Due to the long weekend holidays, it was crowded virtually everywhere on Cameron Highlands. Moving around and finding a place to park our car during holiday seasons like this was an ‘adventure’ in Cameron Highlands. Long queues were expected virtually everywhere.

Nonetheless, we still managed to visit a place or two during our short day trip there.

We visited one of the many cactus gardens up in Cameron Highlands. Cactus gardens are one of the attractions up there. You’ll get to see all sorts of cactuses available in the gardens. Below are some photos taken inside the cactus garden we visited.

Another activity that is nice to do up Cameron Highlands is to visit the many tea plantations there. You should walk around the plantation and enjoy the scenery of the plantation along the way. There are also tea houses available in the tea plantation for you to take a short break and have a cuppa nice tea. These are some of the photos I have taken at the tea plantation we visited.

Besides the above, one can also visit the honey bees farms as well as the various marketplace up in Cameron Highlands. You should try the sweet corns widely sold there. They are very nice and sweet when eaten fresh.

You can also visit the many strawberry farms up in Cameron Highlands and have some fun time plucking strawberries yourself.

There you have it. A short day trip up to Cameron Highlands. On the overall, it’s a nice place to relax and also get away from the busy city. Anyway, I would recommend a visit to Cameron Highlands during non-peak seasons or during week days. The traffic on Cameron Highlands can be pretty nasty during peak seasons and long weekend holidays.

Technorati Tags: Cameron Highlands, cactus garden, tea plantations, strawberry farms

Along the journey, we decided to have Dim Sum in Ipoh. For those of you who do not regularly travel along the North-South Highway, note that the Penang-Kuala Lumpur express link on the North-South Highway is already opened to public use. Therefore, if you intend to detour into Ipoh along the way like me, please be reminded that there is a Y-split at the spot where the old Jelapang toll plaza was. At the split, the right lane will let you continue on a direct drive to Kuala Lumpur bypassing the toll plazas. The left lane will lead you to the exits to Jelapang as well as Ipoh.

Most of the time, we’ll usually have dim sum at Foh San Restaurant, this time we decided to try out the dim sum at Ming Court Hong Kong Tim Sum as it recommended by my friends from Ipoh. It’s located along Jalan Leong Sin Nam. Just follow the signboards’ direction and drive towards the town center in Ipoh, try look for Hotel Excelsior. It’s the biggest visible landmark that is closest to Ming Court Hong Kong Tim Sum.

The place was really crowded as we stepped in. There were lots of customers standing by the occupied tables waiting for their turns.

After waiting for about 15 minutes, we finally got ourselves half-a-table (sharing the table with another family) to have our dim sum. Overall on the dim sum, besides being rather small in portion, the taste was nice.

Anyway, Foh San Restaurant has moved their dim sum restaurant to a new building directly opposite of Ming Court. Apparently they are trying to ‘challenge’ Ming Court on the dim sum business.

After that, we continued our journey towards Bukit Tinggi. By the way, if you are going to Bukit Tinggi from Northern states like Penang, Perak and so on, the best direction I can give you is drive up towards Genting Highlands and get to Bukit Tinggi from there.

There are 2 ways you can reach Genting. The first one is to take the Tanjung Malim’s exit. Once you reach Tanjung Malim’s town, look for direction to Kuala Kubu Baru. As you reach Kuala Kubu Baru, follow the direction towards Rawang. As you drive towards Rawang, you’ll see the turn leading you to Genting Highlands along the way. The other simpler way would be to take the Batang Kali’s exit along the North-South Highway. Once you exit the toll plaza, just start to look for the direction to Genting Highlands from there.

As you are approaching Gohtong Jaya at Genting Highlands, there will be a roundabout there. Just drive around the roundabout and take the exit that lead you to Kuala Lumpur/Kuantan. After passing the police station, you’ll come to a Y-split. Take the lane that is leading to Kuantan. Keep following the road signs leading to Kuantan until you come to a signboard that says “Berjaya Hill Resort”. Just follow the turn and the road will lead you up to Bukit Tinggi.

The main attraction in Bukit Tinggi is the Colmar Tropicale, a French themed Resort. You’ll be greeted by a bridge that connect the main road to the village once you reach the Colmar Tropicale with a pond beneath the bridge.

There are shops as well as cafes outside of the building along the road in the resort. Check out some of the pictures I have taken inside the Colmar Tropicale below:

Further up from the Colmar Tropicale, there is a Japanese Tea Garden right in the middle of the tropical forest. When we were there, we don’t see anyone using those for any tea session.

On the overall, Bukit Tinggi is a nice place to relax and have fun with your family and friends.

I would suggest to go in a bigger group and have some group activities there. The weather is cool in the evening and the air is still relatively much cleaner than the city. It can be on your list to get away from the busy city life during the weekends.

Technorati Tags: Malaysia, Malaysia holidays, holidays, hill resort, Bukit Tinggi, Colmar Tropicale, Berjaya Hill, direction to Bukit Tinggi, dim sum, Ming Court, Foh San

When one is in Malacca, one should get the authentic nyonya pineapple tarts. It’s one of the authentic Malacca delicacy.

There is this shop named LW which specialised in the pineapple tarts. The shop is located along Jonker Street.

When you reach the shop, you’ll be greeted by a giant pineapple tart placed right in front of the shop.

Personally, I prefer the tarts from this shop as the taste is much better compared to others. But again, when it comes to taste, it’s very much depending on personal preference

After that we proceeded to shop in Dataran Pahlawan. It’s one of the shopping complexes in Malacca. Later in the evening, we wanted to go to Jonker Street again but the roads around Malacca town were jammed with cars as there were road closures due to the Wesak Day’s procession.

So, we ended up cancelling the plan to get to Jonker Street. We changed plan to have Satay Celup instead. Satay celup is a Malacca’s signature dish.

It consist of things like fish balls, vegetables, meat balls, mushrooms and other things on satay sticks.

The items are to be dipped into a boiling satay sauce and eaten later when cooked.

Satay celup in widely available around Malacca town. For certain shops that are more popular, there are even long queues of customers waiting for their turns to have the satay celup.

That’s all folks. Hope you enjoyed reading the post above. If you haven’t been to Malacca, hope the above gives you a start-up tips of where you can go and what you can eat in Malacca

Last but not least, if you are looking for a great selection of places to stay with discount prices, you can check out Melaka Hotels for more information.

Technorati Tags: Malacca, pineapple tarts, Jonker Street, satay celup, Malacca delicacy

Anyway, on our way here, we decided to take a short break and took a detour into Ipoh. For the short time we have there, what better to do than going to look for food

We dropped by a shop that specialized in soya bean’s products. According to wife, the ‘tao foo fa’ (soya bean curd) in the shop is very nice. The only direction to the place I have from her is that it’s around the ‘Lou Wong’ Bean Sprout Chicken restaurant. So, we went round the area a couple of times till we finally found the shop located in one of the rows of shop houses there. The name of the shop is ‘Lai Kei Soya’ / ‘Kacang Soya Lai Kee’.

I was wondering what is so nice about that shop that she recommended the shop in the first place. As we got there, the first thing I noticed was that the ‘tao foo fa’ they prepared are free from gymsum powder (a common ingredient in making ‘tao foo fa’). That’s something not so common among soya bean curd sellers.

For the ‘tao foo fa’ sweetener, they have choices between white sugar, gula Melaka (a type of brown sugar made from coconut juice) and ginger sugar.

We ordered the ‘tao foo fa’ with ginger/sugar sweetener.

The first impression I have when the ‘tao foo fa’ were served was they were soft and smooth. And after taking the first taste, it was indeed very soft and smooth. For the sweetener, it was just moderately sweet. Just nice to bring enough flavor to the dessert. Most probably the taste of the sugar was partly neutralized by the ginger, making the sweetener not overly sweet. The ‘tao foo fa’ was really good to the last drop

We continued our journey after we’re done with the ‘tao foo fa’. Before we hit the highway, we decided to have a ‘take-away’ from Ipoh. What’s nicer to take away other than the signature ‘Ipoh Salted Chicken’, right?

We drove to our favourite ‘red shop’. The shop name is ‘Aun Kheng Lim ayam garam’. This shop is located at the corner of one of Ipoh’s main road. There isn’t any nice parking lot available around this shop. I think that’s the reason the shop owner came out with the ‘take-away’ idea. The salted chicken costs RM16 each. Tips for travelers: as you are nearing the shop, turn on your car’s signal light. The workers of the shop will come out to greet you as they spot your car nearing. You just need to tell them the number of chicken you need and they’ll get those packed and delivered to you without the need of you to get down from your car.

Good and convenient service, right? Well, that’s all folks. That’s our short detour to Ipoh. More updates to come later.

Technorati Tags: soya bean curd, tao foo fa, salted chicken, Ipoh delicacy