LOL!

I had considered not blogging this trip but then I realized that if I really did, I would have not blogged for my past THREE Cameron Highlands trips!

That’s so bad of me! THREE times and I didn’t even bother to record it in my diary!

Cameron Highlands has given us so many sweet strawberries and even sweeter memories – I’ve decided I simply cannot be so bad to it!

On June 28th, I went to Cameron Highlands with my dear!

Also went there in November last year, but didn’t blog… (picture taken at the exact same spot)

ALSO went again exactly 365 days before the latest trip, on June 28th, 2008, but also didn’t blog…

So this time I am totally going to blog about Cameron Highlands, before I neglect it for the third time!

Looking back, it is weird and extremely coincidental that my hair happens to be dyed brown every time I went to this place!

Cameron Highlands is a really wonderful place with wonderful memories!

My dear and I went back to Cameron a few weeks ago for a special occasion which had taken place there.

It was a relaxing trip with no pre-planned schedule. We just went wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted.

We stayed at Heritage Hotel, a hotel that was excellent in terms of its location which was away from the town areas, and was – despite already being on a ‘highland’ – situated on top of a hill!

Cameron Highlands is one of the most beautiful, scenic places in Malaysia.  If you need a serious breakaway, locally, this is the place!

In this trip, we went back to the wonderful Smokehouse, which was a small, traditional-English-cottage-styled hotel outside the town of Brinchang.

We had visited this place the last time we came to Cameron Highlands, and we had been so fascinated!

This place had an interior of a nice Englishman’s cottage, with fireplaces and comfy couches and candlelit tables and grandfather clocks… but the exterior, the garden, was heavenly!

It was superbly well kept, with lovely bird fountains and huts, and a small, winding path in the middle of the green bushes and flowery plants flourishing all around you… You’d have thought you were in some Swiss countryside or something!

All the gracefulness of the garden, set with a white marble table with warm tea and freshly-baked scones…

Oh… this blogger is drooling on his keyboard…

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We also went to pluck strawberries at a ‘self-pluck’ strawberry farm!

We’ve each been to Cameron Highlands almost a dozen times since we were young and we had never tried out the self-plucking process…

… which turned out to be quite pointless, actually.

Because one of the workers over there seemed to be too free and he got around the farm and kept running back to us with huge, ripe strawberries!

He must have been thinking that we were going to be so happy to receive so many guaranteed-sweet, professionally-plucked strawberries when the fact was that we thought, politely, that he was merely spoiling the fun!

We ended up plucking only TWO of the dozens of strawberries that we walked out of the farm with!

But it was still quite a fun experience, really!

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Also in Cameron Highlands, the bee farm where you could experience being surrounded by live bees:

And lots of cactus shops and centers that strongly tempt you to purchase pots and pots of cactus (what’s the plural word for cactus?) home only to regret buying them later when you got back.

I always ride home with my parents with at least some cactus each time I went to Cameron Highlands when I was young.

And I always abandon them in no more than three days.

And they always live on even after I had abandoned them.

Unbelievable living things, cactus are, aren’t they?

If God Himself were to look down from heaven, He would have wondered what those little humans had done to the hills below that He had once planted with tall, majestic trees:

The lush green blanket of tea plants on the hills has become some sort of an icon for Cameron Highlands!

I think it would also serve as an ideal, spacious, carpeted landing spot for alien spaceships.

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One thing I feel about Cameron Highlands though, is that it is getting a bit too commercialized, really.

The place used to be a small town where people farmed and grew vegetables and fruits, while some other folks owned beautiful orchards and gardens.

But now it has become a bustling commercial town with tourists and price tags everywhere…

Sigh, but I guess whenever a place attracts people, it attracts businessmen, and traders, and Starbucks, too.

Anyway, I still love Cameron Highlands very much and it remains one of the blissful venues of my comfortable childhood memory!