Visiting the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia

Visiting the Cameron Highlands

The Cameron Highlands… What a wonderful way to escape the heat and humidity of Malaysia for a few days! Similar to the highlands of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, visiting the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia was an amazing place to spend a few days and our trip there was packed with plenty of things to do.

When we got into the main town area, we decided to hunker down for a few days and get unpacked. Well, I wanted to hunker down with an ice cold beer after a long and crazy bus ride from the west coast but you get the idea… Malaysia’s highlands regions is positioned in the northern half of the country and is easily  accessible from any popular location you may be coming from whether its Kuala Lumpur, Penang or from the amazing beaches on the east coast. We took a bus straight from Penang and arrived into town with plenty of daylight to spare. The town itself is very quaint, with shops and parks to stroll through.

Taken from the center of town, this was the main street area with a lot of the restaurants and shops you’d find.

Walking Path in one of the parks we strolled through that afternoon…

Just one of many unique flowers and plants we came across while visiting the Cameron Highlands

But of course, what is Malaysia known for? Cuisine! And it is cuisine alone that makes Malaysia worth the trip! We would eat Malaysian for breakfast, Chinese for lunch and Indian for dinner. There were plenty of little dives to eat in around town and everything was so authentic… not the type of restaurants you would have back home that were ‘themed’ but more like a restaurant that was scooped up in its home country and simply dropped down in the middle of Malaysia. How can I proves the authenticity of the food? Well, this was now my second chance while in Malaysia eating food on a banana leaf. Hardly Malaysian but as authentic Indian as you’ll get here without crossing over the Indian Ocean.

Yes, this was my second time eating on a banana leaf in less than a week while traveling in Malaysia… This consisted of Rice, Papadam, Pickle, Indian Soup, Curry Sauce, Dhall Sauce and four other vegetables. Believe it or not, it was delicious though a bit too spicy on some. You can also see my Roti bread in the background… also extremely delicious!

And if you like to see the making of some delicious Roti bread, check out the video !

As said earlier, there are more than a few things to do in this area. Since we wanted to keep local our first day, we took a short trip to one of the strawberry farms. Truth be told, this wasn’t high on my list of things to do but when you find yourself traveling with others, sometimes you just have to be flexible! That being said, it was an interesting experience to visit the strawberry farms and there is no shortage of them either. While there, you have plenty of opportunities to try everything from Strawberry Smoothies to Strawberry Pie, Ice Cream and anything else you could imagine.

One of the dozens of strawberry farms in Malaysia that we ended up visiting in the Cameron Highlands

Our guesthouse while visiting the Cameron Highlands. It was called the Hill View Inn and I’d definitely recommend it if you end up traveling here. It was only a short walk from the center of town and was extremely affordable and nice!

Leaving from here, we realized there was so much else to do too in the area and since we had limited days here, we ended up taking a full days tour. During that time, we took a hike to see the world’s largest flower, a 200,000 year old mossy forest and a chance to shoot darts through a blowpipe with Malaysian aborigines? Stay tuned for more on all this soon!