Our 2nd night in the Cameron Highlands then off tomorrow back to KL to the hustle and bustle for five nights then home. We don't know where the time has gone and we have enjoyed many different areas.
The Highlands have been a lot of fun and a different experience to the rest of Malaysia. Also the climate is a little close to our own.
When we woke up this morning this is what we saw. Cloud down to the deck just like what happened late yesterday. But tonight that cloud hasn't come in.
An hour later it looked like this.
Today we started at the Boh Tea plantation. What an amazing sight looking down over all the tea plants. It was good to learn the different stages of the finished product. Just simply the tea trees grow about a metre high and as the new shoots of leaves grow they cut them off across the top of the tree. Tea leaves are only cut when the new shoots come through. Just like keeping the top of a hedge trimmed. It is quite a mechanized process nowadays using machines much the same as your domestic hedge cutters with a vacuum attachment. Then the leaves go into a big crushing machine, then put through a drying process which takes approx half an hour and then cut and packaged the consumer.
When we entered the plantation we had to drive through a very narrow windy road for about three kms very interesting driving as the road was through the tea trees. At the end of the road we parked the car and had to walk up this boardwalk to the tea centre, which you can see it stretching out over the tea trees.
Looking back down the boardwalk.
Now at the top
The view over the tea plantation
PT doing his usual chatting to the locals. You always learn a lot talking to them and they seem to really enjoy giving out their information. Always very nice people.
This is the tea room in the Boh tea centre,
This shows better how the tea room is extended out.
Anyone for a cuppa. Its more like the herbal teas, very light and its very easy drinking without milk.
Also we had a strawberry tart sooo nice. Had a very light shortbread type of casing. just melted in your mouth. As this area is all about tea, strawberry farms, and growing flowers and produce. Really good climate for it up in the hills away from the intense heat. So everywhere you go you are inclined to try all the different ways to use strawberries as they will see you through the day.
The tea shop all sorts of different flavours and packaging.
Now we have arrived at the Lavender farm.
We notice that they all have their own titles but everyone produces all the different products. Like above you think that you are going to see lavender but there is several other flowers a you will see. Naturally the purple ones are the lavender.
This is what you can do with your old gumboots.
How about this for a bit of lavender colour. My parents used to have one of these. The old Morris Minor.
Lovely colours.
Nana and her gnomes. (Which one is Nana?)
The lavender shop
A close up of the lavender.
We are now in the gerbera (sp) garden. Beautiful flowers. Very colourful. Some of the stems were 6/7mm thick.
This is a lavender farm but everyone has to be in on the strawberry business as that is big up here. You can pick your own but they didn't look too ripe to me.
Of course had to try a strawberry yoghot . If you look closely there are whole strawberries at the bottom.
Staff taking all the dead heads off the lavender.
We have now gone to another tea plantation called the Cameron Valley or Bharat Tea Estate where we could look down and over it from a very good viewing tea rooms. A must see.
This is what the tea trees look like and as I said they only grow about one metre. Its those new light green leaves that they trim to make the tea.
And again we had to try another strawberry product strawberry scones with butter and cream and warm. We really had a very unhealthy diet today but one has to try all these products in the highlands.
We thoroughly enjoyed our day and wouldn't have missed it for anything.
This is the hotel we are staying at. The Heritage hotel. We are staying in the new wing to the far left but we are around the back with the good views over the hills. So quiet and peaceful. From the reviews it would pay to go for the new wing. Good large rooms. We were on the top floor 695. The hotel didn't get great reviews but we were very pleased with it. I think that the bad reviews come from the old wing. We also noticed that the weekend charges are about NZ$20 a night more than weekdays so that was lucky that we arrived on a Monday. The weather has been good even though the weather forecast say thunderstorms. No sign of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment