on to the next stop, plant farm, which they have most plant which Cameron does not have much market. Plant such as daun manis, rosemary, mint and a lot more can be get here at the price of RM10, the workers here are also friendly and they will bring you go around and answer all your doubts.
We leave in late evening heading back to Berinchang for dinner, which does not seem good for us as the traffic is still stagnant. So after consult each individual in the car, we take the risk of overtaking all the cars, and reach the town in less then 15mins!*5. At the same time we find out the cause of the traffic problem, the pasar malam. Berinchang town has only a single main road that caters all the cars going across Cameron, where during the night market, everyone seems to turn here and there to look for a parking spot, which is not much available*6.
With all the luck we have, we manage to park at a spot, which we have park in the afternoon. We The dinner was took the charcoal steamboat. Which the soup in the pot was serve hot, within 10 minutes, it starts to boil and putting everything in to the pot does not even slow it down. We finish our dinner and headed straight to the night market in hope to find objects for our in-door mini games. The dinner was filling and it was being taken at the best moment, raining. Cool air, warm food, hot soup and also friends!, Hoping that the rain stop sooner, but it ain't gonna be. We hurried to the half closing night market. Mixed food as punishment for mini game is out as we are already stuffed with the dinner. So we decided that drinks is used instead and each of us went to different direction to look for different drink.
Charcoal steamboat.. hot hot hot..
Back home, after a warm shower, we begin the game. Jia Yi, proposed a trick game, where each players hold a card on their forehead which they are forbidden to see. Once the game start, the first player pour a type of drink to the cup, this goes for a round or more, once complete. all the players take their card down, the player that holds the smallest number is required to finish the cup that has everything mixed inside. For this game, we brought 1 packet of soy milk, 1 packet of lychee's drink, 2 packet of tea and self prepared 1 cup of mocha, 1 cup of chocolate, 1 cup of teh-c together with a small can of beer that I brought along.
The game begins, Jia Yi with all her luck gets the first cup, which later follow by me drinking a cup of fruity mocha beer. Yuck!. The game is all about punishment, which ended all of us filled with water. Since we are full, some of us tend to make some sound to get the others to puke. Wen Wei who is there acting to puke suddenly made a fountain that stains the whole living room. We call off the game after that and crap up in a room and start some mid night chat.
The night was long, due to the mix crap that we took. Wake up late on the next morning, we soon wash ourselves and went for breakfast. We went to strawberry cafe, which is recommended by Solona, the design was indeed a cafe. Price was acceptable, so we order a variety of dishes to try if its worth it. The result, nice but its expected and nothing special. Its Cameron, and the flavor here is strawberry, chocolate and cream. We went back to the apartment, pack our bags and start heading off to Kea farm again to buy the local products before heading back.
Going back up now is a pain with all the heavy traffic. Once reached Kea farm, we stopped and buy our goods and reorganized before heading back down to KL. Using the new road (Simpang Pulai exit), we took about an hour coming down, with noobs on the road as well as my hard time to get the timing of the car. The new road has no coverage for Malaysia widest coverage network, both yellow man and green man seems missing all the way until you reaches down to Simpang Pulai town.
Coming down from Simpang Pulai, we stopped by Bidor for the Duck-leg soup and some Gei-zai cookies. The soup was superb and cost me a bomb. Departing from Bidor was a slow due to bad weather, it took us about two and a half hours to reach back to Solona house.
Readings when reach Solona house.
Shop-a-lot competition?
Overall:
The trip was fun and open eye for all of us, well you don't go up to Cameron from KL just for going up.
For T-cafe, vote 4/10, as we did not receive any warm welcome and menu was average.
For Strawberry cafe, vote 3/10, how on earth can you serve me fish n' chips without its sauce!
For smoked corn at Kea farm, vote 5/10, well, it just a bit oily and you served in a plastic bag.
For charcoal steamboat, vote 5/10, i would actually prefer more vegetables and meat instead of noodles.
For the accommodation, vote 1/10, over-charged!
For Sg. Klah tea house, vote 2/10, over priced beverages, dangerous roads, and average food.
For Cameron tea house, vote 1/10, over priced beverages, lack of parking space, dangerous parking space.
For Beefarm, vote 5/10, lack of honey collecting experience, display panel has fly inside.
For pasar malam, vote 5/10, lack of variety, expensive food.
End note:
Yes, the next time that I am going to Cameron (most likely alone) will be camping there due to the overcharged experience up there.
Note:
*1 sort of if you compare them with the people in some major buzy cities.
*2 as in most, but beware of bumps and extreamly narrow roads.
*3 before confirm with the agent of where you are going to lodge, do get the address, phone number of your accomodation, call in and give a check before paying the agent.
*4 only within the subject of honey, not bees.
*5 if calculate from the time of overtaking to slotting the car back in to the traffic should be less than 10 mins.
*6 try to find a parking space during weekend dinner time, which your dinning place is near the night market.
