Coach Bus Transportation

An interesting conversation with Gerard. When a guest enquired on which bus coach service to take, Gerard replied, “You pay more for the bus service that breaks down the least often.”

Intriguing. The cheaper the coach bus service, the more prone the bus you're planning to take will breakdown. And if you have a connecting flight to catch, you are in big trouble!

Murphy's Law also plays a part here too!

When related an incident, one group who booked a coach bus service in the morning to travel from Cameron Highlands to Penang, the morning bus broke down. So the bus company relegated them to the next coming bus on schedule. And what do you know? That second bus broke down too on the way up to Cameron Highlands!

So what the bus company did was to place them on the normal public bus service to take them down to Tapah where they can catch another bus coach to Penang. And that public bus too broke down, and have to wait for the next public bus service.

All in all, it took them some more than 12 hours to reach their travel destinations!

There's a lesson to be learned here. Cheap is not necessary good.

And the conclusion, go for Kang Minivan service. Best all rounder!

Jamu from Rafflesia Flower

Interesting how this traditional medicine ‘jamu’ using Rafflesia flower azlanii bud for reducing weight, to shrink uterus after giving birth and for supposedly sexual strength for men. The UKM study found out that it works in a way but there is a unfortunately cost to using this Rafflesia flower bud, it damages the liver and spleen.

This highlight shows that using ‘jamu ‘ made using Rafflesia flower bud is not safe for consumption. When they fed it to the mice subjects, they did find the size of the mice decreased, which you meant if you want to lose weight it works, but at a cost of damaging your liver and spleen which also decreased in size despite the fact the liver was able to detoxify the body from the harmful substance.

Perhaps this warning should help to preserve the Rafflesia flower plant from being harvested (and sold for about RM9 to RM25 depending on the size), AFAIK, which is an endangered species. Perhaps the Rafflesia plant azlanii specie is not so endangered? Well I’m no botanist, but I do know there are many traditional medicine be it Chinese, Malay, Indian or Western, all must be studied carefully before simply consuming them. You never know the active ingredient may have some other undesired side effect.

Like recently I just learned that Ginseng does boost your blood circulation and metabolism (they managed to isolate the active ingredient during their research) but is not good to be consumed during childbearing because it dilates the blood vessel and would cause excessive bleeding during delivery.

My dad also advises me not to mix Western medicine with traditional Chinese herbs and medicine as it might cause undesired effect or it might cancel out each other’s potency.

Anyway as far as Rafflesia flower plant is concerned, I just want to view the largest flower in the world and not so much about taking it as a traditional medicine.

Some facts about Rafflesia flower plant

Wesak Day coming up

Wesak day coming this 28th May. Will be a super long Malaysia holiday weekend . Quick checking, Singapore also got Vesak day holiday on 28th May, so make that a double super long Malaysia Singapore holiday weekend!

And the verdict? A super traffic scrunch in good old ever popular Cameron Highlands resort holiday getaway travel destination!

Better plan for another time unless you absolutely must go (well, fed up of the heat wave, must see greenery, and the children must go somewhere... etc). Must go, must go, but well, make your wise decision, there are many other tourism Malaysia travel destination that you can go.

If not, join the scrunch in Cameron Highlands.
Have some patience and courtesy and goodwill to your fellow holiday makers!
Cheers!

School Holidays in June

School term break, Malaysia holidays and Singapore holidays coming up! Cuti-cuti Malaysia, yes? Hey, do watch out for holiday scrunch in Cameron Highlands and if at all possible don't come up during the weekend. You might regret it from the traffic congestion! Cameron Highlands is very popular getaway travel destination so plan wisely!

Malaysia School Holidays 2010
Second mid-term break from 5th June to 20th June

Singapore School Holidays 2010
Semester 1 Term 2 from 29th May to 27th June

Plan well and avoid the traffic jam nightmare in Cameron Highlands!

Cheers!

Related post:
Malaysia Holidays and school term breaks 2010

Starbucks Summer Tasting Special

Starbucks in Cameron Highlands is part of the Summer Tasting Special promotion amongst the Starbucks Malaysia chain of Starbucks coffee shops. Check out the list and see if you can get some free coffee on that day on the 27th May 7.30pm. Since I not there in CH, I won't get to try it up there, but I still can try them coz there is one near my house in Petaling Jaya!

Check out the list of Starbucks coffee shop location for the Summer Coffee Tasting event!

Cheers!

How to use this Cameron Highlands website

Basically I have tried to compartmentalise the information and article reviews into section. Of course sometimes the ideas do overlap so it might end up here and there, but basically I have placed them into several general groups:

Accommodation
Food
Tourist Attractions
Getting There
Others

And from there, there are sub-groups and sub headings, so in the end it gets kinda messy. Hopefully you will be able to access each of the information quickly without throwing up your hands in exasperation and head towards the comment section and throw me an email. Hey, I'm kinda busy and if the question is inane I probably won't entertain. After all the information is in the website somewhere.

Use the site search, it might just turn up some gems lodged deep within the site. And yes, it is growing day by day, and getting bigger! The information lie therein might serve you well for planning your trip to Cameron Highlands!

Cameron Highlands Blog on the go!

I'm going to give this blogging on the go for Cameron Highlands Destination website. Quick short post from my mobile phone giving short insightful comments. Or even use it for quick notes while I'm at Cameron Highlands for my later posting of proper articles about our favourite Malaysian highlands escaped holiday travel destination getaway! Yey.

Black tea for diabetics

Interesting. Black tea has another plus point for treating diabetes. It seems the researchers at Tianjin Key Laboratory in China found the polysaccharides (a kind of carbohydrate) in black tea helps inhibit the absorbtion of glucose. They also studied the other teas, green tea, oolong tea. All three have polysaccharides but the black tea inhibition ability is the best.

So drink up more black teas! And yes the tea varieties in Cameron Highlands are of course black tea.

Cheers!