Who joined this trip?
It was drizzling when we left Tampin at 4 o’clock in the morning for our 2 days 1 night trip to Cameron Highlands. We entered Senawang toll and cruised all the way to Bidor at 120 km/h as we planned to have our breakfast in Bidor. By 7.30AM, we reached our destination and headed straight to the restaurant.
The restaurant name is “Pun Chen 笨珍” and it is very famous for its “Duck Noodles 鸭比面”, “Wan Tan 云吞” and local delicacies like “Gai Zai Beng 鸡仔饼”, “Sa Ki Ma 薩骑马”, “Lou Poh Beng 老婆饼” and “White Coffee”.
Our breakfast – “Duck Noodles”, “Wan Tan Noodles” “Chicken Floss Noodles 鸡丝东菇面”, “Beef Noodles 牛什面”. There is a big prawn in every “Wan Tan” and the meat is very juicy. The skin is thin and it wraps the fillings nicely. As for the beef, it does not have the smell as it uses radish, dried “longan” and herbs as the soup. As for the famous “White Coffee”, at the price of RM1.40 each, it is highly recommended to everybody, even to those who dislike coffee.
The duck meat is very tender, soft and smooth. You do not have to tear the meat out, just slightly press the chopsticks on it and the meat is cut. The soup is boiled with Chinese herbs and spices.
Then, we headed to Ipoh and stopped at the various caves which are on the way to Ipoh like “San Poh Dong”. Although I was not really interested in it, but I went in to have a look and we took some photos.
After that, we headed to Ipoh for another round of breakfast and “Dim Sum” was on our list. We went around Ipoh town looking for the restaurant as I have forgotten to bring the map. We found the restaurant, “Foh Shan 福山” which is very near to Kamdar and we went inside. It was full house and we waited for nearly 20 minutes for a table, which we shared with another family.
The price of the “Dim Sum” ranges from RM2.50 to RM4.50, depending on what you ordered. There will be waitress pushing the trolleys around the shop, you take what you want from the trolley and the waitress will write down the price on the piece of paper which will be given to you when you sit down. I do not know how to describe the “Dim Sum”, but I can tell you that each and every “Dim Sum” is worth every single cent you spent just for that little “Dim Sum”. Besides, there are a lot of varieties of “Dim Sum” for you to choose from.
This is the “Har Gao 虾膏” or “Prawn Dim Sum”. There are 3 (THREE) medium sized prawns in every “Dim Sum”. For the price of RM3.50 per basket, it is very cheap. My friends were amazed with it as they never have “Har Gao” and “Dim Sum” with such amount of prawns and fillings before. We did not try the “Wu Kok 芋角” – deep fried yam with barbecued pork because it was out of stock. The “Wu Kok” is 1.5 (May be 2) times bigger than an egg, and the best part is, it has salted egg yolk inside! The breakfast cost us about RM40 and we left the shop with a bloated tummy.
We drove around and found the Ipoh’s “Yim Guk Gai 盐炬鸡”. The chicken is stuffed with herbs and spices, wrapped with layers and layers of salt and then is steamed or baked until it is cooked. My friends said it was nothing special as it tasted exactly like the “Yok Choi Gai 盐炬鸡”, just that it tastes salty and there is no soup with it. I forgot to snap the picture of the shop and the chicken. Sorry!
After the heavy breakfast, we started our journey to Cameron Highlands, using the new road from Simpang Pulai. Juliana has blogged about this new route to Cameron Highlands in this post. I slept all the way and woke up when we reached Kampung Raja. We checked in into our hotel – Strawberry Park, which we had booked earlier. We thought we were lost although we followed the sign board because the hotel was situated way too deep inside the jungle (?). We ate the “Yim Guk Gai” and went to the hotel’s indoor swimming pool for a swim.
To swim in Cameron Highlands, that is something new and very chilling. The air was cold; the water was cold as well. –shivers- I nearly forgot how to swim although I have finished my swimming course which included saving people.
I took a few pictures of the hotel’s surrounding outside the swimming pool.
It was drizzling later in the evening when we left our hotel at 5PM to get something to eat. We had our tea / lunch in a lousy Indian stall in Tanah Rata. We walked around the town aimlessly before we decided to go and get some hot drinks at some tea station which is situated near some tea plantation.
We sat down at a round table, covered with those giant sized umbrella and drank out RM1.00 tea. I ordered strawberry flavoured tea which turned out to be quite nice. We sat there for about 45 minutes before going back to Brinchang. It was Sunday; therefore there was no night market for us to hang around. I could not have my hands on those deep fried sweet potatoes. –sad-
We sat in the car, thinking of what to do before having steamboat for dinner. After minutes of brainstorming yet with no places to go, we went to have our dinner. I suggested going to a famous steamboat place, which is situated under a hotel at the price is RM15 per person. They did not want to pay so much and went to a shop which offered RM9 per person. It was the lousiest steamboat I ever have. There was not much variety (Actually, there was no variety at all), the soup and the service were very bad. I would give a -1 point in a scale of 0 to 10. The shop name is “Silver City”, do not say I never warn you about it. I teased them with our ex-tuition teacher’s saying – “Cheap thing no good, good thing no cheap.” We felt being cheated and went to another restaurant to have another round of dinner, which at least satisfied my taste bud and tummy.
We went back to our hotel and played a few rounds of “Mahjong”. We were tired and we went to bed before 12AM. I actually slept so early! Gosh! I even snored! –lol-
P/S :
I shall upload more photos after I collect them from my friends.
At the end of my post about my holiday trip, I might upload a zipped folder containing all of our pictures for you to download.
