Thru the Heart Photography: A relaxing Highland’s weekend~~Cameron Highland

after a short breakfast at Ipoh dimsum restaurant, just driving to Simpang Empat to turn the direction up towards one of the famous highland county ~ Cameron Highland. After one and half hour to two hours drive, we did facing a bit traffic jam due to the weekend market at the road side, but before arriving the open market area, there is a watercress farm and restaurant, so why not to take a break for after a long journey drive? Just park the car at the road side and enter to the restaurant for a “watercress lunch”… the restaurant is sitting on top of a small valley watercress farm, where you can have a panorama view of the overall valley. Not only that, you can also have a walk down to the watercress farm to have a close up visit to where the watercress growing… the restaurant has several dishes with the theme of Watercress, like fried watercress, watercress soup and even watercress jus… what a special theme lunch with full of watercress.

watercress farm

the watercress theme lunch

the watercress valley

About 20 minutes drive (if there is no jam) from the Watercress farm and restaurant to the south near to Brinchang, there is a small remarkable museum, the Time Tunnel Museum. With RM5 per ticket spending, it can bring you back to the child time where you can find a lot of familiar old stuff like what u may found in your store room, such as the mono color CRT TV, the old gothic cabinet, the wooden horse which u ride during child time, the glass bottle of the soft drinks, the limited edition of super hero toys… all those stuff may not even seen by the children which born in this new millennium, they may only find those picture in their i-pad or pc… have some of the photo shooting in this museum may be like a record that you taking a time machine to travel back to old time to visit your childhood…

the postal ...

classic kitchen

here's the wooden horse during the time the children's entertainment at the era before we have i-pad or even TV games

the oil lamp

let's have a cup of coffee at the kopitiam (coffee shop)

the brands in metal plates

oops!! the "salt-fish" (shoes) during school time

the cashier machine

looks familiar that the soft drinks in this kind of glass bottle

As the weekend, Brinchang will have a “pasar malam” (night market) and all the town area will be full of the stalls along the road side and will causing traffic jam at late evening, there are selling foods, veggie, strawberry soft toys and the souvenirs also can found there…there have a steamboat restaurant “OK Tuck” which is quite nice with reasonable price at the left side after pass by the “pasar malam” area (towards Tanah Rata), can drop by there to have a steamboat dinner in the cold weather of the highland.

There was a rainy night, and we station at Tanah Rata, there are not much night life at Cameron Highland, out of the pasar malam at Brinchang, there is a row of shop lot with some convenient shops and restaurant or café, we were having our night chat at the only Starbucks café there, in the cold raining night, sitting down in the café and having a cup of warm coffee would be a pretty nice relaxing night before ending the day activities.

In the next day morning, after done the preparations, we drove about 2 to 3km from Tanah Rata towards north will arrive the Ye Olde Smoke House to have a western breakfast. Although the price is not that economic, but is really nice to have a try, as the breakfast set is quite healthy and nice in taste. The other point to have a breakfast here is because the hotel is a colonel style heritage building, the environment here is quite classic with the interior of the Hotel’s living room was decorated with some antic and gothic furniture, and we can have a sun bath during the breakfast as the restaurant of the hotel has shaded with sun roof where it help to defuse the sun light and the sun heat. The front garden of the hotel planted with variety flowers making the overall building looks gorgeous and classic…well, to me would be a very good location for photographing from inside to outside of the hotel.

Just a few minutes driving from Ye Olde Smoke House and near by the Jabatan Hutan Daerah Cameron Highland, there are some small family farms and some guest house at the farm there. We drop by KHM Strawberries & Jam farm and to enjoy a cup of homemade strawberry ice-cream. The ice-cream there is quite smooth and also you can choose to have a topping with their homemade strawberry jam, out of that, the fresh picking strawberry also can be bought at there too.

the homemade ice-cream

do u see the welcome smile of the tea farm?

On our way back, we were not gonna miss out the iconic place that is the must to pay a visit at Cameron Highland, the BOH Tea Centre at Sg. Palas. While driving up back to Brinchang, and need to turn in to the left side of the small junction when seeing the Ee Feng Gu Apiary honey bee farm at the right side. After turning in will need to drive in for about 15 minutes to half an hour as the road is quite narrow and curvy, and by following the road direction and turn right side if found any of the junction, we were passing through a big valley of the tea farms and come to a car park to drop down our cars. After parking our car, we have to walk down into the tea farm and claim up the stair cases to reach the BOH tea centre at the top of the valley. Beside the café, there is a tea factory that the visitors can pay a visit to the factory to see how is the process of making tea after the farmer harvest the tea leafs from the farm. After that, we were having our hi-tea at the café, at there you can choose to have different kind of tea which have different taste of those kind of tea leafs. The café having a big and balcony and the over call building of the café seems hanging at the edge of the valley, you can enjoy the overall paranormal view of the tea farm valley while enjoying the hi-tea.