Best Of Cameron - A Farmer's Diary

New year, new post?

Evidently, December has been a lull period. Everyone was given the opportunity to destress and recharge so they have sufficient energy to push ahead next year.

A little back story first - my parents have been harassing me to bring them overseas given my tremendous performance as a tour guide when we visited Taiwan earlier. Despite the sweltering weather, they were amazed that I could bring them around like some local using just Google Maps and a little bit of brainpower. So lo and behold, they forced encouraged me to take two days of leave and accompany them to the 老人街 of Cameron Highlands.

Stole this from Dimensionartpicture's Flickr

We boarded the bus at 10.30 at Golden Mile Complex and it ferried us all the way to Brinchang - a little town at the bottom of the Highlands. The journey took longer than expected as we were due to arrive at 6 am but instead reached at a whooping 10 am. Everyone wasn't impressed by the driver especially when he started selling his own tour packages.

And I have to say I was impressed with his pitching abilities as my parents picked the most expensive tour package there was. Their reason was that it had the most landmarks (It was literally called "Landmark Tour") and I was paying.

Wait, I WAS PAYING?

So as I was 285RM down, and the driver told me he will give me my change of 15RM next time, I was ready to be disappointed by their "Landmark Tour".

It was then I witnessed pitch #2.

One family seated behind us enquired about bus tickets and Kumar the driver was ready to sell the shit out of his ticket back to Singapore. When they asked about the availability of tickets on the 30th back to Singapore, Kumar said "No problem, we have tickets anytime any day!" The family then decided to hand over 125RM each for their bus tickets as my Dad commented that how was this possible when the booking system didn't show any tickets available on the 30th.

"Don't worry! We confirm have space one!" The driver reassured the family and gave my Dad a stern stare - as if he was infringing on his business territory. My Dad then told the family who just bought the tickets that "Everything is cheaper in Malaysia" as their tickets was only around 40 dollars while we spent 50 bucks each when we booked online. When they heard this they were grinning ear to ear as if they struck toto or some shit.

The Grand Copthorne + Kea Farm

It was the path every Singaporean takes when they enter the Highlands of Cameron. The bus will drop them off at the Hotel of Copthrone and thus, everyone will book their accommodations at said hotel. As soon as we arrived, we tried checking-in early but apparently the guests were still in their room and they had a late check-out at 12pm. We threw our bags at the receptionist and proceeded to the nearby pasar malam known as the Kea farm.

Yes, this was the sight I was greeted with when we reached the market. It was rows and rows of cactus and plants being sold squeezed between peddlers trying to sell you some overpriced souvenirs and farmers attempting to out-sell each other when they ALL SELL THE SAME SHIT.

Night Market Food

Basically this place has three categories of items. The first one which is coincidentally my favourite one would be street food. The pasar malam covered a plethora of food - ranging from the basic durian to the legendary enormous fried chicken filet. So for scientific purposes, I bought the gigantic fried chicken and enjoyed every single morsel of it.

Made in Malaysia

The second category of items would be known as souvenirs. They sell all sorts of memorabilia such as keychains, small pouches, t-shirts, stationery and the list goes on. The one thing these items had in common would be that they had "CAMERON HIGHLANDS" printed all over it. And the people seen buying this racket would be the angmohs. I even saw some caucasian lady buying one huge sack of Cameron Highlands magnets to decorate her fridge.

The third and final category of items would be what I call the local produce. If you are an avid follower of Nasile-mak, you would know that I am intrigued by farmers and some people say I am obsessed with farms (both plants & animals). But I was not buying their local produce shit with every single store selling corn and strawberries. What made me convinced that they all were from the same farm was that I happened to chance upon one delivery truck making deliveries to 3/4 of the stores on the day I visited the Kea farm.

Coincidence? I'd rather say this was place was a conglomerate.

After some time of browsing through the market, we headed back to the hotel to check-in and after a short respite went out for more adventure. According to my dad there was a new mall in Cameron Highlands and he was excited to check it out. So I asked my friend Google where it was and made our way there.

Cameron Square

Underwhelming would be the word to describe this place. Firstly, it had 2 anchor tenants which was Watson and wait for it... Old Town White Coffee. Nani??!?! So the "Shopping mall" was actually the lobby of some new hotel that was still under construction so you could see many constructions workers walking around the place. 

It was almost 2pm and our stomach were growling so we decided to hunt down some food. I saw a sign that said the food court was in the basement and we followed the directional signs. The legendary "Food court" was actually the name of an indian-western restaurant and the owner pretty much dragged us in as they immediately offered us coffee on the house. Speaking of a warm welcome...

We ordered two mains to share between the three of us. The first one was chicken chop and briyani and it was really good. The chicken was tender and seasoned to perfection as they grilled it lightly. You could taste the old-school charcoal styled chicken and when combined with the guacamole it was really great. 

The second item on the item was a meat platter which included lamb chop, chicken chop and also the best dish I have tasted in Malaysia - Cheesy Lamb Meatballs. I am not kidding when I say its the best because when you bite into these juicy meatballs the cheese was oozing out of it. You can never have enough cheese as the chef topped it of with a cheesy mayonnaise sauce that was perfect for any person's palette. 

After the hearty meal we bought some ice cream at the 7-eleven and was amazed it was so cheap. I even got to enjoy my childhood favorite rainbow paddle pop ice-cream!

Strawberry Farm

It was time for everybody's best-loved activity in Cameron Highlands - Plucking strawberries. This also meant the one time where everybody was paying to become farmers. The strawberry farm owner greeted us with such a big smile that I could almost see his gold teeth. I handed over 20RM to the guy before heading into the farm armed with shears and a plastic container in hand. 

So how long did you think the activity lasted? 30 Minutes? Let's half it and you got it right. I came out with a container filled to the bream with strawberry and the owner asked me if I wanted to bring it home or they could turn it into strawberry ice blend on the spot. Cold drinks in a relatively cold environment? His words got me sold and I handed over my hard earned strawberries. And what happened next blew my mind.

That fella just wrapped a rubber band around the plastic container, which held the strawberries I had just harvested, and placed it on the table FOR SALE. He then proceeded into the food counter and obtained FROZEN strawberries from the freezer and blended it with ice and sugar syrup for me. 

Ever heard of 睁眼说瞎话? 

This guy was the embodiment of that saying. He handed me my drink and bade me farewell with that same wicked smile. The ice blend tasted pretty bad and my Dad said that I was a fool to be duped by him. 

And for once, I agreed with his words wholeheartedly.

It was around dinner time by then and we enjoyed some fish steamboat at a restaurant near the hotel. It tasted pretty good with the grouper giving the soup a rich taste which really felt good in the cold weather. Also, putting yam into soup was the bomb. I am going to start putting yam into soup this Chinese New Year during any steamboats that I attend.

Orang Asli

Remember the "Landmark Tour" I booked on the first day? We were at the hotel lobby at 9am waiting for our tour bus to pick us up. To our pleasant surprise, the three of us were the only people who signed up for the tour and they sent a van to pick us up instead. The tour guide Raja was a friendly guy and he started the day by asking us whether there were placed not in the itinerary that we wanted to visit. I asked him to bring us to where the locals stayed on top of the locations stated in the tour and he readily agreed!

So we started our journey by driving around where the Cameron Highlands aborigines stayed at. According to my guide, the government is actually investing a huge sum of money in the region for them to stay in the Highlands. With the trend of youngsters wanting to leave and work in the city, the Malaysian government rebuilt the whole community - by funding their housing and also their education. 

Students had free transportation and education until high school if they stayed in the Highlands while families had free houses built by the government should they choose to stay too. Evidently, in order to continue the culture of "Orang Asli" (Also known as the Golden People) much money had to be spent. From a business sense I could understand why the government want to artificially engineer the "Local Culture" of Cameron Highlands.

Boh Tea

After that short history lesson, Raja brought us to the Boh Tea plantation. Sadly, the factory wasn't open to viewing today as one of their workers messed up and damaged their machine so they were busy repairing it. We headed up to the viewpoint and after a short 30 minutes climb, we were greeted by a pleasant overarching view of the tea plantation.

My Dad even climbed up onto some rocks to take a cool shot despite me telling him that I couldn't see his face under the shadows. We made our way down and enjoyed some local tea and if you're ever going there you MUST try the Gold Blend. Add just one teaspoon of sugar to your cup and that's the closest you will ever get to heaven.

Plants

After the tea plantation tour, it was farm after farm and we stopped by random spots on the road when my parents started asking questions about the plants. Surprisingly, Raja spent some time as a gardener in the past and could answer my parents' questions with confidence. Either that or he's smoking shit straight out of his ass.

I dont even know what is this

Avocado Tree

I think I have something of similar length..

Kampong

Despite being intrigued by the farm, I repeated my request in the morning to Raja again - Let's find some aborigines and crash their house. And the madman Raja immediately brought us to a local's house. 

This was a traditional kampong attap house built from some queer wood harvested from the forest. When I stepped into the house, it was shockingly cool. I guess it does not absorb heat from the sun and it's combined with the naturally cold temperature it was even colder than normal inside. 

And just beside the traditional house was a newer more modern house. As you can see from the photo, it was built with steel exterior and cover which made it extremely hot in the afternoons. And on top of that, there were 10 people living inside that small house! Speak about being claustrophobic...

Outside their house they peddled their local products such as flowers, fern and even the legendary "male health supplement". For the uninitiated, this was the famous Tongkat Ali. It's said to boost male performance in the bedroom and it was being sold at 40RM per piece. That was pretty much the visit of the local people's houses and we continued on our "Landmark Tour".

We managed to sneak in another Tea plantation visit and we were greeted by yet another amazing view of Cameron Highlands. 

#GOAT

The final destination of our trip was actually the goat farm. The farmers handed us a bunch of lemon grass located beside the farm and ushered us into the goat enclosures. It was a rather similar experience to the one I had in China except this time, the goat weren't inside their own pens. They had great jumping abilities and scaled the fences easily. They were gnawing at the lemon grass in my hand and in a flash, all of the lemon grass were gone.

This was pretty much end of the tour and the end of the trip. We headed back to the hotel for dinner and packed our bags for the long journey (back to Singapore) the next day. 

That's it for the first post of 2019 and I aim to write more regularly on Nasile-mak so stay tuned for the next adventure!

Han Ren Out.