Cameron Highlands Day 1

After the frightening night, it's time to enjoy!

Let me present to you...beautiful Cameron Highlands!

We booked only the tickets for the bus without any tour, but not to worry because when you are reaching Cameron Highlands, the tour guide will start giving out pamplets to ask you join their tour.

We are given many options for different tours by Titiwangsa, which is the major tour agency in Cameron. 

LEISURE TOUR

Price: RM 25.00 per adult

          RM 20.00 per child

Duration of tour: 3-3.5 hours

Time of departure: 930am or 2.30pm daily

This tour brings you to the different attractions around the Equatorial hotel which we stayed in. Good tour for families and elderly as the name suggests, leisure tour. Some attractions would be market square, honey bee centre, sam poh temple, rose centre and butterfly house. However, we are not so interested in visiting these places so we skipped this tour.

NATURE DISCOVERY TOUR

Price: RM 60.00 per adult

          RM 50.00 per child

Duration of tour: 4-4.5 hours

Time of departure: 930am daily

This tour is like those hiking type. You get to visit Mount Brinchang, trek around the mossy forest, visit the famous BOH tea planation. It's a pretty good tour, especially for young people. But since we are only interested in the BOH tea and not the other attractions... no mossy forest, no hiking...just a leisure one will do. So, we didn't book this tour too.

AGRO DELIGHT TOUR

Price: RM 65.00 per adult

          RM 55.00 per child

Duration of tour: 4.5-5 hours

Time of departure: 2.30am daily

We went with this tour! This tour brings us to the cactus farm which has so many different types of cactus. My mom likes plants a lot so I bought back one for her. We also get to go to strawberry farm with self picking of strawberries allowed - the major highlight of our trip.

SUNRISE SPECTACULAR

Price: RM 65.00 per adult

          RM 55.00 per child

Duration of tour: 2.5 hours

Time of departure: 6.00am daily

(Tour fare includes a light breakfast of tea/coffee/milo with pie and strawberry muffin)

We took this tour too. The tour guide was describing how beautiful the sunrise is. You see the colours slowing unfolding. There's red yellow, pink, blue, violet. Wow... a must catch!

In summary, we took 2 of the 4 tours mentioned. The first tour that we went was the AGRO DELIGHT tour that takes place in the afternoon.

This is the organic farm. Those pots are actually the strawberry plants.

Loves chilli? Take THIS challenge. This is the spiciest chilli in the world. The tour guide told us that you can literally die from eating this chilli. Just by licking this chilli, you'll already be fuming hot and feeling sick. One bite of it... you're gone. SO POTENT! For the dare devils, give it a try? :P

Next stop is the CACTUS POINT. Lots of cactus here and some other plants. Pitcher.

I dislike those medusa looking cactus. Give me the creeps. I like those one single round ball with needles type.

Look at this beautiful cactus! It's so symmetrically round. And of course, it's the perfect gift for my mom. Bought it home for just RM 2. 

Here comes the major highlight. STRAWBERRY PICKING! 

We were brought Kok Lim Strawberry farm to do the picking. 

There are many strawberry farms in Cameron, but some farms are better if you wish to pick the strawberries. Some farms have smaller strawberries due to different varieties. The ones at Kok Lim are imported from Holland, which are big, red and juicy. So I assume you are going for big red ones, then definitely Kok Lim!

Another famous farm is the Big Red strawberry farm. They also offer strawberry picking but the strawberries there are much smaller. We were also brought to Big Red for a visit and to purchase their strawberry products. 

You have to pay RM 30 for you to enter and pick strawberries. With that sum of money paid, you are allowed to bring home 1/2 kg of the strawberries you picked. If you pick less than 1/2 kg, they will top it up for you. If you pick more, then you pay for the extra.

This is the FRESH vegetables farm.

See! So Fresh.

At the cafe, we can buy fresh salad! Free and easy, pick and choose. The salad also comes with the fresh strawberries. We never knew strawberries taste great with thousand island sauce.

Steamboat dinner at Titiwangsa restaurant was sooooo gd. Perhaps it's the cold weather that makes the food even more delicious. Free flow of vegetables and bee hoon but limited plates of meat. 

A funny conversation happened during dinner.

As you know... we had a bus crash which left us with many bruises.

There were 4 eggs available for steamboat so we decided to cook it and bring home to nurse our bruises! HAHAHA

But in the end after we brought it home, we didn't do it. Instead, that became our breakfast as our hotel stay didn't come with free breakfast. 

Loves hard boiled eggs!

Bollywood Veggies

Went to Bollywood Veggies many weeks ago. This is an extremely outdated post but I'll try to remember as much of my wonderful experience there and blog about it.

Bollywood Veggies is a Singapore farm at Kranji. It's not often to visit farms in Singapore as there are not many to begin with, and it's so far from where people lived. So one day, we decided to bring Granny out to visit the vegetable garden there.

We ate our lunch at this Bollywood Veggies restaurant. The vegetables we eat here are what they grow in their farm. Fresh.

This is the decor of the restaurant. There's this 印度风格, a very authentic feel here with the strong sense of heritage as we see the history of the farm being displayed on the yellow walls.

The appetizer that was recommended to us was this fried veggie dish below. Fresh veg fried in flour. Crispy and light. I enjoyed this dish the most.

This is the veggie dish we ordered. Fresh from the oven farm!

Delicious 4 in 1 Nonya dessert plate. Banana kueh, chocolate banana kueh, tapioca kueh and the one with the coconut scattered on the kueh. That I loved the most.

Granny amused by "Blurrie" our soft toy pig that was mistaken many times for a cow, hippo and even a dog or "Hund" in Deutsch.

Granny found an apple! Just like how Snow White found hers. Smiling happily for a photo.

Nice photographs taken of nature.

I like this photo a lot. The purple flower hanging by its vine.

Life is short, death is sudden.

As mentioned earlier in my blog post, I recently went to Cameron Highlands for a short holiday!
Though it's just Malaysia which is so near to Singapore, going somewhere is better than going nowhere at all.

Off I go! Happily packed my luggage and boarded the coach at Golden Mile Tower. It's a night coach and the journey started at 10.30pm. The seats are sooo comfortable! Great for sleeping. They have the airplane kind of watch movie play games system. Pretty cool for a bus. You can even adjust the backrest and leg rest accordingly. HUGE amount of leg space. For the head rest area, there's tiny ledges sticking out on both sides so that your head can rest against it. gd gd. Very gd.

Since it's at night, of course I went to sleep. Zzz

1.30am. 

I'm sleeping.

3.00am.

Still sleeping.

5.00am.

Happily sleeping.

6.30am.
Not sleeping happily anymore because...

SUDDENLY! I felt the bus skid on the road and the world seemed to turn upside down. *Knock here knock there. AHHHHH

KONSORTIUM BUS CRASHES!

into the drain when driving up the mountain. O_O Thank God it's still quite a small drain, if not the bus would have landed perpendicularly and it would be so much worse. BUT...according to the hotel receptionist at Cameron Highlands, a small drain does not necessarily mean it's not fatal. 

2 years ago, a Thai Bus traveling up to Cameron Highlands crashed into a small drain as well. It was a double decked bus. All the passengers sitting on the upper deck died. 

Thank God also that this side of the mountain was covered. If it was a cliff, that would definitely be the end for me. The accident happened so quickly and so suddenly. It dawned upon me that life is so fragile. You can go any moment regardless of age. There were a lot of thoughts in my mind during that short 5s of crashing. I thought of my family and friends. Not even the chance to say goodbye to them if I really couldn't make it back.

Thus the post title: Life is short, death is sudden.

When the bus stopped after it crashes, everyone was so paranoid. What's happening?! Then a thought suddenly flashed my mind. Will the bus explode?

Thank God again, it didn't.

Here is a photo of me waiting outside the severely damaged bus.

Apparently, someone in the bus witnessed what actually happened. The reckless driver was trying to overtake another car in front on the mountain bend. How dangerous is that?!

Another thing that got us so angry was that the driver did not even give us instructions on what to do after it crashes. He did not come to help us get out of the bus. Some of us are stucked in the bus. All he did was to shout at us to get out of the bus quickly. No torchlight provided even. How to get out quickly in that darkness?

Thankfully, there's this old man who came into the bus to help us get out of the bus. He gave prompt instructions on where the exit is and told us to step on the driver's seat in order to jump out. He even stayed in the bus longer to help us find our missing belongings. So..who is this mysterious helpful old man?

He is not one of the passengers.

He is not the driver, obviously.

The irony. This old man is the one the reckless driver was trying to overtake. 

This old man even offered to send us to Cameron Highlands as he works there. But we decided to stay as a group and wait for the "saving us" bus.

We were asked if we want to continue going to Cameron Highlands or just return to Singapore. All of us decided to go ahead.

So what did we take out of this accident.

LOTS of Bruises.

This is Ronnie's big bruise on his hip area which probably hit the hard arm rest of the comfortable coach chair. Besides this, he got a cut near his eyebrow too, which received immediate attention by the doctor when we reached Cameron Highlands.

This is me. Sad. I got a 2 bruises on my face. One on the cheek bone which is not obvious but very painful, and the other near the side of my mouth. Pouts.

But still, we had a great holiday! Will blog about my wonderful holiday soon. :)

a step towards online shopping

Online Shopping.

Scary.

Why?

It's just a mental hurdle to overcome. To get used to keying in your credit information and buying things online.

The top 3 reasons I didn't want to online shop in the past are:

1. Credit card information security
What if there's some hacker out there who manages to tap on the credit information during transmission and uses my information to spend my money? O_O
What if the website owner deduct my account more than it should? What if..what if...

BUT... after learning a course in NUS, IT1004 Electronic commerce, I understand now that it's not that easy to hack. All the lessons learnt on digital signature, digital envelope, phishing, coding etc did provide me with a better understanding to this digi tech world - A place that I don't belong.

Now that this is safe, what's stopping me?

2. Packaging
I've always a fear of receiving online goods in those filmsy packaging and upon unwrapping, realizing that the goods are defective or damaged. And imagine the hassle of sending them back again, demanding for refund, and waiting a long time before things are settled.


But, no! The goods are intact! The key is to read more reviews of that owner. If it's good, then probably it's fine. Such joy when you receive your little surprises in wonderful condition and cheaper than retail prices!



3. Wasted buys
I've actually tried buying clothes from online shops previously. Despite taking my measurements and ensuring I buy the right size, the clothing just don't fit me well. I think it's quite hard for me to buy clothes online also because I am tall. Can't buy those cute petite dresses! I need to try it out to see if it suits me, looks nice, skirt not too short etc.

So... as Electronic Commerce teaches us, the more commonly bought goods are those standardized ones. They can be electronic products, branded handbags, wrapped chocolates, music CDs... These goods have standard specifications and can't go much wrong.


Presenting to you my successful buys! Iphone covers! Standard specification goods.

I'm now happy.

Perfect buys!