Monday 5 July 2010

BOH Tea Plantation

No trip to Cameron Highlands is complete without a trip to the famous tea plantations. This is one of the main attraction that you have to put into your “must see" list. From there you can visit the factories to learn about the tea making process or you can also pamper yourself with a cup of tea at the café while enjoying the view overlooking the plantations.

BOH Plantations Sdn Bhd is the leading tea grower in Malaysia with four tea gardens – Boh, Sungei Palas and Fairlie situated in Cameron Highlands; and Bukit Cheeding in Selangor – constituting a total land area of 1200 hectares.

The road journey to the BOH Tea Plantation is quite an adventure as the road is narrow and winding. Our experience bus driver will give a honk or two while negotiating a corner to let oncoming traffic know there is coming vehicle. Apart from the narrow roads towards the plantation, the view of green rolling hills with neat standard rows of tea plants are truly breathtaking and refreshing.

BOH’s operations are mechanised while application of fertilisers is carried out aerially and harvesting is done by hand-held machines or raised tractor harvesters. Each of BOH’s tea gardens has its own processing facility and the Fairlie tea garden utilises some of the most modern machines in the world.

With a production capacity approaching 3000kgs per hectare, the Company produces 4 million kgs of tea annually which translates to about 5.5 million cups per day. Hence, with the high altitude, low temperatures and slightly acidic soil, Cameron Highlands is the ideal environment for growing superb teas of distinctive flavour and aroma.

There is a full length glass view café located near the entrance of the BOH Tea Plantation whereby you can grab a cup of tea with a slice of cake or snack while enjoying the magnificent view of the tea plantation. I am thankful that this trip we are able to explore this tea plantation to witness such a great view and enjoy the refreshing aroma of the tea leaves around the mountain. Posted by Picasa


BOH TEA CENTRES:
BOH TEA GARDEN
39200 Ringlet
Cameron Highlands
Tel: +605 493 1324
website: http://boh.com.my/

SUNGEI PALAS GARDEN
39100 Brinchang
Cameron Highlands
Tel: +605 496 2096


Cameron Highlands Trip - Day 2

After a night of good rest, we were be heading to quite a number of places to cover our sightseeing tour on the second day of visit. Apart from the Strawberry Farm and Tea Plantation that we are looking forward too, we are also keen to explore the Rose Valley which consists of 400 over varieties of roses in all shapes and sizes from the 'Black' rose, 'Green' rose and etc.

Breakfast was served a local restaurant 5 minutes away from the resort that we stay. According to the tour guide, this restaurant which is known as “Country Lodge Restaurant” is also owned by the owner of the resort. Breakfast menu was light and simple countryside dishes with fried bee hoon, sunny side-up egg, minced meat porridge, bread (butter and homemade strawberry jam are available for spreading) and coffee.

After breakfast, we set off to our first stop at “Rose Valley” which is a few minutes from Brinchang town. This valley is basically a beautifully landscaped rose farm with hundreds of rose varieties and you can also find some tomato, white radish, Cameron apple and etc that occupied a small portion at the far end of the farm. Entrance fee: RM$4.00

Other than the lovely roses and local vegetables you can also find some other flowering plants that bloom beautiful around the valley. Take a look at these beautiful Daisy plants, I am sure they do put on a smile on you.

Outside the Rose Valley, there are a lot of stalls selling all kind of local grown vegetables, fruits, snack and souvenir. While most of the tour mates are busying with their shopping, we stop at a stall and enjoy the steam sweet potato and tapioca which is a good enjoyment during cold weather.

Cameron Highlands Bee Farm is the second attraction on the list while waiting for the transportation to visit the BOH Tea Plantation (click HERE) up hill. EeFengGu is situated 5km from the central of Cameron Highlands. It is a must to visit when you are in Cameron and it opens from 8:00am to 7:00pm daily. Upon visiting the farm you will realise that Bees are not confined but roaming freely from flower to flower around the sanctuary to collect nectar. In this case, do not provoke the bees while touring around the sanctuary unless you wish to be sting by it :p

Lunch was at “Kea Farm Strawberry View Café Restaurant” that is located at the center of the Kea Farm market after our discovery tour from the BOH Tea Plantation. The dishes are consider as good "at sight” but rather average "in taste" and most of the dishes are “cold” when served due to the cooling weather. For this reason, the tour guide always suggests that we shall have steamboat for dinner instead of the usual 8 course meal.

Kea Farm is not just about vegetable markets, there are also various stalls selling roses, carnation, freeze dried flowers, etc. Souvenirs ranging from simple key chains to T-shirts with Cameron Highlands prints are also available at most of the stalls. And the vegetable markets in Kea Farm are no exception. The roadside vegetable markets nearer to the T-Junction are priced higher; you can check those prices but refrain from making any purchases till you explore the vegetable markets located further in. Another interesting items is the delicious looking bi-coloured sweet corns that comes in several grades; such as grade A, B, C based on the size of the sweet corns and will be priced accordingly.

After lunch, we are all excited and getting ready to explore the long waited Strawberry Farm (click HERE) which is one of our main attractions on this tour. But before entering the Strawberry Farm, we stop by at the "Time Tunnel" (click HERE) and Cactus Valley which is just beside it. This valley is the newly built tourist attraction with numerous types of cactus on show. Its hillside location makes for interesting viewing of the cactus and other plants which include Strawberries, Roses, Apple & Peach trees, Orchids, Cherry Tomatoes etc.

Other than resting at the resort while waiting for dinner time after the strawberry farm visit, we decided to take a short walk to the Brinchang Market to grab some fresh fruits and souvenirs before heading back home on the next day.

From the photo above, you can see that their coconut outer skin is toward "Black" in colour instead of the normal "Green" that we have over here. Along the roadside, we also spot a stall selling "durian" which makes us so tempted to try some.

At the fruit stall, we bought some “Pepino Melon” which is also known as “Cameron Apple” because it was planted in Cameron Highland. When we first heard about Cameron Apple, we are still looking for that “red” usual apple until we realise that actually the physical “Cameron Apple” is not what we thought of. We bought 2 of it for RM$1.00 and surprisingly it taste great with a sweet scent like honeydew taste.

Dinner was at another local steamboat restaurant known as "Restoran Highland" which is different from the previous day. The steamboat at the restaurant are served using Charcoal and traditional steamboat pot which long vessel to prevent the ashes of the charcoal from dropping into the soup.

Overall the food over at this restaurant is far much fresher and better than the one we had yesterday. Guess having steamboat on cosy weather is always a good choice and everyone of us enjoys our meal heartily with the extra local green vegetables too….. Posted by Picasa


Saturday 3 July 2010

No Signboard @ Vivo City

No Signboard! Finally we have scheduled our visit to “No Signboard Restaurant” at Vivo City after some brainstorming ideas on where to go for our usually weekend gathering. Since most of the members in our family group loves to eat “Chilli Crab” we decided to choose this restaurant due to their good feedback on their White Pepper Crab and Chilli Crab dish.

According to those who frequent this restaurant, reservation booking is always recommended to avoid the crowds or waiting time. As we are pretty late for lunch after church service around 2pm, they are barely any large crowds in it. Upon stepping into the Vivo City branch, we are captured by it beautiful interior design with crystals lighting, full-length windows, paintings, dragon statues coiling the pillars and etc. And you can also notice from the photo, even their restaurant name “无招牌” is uniquely engraved on the chopstick as well.

In total we ordered about 6 dishes, the first to be served is this "Steamed Japanese Beancurd with Diced Seafood". Each beancurd is stuffed with fresh seafood like prawn, squid, fish and some mushroom. It is served together on top of the steam egg custard with some green vegetables. The texture of the egg is so smooth and silky that makes it goes very well with the seafood beancurd.

Garlic Steam Bamboo Clam served shortly after the above seafood beancurd. Personally I don't really like this dish as I find that the amount of garlic used is too much and it actually mask the taste of the Bamboo Clam itself.

Other than the usual “Oatmeal Prawns” we decided to try out their “Deep-fried Butter Prawns” instead of “Deep-fried Butter Crayfish”. The prawns served are relatively big and most important they are fresh to taste. Each bite of it is so firm and crunchy…… and the butter crumps make it so fragrant and tasty to go with the prawns.

Yes! This is "Yee Fu Noodles" which is one of our favourite noodle dish that we usually order during any eat out. The Yee Fu Noodles here are fried with chives and buttom straw mushroom.

These are the two crab dishes that we have which is the "White Pepper Crab", the flesh of the white pepper crab was succulent, firm and well-infused with their special concocted white pepper powder seasoning and spring onion which makes it finger licking good. This dish will taste rather a bit spicy for those who can't take spicy food.

The Chilli Crab was fantastic at least it didn’t have the distinct tomato ketchup taste and it is served with the fried mantou. The fresh Sri Lanka crab is cooked in their signature robust chilli sauce flavour with prawn paste, garlic and other ingredients. Everyone loves to dip the deep-fried mantou with the egg sauce which make the taste even better. Since I am not really a crab love and it find it too time consuming eating each parts of it, I rather go for a few deep-fried mantou in the egg gravy. Posted by Picasa

No Signboard Seafood Restaurant
#03-02, 1 HarbourFront Centre Walk
Vivo City
Singapore 098585
Tel: 6376 9959
Website: http://www.nosignboardseafood.com/


Sakae @ Wheelock Place

This is our 1st time dining at Wheelock Place Sakae Branch that is located at a corner of level 2. The setup of the place look bright with some full-length windows facing the road that shows certain view of the ION building across the road. The last round when we dine at Wheelock Place was during last year December where we went over to eat pasta at "The Pasta Shop" by Sakae too.

As we are planning to have some small meals in between our shopping trip around Orchard area we decided to grab a few colour plates on their sushi belt. I am not sure what is the name of this sushi, but it seems like some diced shittake mushroom with sauce and topped with spring onion. Taste rather refreshing if you love mushroom.

Recently it seems that Sakae has replaced their usually "Red" pickled ginger to this normal "yellowish" type. Em... wonder what is the reason behind it :)

Soft Shell Crab Roll is the second item of our list which we find it rather normal.

This new Ebi and Salmon Mango Roll is one of my top choice because it consists 3 of my favourite ingredients into 1 dish. Imagine when you put into your mouth, the combination of the crispy fried ebi wrapped with rice and topped with salmon and mango. Em.... the sweetness and mango fragrant….really makes you crave for more.

Mum prefers this Prawn & Avocado slice because she doesn’t really fancy raw salmon as I do most. Overall we find the sushi served at this outlet is very fresh due to its colour and taste but on the other hand, we think they should really improved their customer services as it is quite disorganized when they took more than 10 minutes to serve the drinks and forget the items that I requested for at least thrice. Posted by Picasa

Sakae Sushi @ Wheelock Place
Orchard MRT Station
501 Orchard Road
#02-18 Singapore 238880
Telephone: 6737 6281

Opening Hours:
11:30am - 10:00pm (Mon - Thu & PHs)
11:30am - 10:30pm (Fri - Sat & PH Eve)


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