Cameron Highland’s Flora Park

17th May 2023

Breakfast at the Heritage Hotel is pretty good. Plenty of hot food for those who like a cooked breakfast as well as cereal and coffee for those who don’t. I had corn flakes, French Toast, Bread and Butter pudding and coffee! I might try an omelette tomorrow.

After breakfast we decided to go to the new Flora Park near Brinchang about a 20 minute drive away. There was no sign posting near by so it took us a couple of goes to find the right turn off. There was no parking at the Flora Park, you park about a km away then take their shuttle to the park. I say shuttle, it is a Dmax ute with seats in the back, there is also a charge for the car park, it cost us RM10 for about three hours parking.

The Flora Park is on the side of quite a steep hill so there are a lot of steps but none of them are very steep as they meander their way up (except those to a lookout), every time you think you have reached the end it opens out into another section, it was very large. There are also several places selling food, drinks, ice cream etc.

I know very little about flowers so I just enjoyed the many colours throughout the park.

After a pleasant few hours spent at the park we drove back to Tanah Rata and stopped in town for a lunch of Paper Thosai and Teh Tarik before returning to the hotel.

In the evening drove into the town centre for a Tandori Chicken and Masala Tea.

Ipoh to Cameron Highlands

16th May 2013

We both had a breakfast of Nasi Lemak before packing for our trip to Cameron Highlands. Checked out of the hotel at about 9.15am to visit the Qing Xin Ling Culture Village.

Drove there using my Tom Tom Satnav, I have to say that the South East Asia map “points of interest” database is very poor compared to the Oceania and European equivalents on this device. More times than not you have to look up the place on Google then enter the address in the satnav just to get close to where you want to go, it does, however, make a valiant effort at pronouncing the street names.

Anyway, on arrival discovered that they had a different entry fee for Malaysians (RM12) and Foreigners (RM20), naturally I was outraged. Winking smile

After a couple of hours at the Culture Village we set off for the Cameron Highlands, it was a fairly slow journey as we kept getting stuck behind trucks but were still able to arrive in Tanah Rata before 2pm. As it was far too early to check in we stopped in the town centre for a Teh Tarik and Roti Canai as a snack for lunch. By then it was after 2pm so we made our way to the hotel for check in.

In the evening just as we were going to drive to town for an evening meal it absolutely belted down with rain. We decided to give the hotel restaurant a try. It turns out to be a buffet for RM30 per person. The food was Malay and not really much choice, basically rice, a fish dish, a chicken dish, bean curd plus some not very exciting salad, for dessert there was watermelon, cantaloupe and tiny pieces of fruit cake. Certainly not good value in my opinion.

BTW when I first got down to the restaurant I had to quickly return to the room to get my jacket, I was cold.

Cameron Highlands

18th to 21st September 2018

Drove a couple of hundred kilometres to spent a few days in the cool of the Cameron Highlands. The temperature at this altitude is lovely and cool (17’ to 21’C) after the 32’C heat of the plains.

This is my fourth visit to the Highlands so it was not an unknown quantity and as a touch of nostalgia stayed at the Heritage Hotel in Tanah Rata, the same hotel as on the first visit 12 years ago.

Because this is a tea growing area there are plenty of Indian restaurants with Tandori Chicken cooked in a kiln being a speciality. The area also grows strawberries and flowers as well as a variety of cool climate vegetables. It is interesting to see how these nurseries cling to the side of some very steep slopes with fascinating offerings such as “Self Plucking Strawberries”.

Cameron Lavender Gardens

The first visit was to the Cameron Lavender Gardens a large flower nursery and tourist attraction.

Boh Tea Factory

Another nostalgic visit; when we came 12 years ago there were visits to the actual factory where the tea was ground, dried, fermented and packaged but that doesn’t seem to be possible now. The tea rooms then were new and spacious, on this visit those same tea rooms were crowded though the tea and scones were still fine.