Tanah Rata: the base for exploring the Cameron Highlands

We left the tower very early that morning. Komtar de Penang. Without knowing exactly where the bus stop is… We had barely a few minutes to spare... Le time to try to walk around the building, ask where it might be be, closest as it was super early there weren't many people around...

Eventually, we will find a series of shops that sell bus tickets, including ours, which will print me some. express our tickets and we will get straight on the bus that was already there. FYI, I booked the tickets online using this site: https://www.busonlineticket.com closest So it was necessary to find the agency to be able to obtain the ticket physically (if we can't print it ourselves)

Welcome to Tanah Rata

It will still take us a good 7 hours (break included) to reach our destination. There are several reasons for this, the first being that to reach the Cameron Highlands, you must therefore, altitude obliges, take a mountain road which slows down progress as much as we have had traffic jams… And so that's the second reason. We were one Open on Saturday and apparently the Cameron Highlands are very taken the weekend by the Malaysians. And since it's in the mountains, the road isn't wide, just a dual carriageway, but people park along the road and a bit haphazardly at every market we pass.

In this case, the Cameron Highlands consist of 3 small towns, since Penang, in order there are Brinchang, Berinchang et Soil Rat. In our case, the terminus of our bus was Soil Rat.

When we arrived, we simply followed a tout, the only one there was, because we didn't have a hotel and were a bit lazy to look. So we landed at Cameronian Inn, a little out of the way but accessible on foot although we were taken there by van. Given the budget (70 RM) it was ok so we took the room and went straight to explore the surroundings.

The exterior of the Cameronian Inn hotel.

Our room at the Cameronian Inn.

Le less thanWhat we can say is that the architecture irremediably brings to mind this “mountain” side of the place. Unfortunately, we won't see much today... After a disappointing meal for lunch (the only restaurant that looks “modern”), we were wondering what to do… Hesitant to rent a scooter as usual to explore the surroundings, we gave up when we saw the sky getting seriously overcast, especially since the afternoon was already well underway.

So we decided to just go for a walk in the immediate area, starting off walking along the main street to a garden marked on a local map. There, we get "caught" by a group of young girls and another couple of tourists to watch their little dance show and give them a mark.

Little rain dance?

We don't see any problem with it as we don't expect more than that from the garden, we take our time. Here we are in this small public park (which was perhaps the garden we were going to…) watching these girls dance for a minute, they're clearly having a good time. We must give a mark on 5 000... (funny notation, but oh well…).

We are a good sport, our tourist neighbors jokingly tell them that it is worth more and they jump for joy! When it was our turn to give our mark, we made the same comment to them by giving them a double mark, and they jumped for joy! How to please simply!

Without knowing if it was because they knew the rain was coming everyone left in space top chrono true of 10s ! We found ourselves there all alone in the middle of the park with the rain starting to fall.

A few dance steps.

Alone after the lightning fast show…

Tanah Rata, boredom was not far away…

We will have to wait a good hour for the rain to finally stop. Given the time, we decided to return to the main street and sit down quietly at a café. We'll have a small glass, for my part, of strawberry since it's the local specialty, too bad it was mixed with too much water... Meanwhile the rain continues to fall intermittently...

We will only move from there to go and eat our evening meal. (although could have eaten at the same place). So not far to go since it was a few meters further at the " Restaurant Sri Brinchang " which has a confusing name since here, we are at Soil Rata… But that's normal, because Mount Brinchang is the name of the main mountain in the area. This restaurant serves typical South Indian dishes., served in a banana leaf instead of a plate.

Waiting for the rain to stop…

The main street of Tanah Rata.

Traditionally, we eat with our fingers, but I still had cutlery. With full bellies, we returned to our hotel. We had previously taken the time to look at the prices for tours to Cameron Highlands. Since the weather wasn't great and we weren't planning on staying very long, we opted for a one-day tour only, which is rare, but Soil Rata really gave us that 'bored' feeling.

We bought our tickets at the hotel, because they had a discount, the tour was at 40 RM per person Instead of 50 RM for the discovery day in the plantations, including the visit of the moss forest and the tea manufacturing factory of the company which ultimately owns all the plantations (BOH).

Disappointing strawberry juice…

At Sri Binchang Restaurant.

Fancy an Indian curry?