Cameron Highlands and KL

Hubby and I decided to take a road trip up to Cameron Highlands and KL for our 2006 year end holiday.

We started the day early around 5.40am as it takes 8 hours to go up to Cameron Highlands and that is if you drive non-stop.

The immigration was smooth and soon we were on the north-south highway towards Cameron Highlands. The journey was tiring and I fell asleep like 2 - 3 times along the way. I was responsible for keeping my hubby awake actually..hahaha.

We took the new route via Simpang Pulai to Cameron instead of the old route via Tapah. The roads were narrow and a lot of bends so you need to drive slower on these roads. We made it to the hotel at cameron around 3pm as we stopped a few times for toilet break and just to take some rest and we encountered a slight jam on the way up to our hotel.

The air was wonderful, fresh and clean although its drizzling everyday. Temperature never goes beyond 20deg celsius everyday. We checked into our hotel - Strawberry Park Resort. The room is big, with a common room, a kitchen, a bedroom and a big bathroom but its just not to my liking. I like places which are clean and although its pretty clean, it looked run down and old.

After checking in, we made our way to a town called Tanah Rata for lunch. It was a really small town with a few restaurants. We ate at this Mayflower Chinese restaurant and it was pretty cheap for a soup, veg, beef, fried rice and chinese tea. All these costs us RM30.

Dinner was just marrybrown chicken as we tabao back...had a late lunch so decided to keep the food till later.

We started the next morning with breakfast in the hotel and they served really really lousy breakfast. After that we ventured down to Brinchang area (the opposite side of Tanah Rata) and stopped by several strawberry farms, cactus farms and flower farms. We bought some cactus and several pots of plants.

We also stopped by a reputable tea plantation called Cameron Valley Tea Plantations and bought some packets of tea which costs us about RM70. We went back to the town of Tanah Rata and had some indian food for lunch. We had banana leaf rice and it costs us RM7 per pax. In the evening, we went to another chinese restaurant - Hong Kong Chinese restaurant for steamboat. The steamboat costs us RM17 per pax and it came with fixed items. Good weather to have steamboat.

The next morning, we visited the famous BOH tea plantation and hubby met one of his colleagues there as well. In the BOH tea plantation, we learnt about how tea are made through a factory visit and again we ended up buying more tea and that set us back by about RM120. The BOH tea plantation has a huge land mass and has a cafe that looks over the plantation at the top of the mountain.

After the visit, we checked out of our hotel and drove towards KL. We decided to take the old route (via Tapah) as we were told there are some waterfalls along the way. The old route is definitely more dangerous than the new route as it's really very narrow and more winding than the new route. But we did hit upon a waterfall, not a majestic one but not bad.

We hit the jam at KL about 3.30pm and eventually only reached our Hotel - Novotel Hydro Majestic KL around 5pm. The hotel is really new and although the room is small, everything is just to my liking. I forgot to take pictures of the room. Our hotel room has a view of the Petronas Twin Tower (just one tower though)

After checking in, we went out shopping, as its around dinner time, we went to a chinese restaurant inside sungei wang called esquire kitchen. Been to this chain of restaurant a couple of times, food is not bad.

After that, we went walking around for a bit more before heading back to the hotel. Started the next day late...woke up around 10am and finally dragged our feet to checking out around 11.30am. After checking out, we drove to KLCC and walked around and had lunch at Genki Sushi.

Wanted to buy christmas presents but nothing seem nice and even with Malaysia's year end sale, the prices were not attractive. Eventually left the place around 2.30pm and began our journey back to Singapore. Along the way, we saw some villages got caught in the flood and some children swimming in the flooded water as well. Just like what I always saw from the TV news.

Certain parts of the roads were blocked and were closed due to the flood so instead of a 4 lane road, it became one lane and caused a slight jam. We saw a rainbow on the way back to Singapore too. Finally reached Singapore around 7.30pm after making stops along the way for food and toilet breaks.

Now I am going to plan my next road trip..heehee