Friday, January 1, 2010

Our Holiday in Cameron Highlands

It's been quite awhile since my last entry. From then till now, a number of things have happened.

First, I am currently working with a boutique company that provides training. My specified role is projects and marketing, but I do whatever I can to help out.

The people are great and the environment is truly an enjoyable place to work in. I cannot be happier professionally.

On top of that, I am slated to go back to teach in the Fine Arts department this coming January and will be committed to 6 hours of teaching at the institute. Perfect marriage of professional love and passion for the education industry. :-)

Over the festive season, sweetie treated me to a holiday in Cameron Highlands as a Christmas gift. The only other time I went there was as a kid, more than 20 years back, with my parents. Thus, I was truly looking forward to this trip.

The journey took a little over 1o hours to get there by coach. As it was a night coach, we slept almost throughout, arriving bright and early at around 8.30am to catch the crisp morning air of the highlands. Gotta say, the new Ipod Classic held up really well.

This was meant to be a relaxing trip and therefore, we didn't do much. However, we did go on a few land tours, namely the Boh Tea plantation tour and the most memorable of all, the Cameron Highlands morning sunrise tour. There're a ton of photographs but I'd like to show the most memorable ones I managed to take.


The first thing that really caught my camera's eye, the mist descending across the highlands


Our first stop of the land tour, where the guide gave us a very brief history of the Cameron Highlands itself and her tea plantations.


Worm's eye view of tea leaves.


The view when we got to Boh Tea Factory. The shades of green is just breathtaking!


Morning dew at the highest point in Cameron Highlands.


Caught this bee frolicking amonst the flowers.


Took this with the 50mm lens


Even in the afternoon, the mist is pretty heavy. This was taken around 3pm.


As it was raining and there were no cabs to town, we had an early night, but not before having a drink at the hotel bar. Sweetie had a martini while I took the Black Label. Just as well, since we did have to turn in early as we had to wake up at 5 the next day to catch a sunrise.

The following series of six photographs were of the sunrise we caught on the 2nd day. I shall let the pictures speak for itself. Suffice to say, it was well worth waking up for.












I have never seen a more mesmerising sequence of events than this. Just standing there, taking it all in is something I can never describe in words.


Malaysia's national flower, the Hibiscus.


Although Cameron Highlands is famous for strawberries, we never did find them to be appetising, being rather small and looking quite sad actually.

We checked with the hotel and realised that they do have shuttle services to Brinchang, the main town in Cameron Highlands. They have a night market there and we thought we'd check it out.

Not much to see, but there were some interesting opportunities for photography.


Shot of the moon taken with 300mm lens


Handheld shot of the "main" carpark for those visiting the night market. It's pretty darn packed for a small town, I must say.


I felt this photograph was a good way to end this entry, as the neon lights and colours of dusk helped portray what I felt, a somewhat strange reminiscing feel of a place I love. Would I go back there again? Definitely, but not so soon. I'd like to see how this place develops after say a few years.