As promised, here are the pictures for the second part. I'll start this one with where I left out in the previous post.

The last time I've been to Cameron Highlands was when I was still in primary school. Back then, my family went with two other of my father's best friends family. My my, what fun we had! Going back there again after so many years got me really exited. Despite all these years, I can still recognise the place we stayed, the place we ate and the place I played Counter Strike with my other friends. Good times.

Thanks to the annual Cameron Highlands Ratha Yathra, my family had a reason to go back there again. Ratha Yathra in a cold weather was a one-of-a-kind experience! Definitely beats getting wet in the rain... hehehe. Nevertheless, all that is a pleasure in itself. Anyways, since I'm all grown up now (well, half way grown up) my version of family vacation has changed a lot since I was a child. Instead of spontaneous decisions that we used to make, I planned my trip this time. I wanted to cover all the places that we missed out the last time, plus re-visit some places worth going twice. Below are some pics of the places I visited. More pictures are coming up in part 2!


The view on the way to Boh tea plantation factory. The whole area covers a total of 8000 acres! The largest in Malaysia.... so far. The journey here was awesome! Well, maybe not much if you're the driver. For me, I love driving on windy roads, so I enjoyed the ride. You gotta be really careful on most curves, you can't see the oncoming car. So I honked before taking each curve (irritating, but I had like 5 other souls in the car, so had to be extra cautious), just in case. Saved me a few times.


Dad and myself felt a little bored after touring the Boh tea factory. We decided to take a short walk to the back of the factory. Found these logs stacked right opposite the conveyor used to transport the tea leaves into the building.


View at the peak of Gunung Brinchang! Some people call this place Gunung Batu Brinchang. This is the 2nd highest mountain in Cameron Highlands, boasting a height of 2.031km above sea level. Height of Gunung Irau (the highest) on the other hand is 2.11km above sea level. This mountain is located at the Titiwangsa mountain range, almost at the border of Perak and Pahang. You can see how the mountains looks like they're overlapping each other from here.

They always say, "It's not about the destination, but the journey that matters". To get to this place, you can either drive or hike all the way up above. Unfortunately, due to certain circumstances, I could not go for the hike. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the drive (But I'm quite sure the hike would have been better. Too bad.). The road was extremely narrow and windy. At some places, the road was quite uneven, got me worried if something bad would happen to my tyre. The view on the way to the peak made the drive worth it.


This was the view from the Mossy Forest. Mossy Forest is located few minutes drive before reaching the peak of Gunung Brinchang, so you can get to this place on the way to the peak of the mointain. The tower you see there is the peak of Gunung Brinchang. The picture above was taken from there.


The specialty of this place is the thick growth of moss on top of the tree branches. Entire scenery there looks like Avatar movie set. No, not the air bender Avatar; loved the cartoon, not the movie. There were few signposts here showing tourists that they were standing right at the border of Perak and Pahang.


You get to walk deep into the forest. Can you see a thick branch blocking the way right below, that's the end of this trail. Well, not really the end. We can still walk further (plus there is also another path going all the way down on the right if this picture), but it may not be a good idea going all the way down. A really big bee kept circling over my head, probably doing its job protecting its territory. To think about it, you have to jump across that big trunk, and then there might be chances of spotting the brothers and sisters of my annoying friend.Is it worth it? Nope, not when I have family beside me ;-)



Besides the moss, old trees and ferns, I was surprised to spot some flowers there! If I'm not mistaken, those are wild rose flowers. This plant definitely stood out from the rest of the plants there.


This little one was spotted at Lata Iskandar Waterfall, on the way to Cameron Highlands. You can spot various insect (and arachnid! One spider was almost the size of my palm) species here. This one was spotted easily thanks to its distinctive color on the rock. The species name of this moth is Dysphania Subrepleta. This was what I found after some Googling. I'm still a little confused whether or not it can be Dysphania Militaris. If I'm not mistaken, the latter is bigger. This one is quite tiny. This particular species is a day-flying moth, and they like moisture. This explains why it was hanging around the waterfall area. One website stated that the blue hue on its forewing is poisonous. Not sure how true is that.

There are more pictures and crazy stories of this waterfall. I'll post it in the second part.

Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) is definitely a place to go for nature lovers. It's located at Selangor, just on the outskirts of Kepong and Selayang. There are various facilities provided there, such as; badminton court, tennis court, football field, jungle tracking (with canopy walk), primary school, auditorium, museum, waterfall and the list just goes on. Just head on to their website for more details. They update it quite often.

For me, I love going for a 'walk' along the forest. You can observe various nature wonders there! I've covered a bit about their famous camphor trees in a previous post. In this post, I would like to share some images I took few months back. All these images were already shared in my Instagram account.


There are about three main ponds in FRIM, and this one is my favorite. This pond is located just at the back of the Arapaima pond. Yeah, they have few Arapaima's in FRIM.



These are FRIM famous camphor trees. Notice how the leaves of different trees never touch each other? It's a special trait of this tree called crown-shyness.


Those fibrous roots grew really wide across that area! Now, try to imagine if those were long slimy tentacles... Kinda reminds me of Davy Jones. Nope not the real one, I'm talking about the one from the movie.


Apparently, this particular species of butterfly is quite rare. If that's the case, I'm quite lucky to get this shot! Via quick Googling, I found out that this butterfly is called Fluffy-Tit (Zeltus Etolus). Cute name.


Nature is simply amazing and beautiful. Had anyone ever wondered how come water is ALWAYS flowing from the top of the hill all the way to the bottom, 24/7? The behind-the-scenes works of nature is not easy to comprehend sometimes.


Not sure if it's that, but I think this mushroom is called Pigskin Poison Puffball. That's quite a mouthful to pronounce. If I got the name right, this one is quite poisonous! Just sayin', if the name is not obvious enough.

Camphor were known as 'Malaya Chandan' in the Vedic scriptures. This was simply because, at one time, Malaysia were famous for our camphor's. Well, time changes things, and we are well known over the world for other things now.

The picture you see above are camphor trees (Dryobalanops Aromatica or Borneo Camphor if you will) at Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM). One special trait of these trees are, leaves from different trees would not touch each other. So, when you look up, you can see a map-like view up above. This phenomenon is called 'crown shyness'. They look quite cool when you see them on a sunny day.

There are a couple of places at FRIM where you can spot these trees. One particular place (probably THE place to see these trees) is now restricted to public access after achieving their UNESCO world heritage status. You have to pay to enter into that area, where you will be escorted with a representative. He will bring you around, explaining some research done by FRIM in that area, plus of course, showing you these trees. For the benefit of those who are curious about the said location; it's beside the Arapaima pond. It was quite a disappointment for me, personally, who frequented FRIM for jogging during the weekends since I was 6 years old, and now not be able to enter into that area freely. In fact, I studied in the primary school in FRIM. Ah, good times :-)

After some explanation by the people in charge there, apparently some joggers who enter into this area steals some plants. One particular plant is Tongkat Ali (Eurycoma longifolia), planted there for research purposes. My humble request to anyone who's reading this post, please do not damage or steal plants, especially if it's planted for research.

Another place where you can spot these trees are, at the jogging trek, on the way to the entrance of the canopy walk hike. There will be one part of the trek where you will be walking up a steep hill. You can spot these trees on the way up the steep hill.