A three hour bus ride from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, lies some land above the rest, known as the Cameron Highlands. Perhaps a little less known but growing with popularity, this hill station is cooler, greener and has more steamboat restaurants than anywhere else. Settled by the English, you’ll see a clear colonial feel to the area and the architecture.
We used Cameron Highlands as a stop over on our way to Penang, enjoyed the cooler climes, the slower pace of life and change of scenery it offered. We only spent two nights and one full day here and found that to be more than enough for us. If you’re planning on doing a rainforest trek, you’ll probably need a little longer.
How we got there
From Kuala Lumpur we jumped on a bus, which turned out to be easy, cheap and reasonably comfortable. We booked our tickets from busonlineticket.com as there were a few options available and ticket pickup was then easy from TBS (Terminal Bersepadu Selatan). It’s probably worth pointing out this isn’t the main station in KL, so we caught an Uber from our hotel, as was too far too walk.
The bus was RM35 through Unititi Express, which we found quite reasonable for the quality of service, with the drop off point for the bus is Cameron Tourist Information Centre at Tanah Rata.
Where we stayed
There’s two main towns in Cameron Highlands, both offering tourist accommodation. While the bus dropped us off in Tanah Rata, we had booked a budget hotel in nearby Brinchang, which was a short taxi ride away. We were ripped off on this ride, paying RM20, which we later found out should have actually been more like 10. Only upside, was the taxis are old school Mercedes, so at least you ride in style.
While we can’t really recommend where we stayed due to the slightly putrid smell of blocked drains in the bathroom, we were very central, which isn’t hard given the size of the town. The town itself has a strange alpine resort feel to it, just with no snow and a little less architectural class. There’s really not a lot to explore either in Brinchang or Tanah Rata, which proved to be around a 45 minute walk away, but instead you come to visit for the beautiful vistas outside of the main towns…oh and the jam and scones.
Where to eat and drink
Brinchang seems to have more Steamboat restaurants than one could imagine needing, while nearby Tanah Rata, seems to specialize in curry houses. We dipped our toes in each hot pot of food so to speak and especially enjoyed our first steamboat adventure. I say adventure, as we kind of had to be shown by the restaurant owner as to how the professionals do it, as we were far too apprehensive about chucking everything in.
Our favourite find was ‘The Lord’s Café’ in Tanah Rata. Yes, a strange name choice for a café, and even stranger that you could purchase the ‘Lord’s Scones’ for a delectable little afternoon tea. We enjoyed the bible quotes hanging from the wall, the cup of tea and the jam and cream scones we bought. They might not be just like your mum makes them, but a nice treat all the same.
Things to do in Cameron Highlands
With little or no public transport to be seen and the attractions dotted too far between, we figured a tour was the best way to see the places. We hadn’t bothered to set anything up before arriving and easily managed to find a tour operator selling a number of tour options on the main road in Tanah Rata. With just the one full day in the Highlands, we opted for a half day tour, which included pick up and drop off from our hotel, in an old Landrover Defender I might add.
Due to the climate and terrain of the area, the mighty Landrover Defender has become the car of choice in the Cameron Highlands and especially popular with the tour operators due to the size of them, with 8 or so people can fit in each. Probably not the smoothest of rides, but riding in my favourite kind of car was pretty cool.
Most of the half day tours are around RM25-40 and offer the same, or a very similar itinerary. Here’s where we visited on ours:
- Butterfly Farm
- Boh Tea Plantation and Factory
- Mt Brinchang View Point
- Mossy forest
- Strawberry Farm
Due to an irrational fear of butterflies landing on me, the butterfly farm wasn’t the main appeal of this tour, but rather a necessary evil. The entry price of RM5 wasn’t included in the tour costs, so quite wrongly I thought I could sit this one out. No chance and it actually turned out to be ok. It feels like one of those attractions which has been set up post the tourists arriving and a little tacky and dated, but not a bad first stop.
We then drove a little further, past a pretty substantial tea plantation to the highest point in the region. The views from Mt Brinchang were pretty great, the sky was blue and we could see as far as Ipoh in the low lands. Our guide told us that this is not always the case and we were ‘lucky’. A phrase we’ve been given a few times now on our trip.
Just a short drive from the top of the mountain, we parked up at the edge of a nature walk and began our 500m or so walk into the Mossy Forest. Perhaps not quite as dramatic as we were hoping, the trees definitely had a Lord of the Ringsesque feel to them and gave us a chance to walk off the scones from the day before. From what we could tell, some guides were more hands on and did the walk with their tour group, but ours was fine to leave us to it, which we kind of enjoy.
Next stop was the main event, Boh Tea Plantation. We’d been told by the locals that Boh Tea was the best of the many tea plantations in the area, so we were pretty happy this was the one included in our tour. As tea lovers (not sure if that shows our age or our English heritage more), we were excited about this stop and our guide made it just educational enough for us, explaining how the tea was grown, cut and harvested. After catching enough tea vistas, we wandered through the on-site factory and finished the tour off with a cup of tea, and yes another jam and cream scone in the café.
Our last stop was a strawberry farm, a pretty tech-savvy set up on the hillside on our way back into town. Strawberries are able to be grown year round in the Cameron Highlands and much to our delight, we were able to purchase fresh strawberries in the middle of October. After polishing off a strawberry milkshake too, our slightly longer than half day tour came to a close and we still had time to do our laundry.
