Emma Exploring

It’s time for the main event; the reason why I came to the Cameron Highlands! Beautiful, bouncy, leafy mountains!! Honestly, I defy anyone to not want to go after seeing photos of them.

The mountains are actually plantations of tea leaves, rather than just wild greenery. There are several different tea plantations you can visit but even if you don’t visit a plantation (although I highly recommend you do!), you can see the rolling tea plantation mountains wherever you are in the Highlands. I had the most amazing views from just my bus journey from KL up into the Highlands!

I decided I wanted to do to the Boh Tea Plantation, mostly because it was the top recommend one on Trip Advisor. Since it’s a countryside area, it’s quite difficult to hail a taxi off the street so my hotel recommend I ‘hired’ a taxi for a day. You basically pay a taxi driver a flat fee upfront and they’ll drive you wherever you want to go all day.

So off in my taxi I went, taking a 30-ish minute journey around very windy mountain roads! To ensure drivers don’t hit on-coming cars when going around the blind corners, they constantly honk their horns just to make sure anyone around the other side knows they’re coming. It’s equally funny and terrifying!

My driver was a really kind young guy but he gave me an absolute heart attack on the journey there because long before we reached the tea plantation, he pulled over to the side of a road and stopped in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE WITHOUT WARNING. I don’t know about you but, as a young woman, if you’re in a car alone with a man you don’t know and he tells you he’s taking you where you asked to go but then he stops the car in a completely different (and isolated) place, you instantly expect the worst. I barely had time to process this was situation was unfolding when my driver turned to me and gestured taking a photo and pointed to my DSLR camera! He’s probably never seen someone look so alarmed at the prospect of taking photos…! And so I just let it go – I didn’t have the words to describe this miscommunication to him and I was too relieved to give it a second thought! But note to any taxi drivers: do not make a detour or stop your vehicle in a different location without warning your passenger(s) first!!!

Bless this man. He’d clearly made a point of stopping the car for me in this picturesque location because he’d noticed my chunky camera! I did indeed snap some photos and I also got to see some of the tea-leaf pickers up close. They even gave me a leaf to try which was kind. Apparently you can chew it just like you would a tobacco leaf but, between you and me, it tasted horrible! Too bitter! Next time I’ll wait until the tea is boxed up and ready for drinking…

Aside from the plantation fields themselves, there’s not an awful lot else to see but I certainly wasn’t complaining! The fields are the sole reason I came to the Highlands! Inside the site’s building there’s a high-rise cafe with glass windows that overlooks the plantations. The perfect place to sample their tea produce.

Boh also operate small tours of their tea-processing factory or you can just walk through the area yourself, which took me about 10 minutes. I’ve heard their organised tour isn’t that informative and you can pretty much get all the info you need from the boards put up around the place.

And, of course, there’s also a souvenir shop which sells everything Boh tea related! I sort of became possessed and ended up buying 7 boxes of tea…! Why?! Don’t get me wrong, it’s great, but it did mean I had to lug around a crazy amount of extra bulky luggage for the rest of my Asia trip! But if your only stop abroad is to the Highlands, then please do stock up on tea! Top tip: you can buy plenty of Boh tea in Kuala Lumpur Airport but the prices are insane compared to what you pay at the actual Boh plantation site. I think they were two or three times more expensive at the airport…

At the back of the cafe there’s a lovely wooden set of steps that takes you straight to the fields and you can walk alongside them for a little bit, which is serene.

Although I was slightly disappointed it was overcast on my visit, I still got to see the plantations!! They absolutely lived up to my expectations. It was undeniably the most beautiful place I’ve visited.

I’ll leave you with some more photos!

Have you been to the Cameron Highlands before? What sights would you recommend? Let me know in the comments below!