I was on leave yesterday to finish the unfinished business (which means that i've only worked for 3 days for this week). Finally i've achieved closure on the unpleasant incident that happened during our trip. I'm really happy now. 
Previously,
(As we are in most of the photos we had taken, some of the pictures i posted here were cropped images. For those that couldn't be cropped, 贝 and i may be in the pictures, but with our faces still concealed.)
Before we went to Cactus Valley, we actually wanted to visit a strawberry farm. The hotel receptionist highly recommended Raju Hill Strawberry Farm so we went there accordingly. However, there wasn't much to see on the farming part because only a small portion of the strawberry nursery was opened to visitors. We decided to return the next day to buy the strawberries and jam.
We thought we could go to another strawberry farm that offered strawberries picking facility, but discovered that we gotta pay for a higher price for the self-picked strawberries. Then we decided not to do so and instead just take some pictures of the farm. I'll leave the photos to the next post, together with the photos taken the next day at Raju Hill.
Cactus Valley was the only place we visited that required entrance fee. The entrance fee was RM4 per person and i think what they offered was more than what they charged for. Just visit this place and you would have seen almost all the plants and foliage in Cameron Highlands. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a person who's into gardening, and yet i was amazed at the wide variety of flowers and cactus that were planted there.
Cactus Valley resides between two slopes and each was made into ascending terraces for displaying the plants. One one side were the flowers and fruits, and on the other were the cactus. Each row of the terraces housed a few types of plants and they were rather well-maintained.
Upon entering the Cactus Valley, we could see different types of cactuses and potted plants for sales. Among all was this gigantic cactus that was said to be 70 years old.
A 70-year-old huge cactus.
There were also potted strawberry plants for sales. It was rather interesting to see the strawberries to be planted in such manner instead of planted on the normal farming ground or hydroponically. Perhaps i should have bought one pot back to JB and see for how long it can withstand the hot weather.
Then we also saw "Dionaea" for sales, which was a kind of plant that captured flies. There were really corpses of flies in the plants and we kinda wondered if the flies were really lured in by the plants, or the flies were manually placed within the plants by the people there.
If they have a plant that entraps mosquitoes, then i'll sure buy one back, especially now that we have serious cases of dengue.
We proceeded to ascend the slopes with flowers and fruits. The beautiful flowers simply left us in awe. There was such a wide variety that i didn't even know the names for most of the plants. From what i can recall, there were roses, hibiscus, fuchsia, bird of paradise, tomatoes, chilies, and apples.
Two bird of paradise -- these are flowers, in case you are wondering.
Flowers that i don't know the name of. These swad of flowers were actually made up of many small flowers.
Tomato at the background, with me the smiley face (i do look as cute but definitely prettier than that smiley)
After that, we went on to the other slope with cactuses. I've never seen so many cactuses in my life! It was just a pity that the first thing we saw was something that happened in most tourist attractions in Malaysia:
Sign asking tourists not to write on the cactus
But perhaps the tourists just couldn't contain their excitement and creativity.
刘汉华, whoever you are, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
I never knew that there were in fact so many variety of cactuses and this strange plant could have such funny shapes:
Look, mom, i have toes!
Caterpillar cactus?
Hairy eyes or hairy nipples? Use your imagination.
We took lots of pictures with the ocean of cactuses before we left the Cactus Valley.
贝 and i with the cactuses
When we left the Cactus Valley, it was already evening. We decided to get some food from the pasar malam for dinner since we were going there to shop for stuffs that were to be brought back to JB.
The night market was not very big, with the stalls selling things that were rather similar. It was either flowers, cactuses, strawberries, veggie, fruits, or souvinirs.
Stalls selling plants
贝 said these cactuses were nice, but i found them eerie as they reminded me of the snake-headed lady who tried to killed baby Hercules.
There were some strange veggie and fruits that we don't normally see in JB.
Cauliflower in purple color. Not sure if it tastes like Ribena.
They looked like small onions but they were actually jambu air (water apple). I'm sure it doesn't taste like Ribena (because i've tried some).
爱情果 (Ai Qing Guo, or Fruit of love). Didn't try as i didn't think i needed to look for love out of some tomato-look-alike fruits.
Of course, just like any night markets, there were also stalls that were selling clothes. However, i didn't fancy the fashion of Cameron Highlands at all. As much as i love strawberries, i don't really intend to wear them on me.
The fruits and veggie were really cheap. Most things were sold in bulk, like 4 packets for RM10 (dried strawberries), or 2 big packs for RM10 (veggie), or 14 small packs for RM10 (veggie). So needless to say, we bought a lot of fruits and veggie back to JB. I was thinking to myself that luckily my mom wasn't with us, or else she would have bought the whole week of supply back and burst our car boot.
We bought some food stuffs such as fried veggie and fresh fruits back to hotel. We had these food as dinner at the open-air mezzanine in the hotel. It was a totally enjoyable evening, eating food that were fresh and healthy, sitting around chit-chatting with good friends, inhaling the fresh air, with the cool wind blowing and all. For a moment, i almost had a feeling that life couldn't be any better than that.
We all went to bed rather early that night. I guess everyone was exhausted after all the walking. I even had muscle ache for a few days after that; but as long as we had fun (and kinda served as a workout for me), then i guess it was just a small price to pay on my part.
Labels: travel
