Cameron Highland half-day tour

Day 56 – Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

I was picked-up at my hostel by the bus, as usual. We went first to see a butterfly garden. Frankly, it is a pathetic thing to see these magnificent insects apathetic, not moving when disturbed, letting themselves be picked up by the guide.

Yes, it is fun when he puts one on your shoulder for a picture… except each time it is picked up, isn’t it losing its ability to fly a little bit?

Rajah Brooke Butterflies, male on the left, female on the right.

Several terrariums and cages contain insects and animals, with minimal environment recreation. The hedgehogs were huddled in a corner, one of the stick insect was dead on the bottom of the cage, one chameleon looked poorly…

Only the flowers were easy to look at without feeling guilty. (They were selling cabbages!) Most of my flowers pictures came out too bright, I have to find how to change the settings. I don’t know what most of the flowers are, so it’s reflected in the legends of the pictures (as usual, head to the gallery to see the whole lot).

After half an hour, we were back on the bus, headed to a bee farm. I don’t like honey and I know how honey is made, but well. We had a taste of regular honey, of honey made from local bees (that don’t sting), it was stronger, almost with an alcoholic taste, yuck, and a taste of jungle honey, not very different from the first.

The local strawberry farms depend on the bee farms for pollination.

What I found interesting (apart from the numerous virtues of honey, which is apparently a cure-all), is that they were selling honey in thin “sticks”, elongated pouches with small doses, allowing you to eat it as a snack or, at a guess, to dole it more easily in your tea.

I still don’t like honey.

The garden was filled with kitsch giant figures of bees, and was nested between a village and an apartment block.

Again, the visit was limited to half an hour, and then we stopped 20 min in the market to buy fruits, strawberries, and then onwards to the tea plantation.

There, we had a short tour of the factory where they explain how they process the tea leaves. The guide explained how the resulting tea was graded, from the premium hand-picked leaves to the smallest, broken bits that were used in flavoured tea bags.

BOH Tea plantation

Then there is the shop, the Tea’ria, and the terrace with the amazing viewpoint. The problem is that you should try first a cup of tea before buying any, but the queue is so long at the cafeteria that you don’t have the time to do that and browse the shop. So I went straight to the shop, where I found a nice assortment. I’ve already tried Lime and Tangerine and Rose and Lychee.

I will to go back to a plantation tomorrow to have the time to walk in the fields. This plantation covers all the hills on the picture, it is huge.

Bushes are harvested every three weeks for three years, then are left to rest. So there is always picking going on in the plantation.

Workers work either with shears or with machines. They are paid by the weight of their cuttings.

After the tea plantation we went to the rose garden, while there are some flower farms around, this garden was developed for being visited, not cultivating flowers for sale.

They are not ashamed of kitsch decoration, that’s for sure. The garden is quite sprawling, with unexpected twists, false bridges, etc.

There is also a poor peacock in a cage.

After the rose garden, we went to a strawberry farm, where the guide told us not even to try picking strawberries, this being the high season and most strawberries already picked (hence the advice to buy them at the market, where they come from farms no open to tourists). So we went for strawberry smoothies, juice, sundaes, cookies, etc. You name it, they almost have it.

The last stop of the day was a local temple, quite modern, and not very interesting-looking.

So I was dropped back at my hotel, and had an interesting lunch, with instant noodles, tea and strawberries!