Half-Day Tour of Cameron Highlands (Review)

The Cameron Highlands are popular because the elevation means it’s MUCH cooler there than anywhere else in Malaysia, and there’s lots of hiking trails and tourist-y things like strawberry farms and tea plantations to visit.

The easiest place to base yourself in the Cameron Highlands is Tanah Rata, which you can get to by direct bus from Kuala Lumpur in under 5 hours. I visited Tanah Rata recently and went on a half day tour to some important sites in the Cameron Highlands area.

This post is an overview of the tour I went on, my personal thoughts about my experience on the tour, and recommendations for similar tours.

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Tour Information

The tour company I went with was Discover Cameron.

• Time: 8:00 am to 2:00 pm (roughly)
• Includes: Tour guide (English-speaking), entrance to BOH Tea Plantation.
• Does NOT include: Entrance to Mossy Forest (additional RM10), food, water.

I booked my tour through my hostel, but you can also book a ticket to a similar tour here on Klook. This is a very popular tour and there’s tons of 4×4 zooming up and down the hills.

If you’d prefer, you can also do a full-day tour from Kuala Lumpur.

Most of my tour group (9 total including me) were actually doing the full-day tour, which continues onward from where the half-day tour stops. To be honest, the full-day tour didn’t interest me as it looked like a tourist trap, and I really only wanted to visit the Mossy Forest and the tea plantation anyway.

The Land Rover was an interesting experience. I’d been in one in Indonesia for the Mt. Bromo sunrise tour, but this particular vehicle was a lot older and a lot less comfortable. Most of the tour is going up mountains and then down again, so you do get jostled quite a bit. If you’re prone to carsickness, you might want to sit up front so you’re facing towards the road.

At the very end of the tour I was transferred into another 4×4 to get dropped back off into town, and it was MUCH nicer. I assume that must’ve been a more expensive tour. 😉

Tour Itinerary

The half day tour only goes to three places:

First stop: Mossy Forest

The Mossy Forest is one of the main attractions in the Cameron Highlands. It’s an evergreen forest near the summit of Mount Brinchang, over 200 million years old and the oldest in Malaysia. It’s popular with visitors for its boardwalk hiking trails and beautiful views.

Unfortunately, the main Mossy Forest trails are currently closed for maintenance.

The forest is very delicate, and too many visitors coming and touching the trees destroys the moss. It needs time to recover, so the rangers have closed most of the access to only a few hours in the morning and only to a smaller side-location.

The alternate trail doesn’t have a boarded walking path and you have to scramble slightly up and down some rocks. I didn’t find it too difficult, personally, but if it’s a rainy day then it’d be a lot slippier. Be sure to wear proper shoes for outdoor adventures if you’re going on this tour.

Still, it was a very beautiful area! We hiked up a short part of a mountain and got a history of the area, including why it’s so special. We also learned why it’s so mossy. Basically, the elevation means there’s lots of fog and dew, which helps the moss grow. Without the fog, there’d be no moss!

When you come early in the morning the fog hasn’t had time to burn off yet, so the views will mostly look like this:

Our guide made sure to stop and talk about local plants and how they’re used in medicine, or how they’re special to the forest. It was a very nice experience overall!

As for crowd levels: there were several other groups near us but we managed to avoid running into a truly massive group (maybe 30+ people) which I appreciated because nothing ruins the beauty of a forest like a horde of tourists yammering on.

Second stop: Tea plantation fields

After the Mossy Forest we made our way over to the BOH Tea Plantation area. BOH is a local company that produces something like 5 million cups of tea PER DAY, and yet it’s really only sold in certain parts of Asia (and on Amazon). I suppose it’s equivalent to a Lipton tea: basic, but good.

Our guide dropped us off at one section of the fields and let us walk about 5-10 minutes to get pictures before meeting us at the other end. He explained how tea production works, the history of the tea plant, how different types of tea are made (green, black, etc.) and who works for the tea company and what it’s like working for them.

Turns out it’s mostly immigrants from Pakistan and Sri Lanka who come to work here. They work on a 2 year contract and live in company-provided housing. Nowadays production is a lot more mechanized so it’s faster and safer for the workers, but it still seems like a very difficult job.

Third stop: BOH Tea Plantation

After that, we went to the visitor center for the tea plantation where we went on a free guided tour of the factory. They also have a tea shop, a couple restaurants, some good viewing platforms and a tea-tasting area.

By this point I was starving, so I got a snack and a cup of tea and sat to watch the fields for a bit.

It’s a very beautiful area, but unless you’re a tea enthusiast it’s not necessarily a “must visit.” I’ll be writing more about my visit to the visitor next so keep an eye out for that post.

After this plantation visit is where the group split up. The full-day tour people continued onward to a strawberry farm, and I was transferred to another 4×4 and driven back to Tanah Rata where I was dropped off at the bus station (which is the center of town). I grabbed some lunch and then went back to my hostel to rest for a bit.

Final Thoughts

This was basically exactly what I expected from the tour and I’m happy with what I saw for what I paid. It’s a very short tour but honestly it’s a good value because we got a good driver/guide and got to see some nice things.