When I travel by myself I usually avoid organised tours, not enjoying the experience of being trapped, forced to spend longer than I would wish in places of no interest, rushed away from those I enjoy. Having covered all the nearby places of interest on various runs however, I decided that for the sake of MR20 - less than three pounds, I would take an afternoon bus tour of the local tourist attractions: Butterfly Farm, Boh’s Sungai Palas Tea Estate, Rose Garden, Strawberry Farm, Honey Beef Farm, and the Chinese Temple at Brinchang.
The Butterfly Farm is rather sad. In a green netted garden tatty butterflies cling to the walls, trying to escape, or lie dying on the floor; a scant few, all deformed or ragged in some way, fly amongst the lush vegetation. The perfect specimens are harvested, gassed and pinned in frames as soon as their newly spread wings have fully unfolded. The framed carnage brings in the real money, not the tourists. As a side show, there is a small exhibition of beetles and snakes, all indigenous to the highlands. There are huge rhinoceros beetles, looking for all the world as though they were made out of Japanese lacquer, and some startling snakes, writhing, bright green in Medusa like knots in a way that I thought was purely Hollywood fiction. The attendant, obviously delighted in way the bugs made the girls squirm and the men keep a safe distance, took a large black scorpion from the pit and placed it on the palm of my hand. I found myself focussing very hard on the curved sting at the end of its tail.
Tea plantations fascinate me. The rolling hills of the Sungai Palas estate, on of the Boh plantations, are surreal. The bright green rows of closely cropped, flat topped tea bushes testament to so much hard, manual labour, and quite disconnected, in my mind at least, with the tea I drink daily. They have a machine for picking the leaves now - like a large hedge trimmer, the exhaust being used to blow the picked leaves into a bag. The estate supports a whole village, complete with primary school, small health centre, mosque, church and Hindu temple - although none of the buildings is much larger than a hut. The most impressive structure at Sungai Palas, apart from the owner’s house high on the hills and enjoying the most spectacular views across the valley, is the new exhibition centre and tea shop. Its elegant, modern design is similar to that of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In concept and execution it is very much a product of Western tastes and education, but perhaps of less relevance to the tastes of local tourists.
http://trendsideas.com/ViewArticle.aspx?topic=21®ion=23&article=5812
http://boh.com.my/pl/pubdoc/1912
Thanks to recent developments, the Cameron Highlands are primarily a destination for Malaysian tourists on short breaks. Huge ‘resorts’ like the hideous mock Tudor Equatorial and Heritage Hotel have ben built in the last decade. Their visitors enjoy the markets or, like me, trail around the various ‘attractions’ nearby. The most successful attractions are those that provide cheap food, the markets and, unfathomably, concrete garden ornaments. Perhaps it is to disguise the fact that the best roses are already on their way to market in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore that the owners have decided to decorate the Rose Garden with an assortment of Chinese lanterns and hideously painted concrete flowers. The roses that remain on their stems are blown, rain damaged or half eaten, but that doesn’t bother the local tourists, who flit excitedly from one artificial monstrosity to the other, in front of which they pose, smiling for digital snapshots.
Huge, fiberglass honeybees are the main attraction at the Honey Bee Farm, itself not unattractive with hundreds of flowers and small neat hives. A stream runs through the center of the garden, collecting on its way a trickle of raw sewage from the toilets by the entrance. Nobody seems to mind the smell and it certainly wasn’t damaging honey sales.
The Strawberry farm is, well, a strawberry farm. Not much to see really. The main business here is in fruit farming and no real effort has been made to serve the tourist trade. The cafe is very much an afterthought and the management has neglected to provide a large concrete strawberry for the requisite photo opportunity.
At MR20 the trip was good value, although ten minutes at most of the attractions would have been more than adequate.
This morning Tanah Rata is covered in a thick blanket of dark grey cloud and the temperature has dropped just a little too far for comfort. I am holed up in a cafe with a ridiculously strong Nescafe, what passes for good coffee here, and looking resentfully at everybody who has a jumper or coat.
The Butterfly Farm is rather sad. In a green netted garden tatty butterflies cling to the walls, trying to escape, or lie dying on the floor; a scant few, all deformed or ragged in some way, fly amongst the lush vegetation. The perfect specimens are harvested, gassed and pinned in frames as soon as their newly spread wings have fully unfolded. The framed carnage brings in the real money, not the tourists. As a side show, there is a small exhibition of beetles and snakes, all indigenous to the highlands. There are huge rhinoceros beetles, looking for all the world as though they were made out of Japanese lacquer, and some startling snakes, writhing, bright green in Medusa like knots in a way that I thought was purely Hollywood fiction. The attendant, obviously delighted in way the bugs made the girls squirm and the men keep a safe distance, took a large black scorpion from the pit and placed it on the palm of my hand. I found myself focussing very hard on the curved sting at the end of its tail.
Tea plantations fascinate me. The rolling hills of the Sungai Palas estate, on of the Boh plantations, are surreal. The bright green rows of closely cropped, flat topped tea bushes testament to so much hard, manual labour, and quite disconnected, in my mind at least, with the tea I drink daily. They have a machine for picking the leaves now - like a large hedge trimmer, the exhaust being used to blow the picked leaves into a bag. The estate supports a whole village, complete with primary school, small health centre, mosque, church and Hindu temple - although none of the buildings is much larger than a hut. The most impressive structure at Sungai Palas, apart from the owner’s house high on the hills and enjoying the most spectacular views across the valley, is the new exhibition centre and tea shop. Its elegant, modern design is similar to that of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In concept and execution it is very much a product of Western tastes and education, but perhaps of less relevance to the tastes of local tourists.
http://trendsideas.com/ViewArticle.aspx?topic=21®ion=23&article=5812
http://boh.com.my/pl/pubdoc/1912
Thanks to recent developments, the Cameron Highlands are primarily a destination for Malaysian tourists on short breaks. Huge ‘resorts’ like the hideous mock Tudor Equatorial and Heritage Hotel have ben built in the last decade. Their visitors enjoy the markets or, like me, trail around the various ‘attractions’ nearby. The most successful attractions are those that provide cheap food, the markets and, unfathomably, concrete garden ornaments. Perhaps it is to disguise the fact that the best roses are already on their way to market in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore that the owners have decided to decorate the Rose Garden with an assortment of Chinese lanterns and hideously painted concrete flowers. The roses that remain on their stems are blown, rain damaged or half eaten, but that doesn’t bother the local tourists, who flit excitedly from one artificial monstrosity to the other, in front of which they pose, smiling for digital snapshots.
Huge, fiberglass honeybees are the main attraction at the Honey Bee Farm, itself not unattractive with hundreds of flowers and small neat hives. A stream runs through the center of the garden, collecting on its way a trickle of raw sewage from the toilets by the entrance. Nobody seems to mind the smell and it certainly wasn’t damaging honey sales.
The Strawberry farm is, well, a strawberry farm. Not much to see really. The main business here is in fruit farming and no real effort has been made to serve the tourist trade. The cafe is very much an afterthought and the management has neglected to provide a large concrete strawberry for the requisite photo opportunity.
At MR20 the trip was good value, although ten minutes at most of the attractions would have been more than adequate.
This morning Tanah Rata is covered in a thick blanket of dark grey cloud and the temperature has dropped just a little too far for comfort. I am holed up in a cafe with a ridiculously strong Nescafe, what passes for good coffee here, and looking resentfully at everybody who has a jumper or coat.
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1 comment:
18
Seems like a very different way to pick the tea leaves than the one in Darjeeling. Was the tea from the Boh plantation better than the one we had in the cafe in Darjeeling? Hope so. have a good day
17
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