A little while ago Haze and I took a little weekend getaway to Fraser’s hill, the less glamorous of the highlands in Pahang after Genting, Cameron, and Bukit Tinggi.
For the lack of flashiness and modern entertainment, Fraser’s Hill has that rustic charm that if not for the cars parked on the side of the road, the place would look almost exactly alike as it was 20-30 years back.
the famous clock tower at Fraser’s hill
The hill is situated at some 1,500 meter up, with a perfect temperature of 17-25C, and the void of noise except for some bird chipping sound. It is a perfect place to recharge the soul.
It’s only a couple hours drive from KL, and a scenic one at that. Our hotel room at Puncak Inn costs around RM 120 with clean sheets, warm shower, and great location.
So now, here’s 5 things you can do at Fraser’s hill, and the great thing is, they won’t stress your wallet.
jungle trekking is a great exercise!
1. Jungle Trekking
There are a number of trails on Fraser’s hill, they are reasonably well traveled with little rest stations within the jungle too. Most trails are not more than 1-2 kilometers in length and they usually have rest stops in the trail too.
Click on map above for higher resolution
We trekked some 6.7 km in the jungle over 1.5 hours or so. It was refreshing, and of course, very tiring too. One advise though, wear anti-leech socks or bring salt, I ended up having to use a knife to peel off a couple leech on my foot at the end.
Cost - RM 0.
dining at Scott’s, Fraser’s Hill
2. Dinner at Scott
After a good shower, we walked over to Scott’s just right next door to the hotel. A Western + local food restaurant that was probably previously a house owned by some English dude who missed home too much he built a house that is completely out of place in this country.
There are a couple tables at the garden, more indoor, a bar, and sofa in front of the fireplace too. It was charming.
The food wasn’t too shabby either, but don’t expect something spectacular though. My lamb chop tasted just fine if not a little fatty, the fish and chips was decent, and we do like the orange cake they had for the night.
Cost - RM 50 or so, including drinks.
archery for only RM 8 for 10 arrows
3. Archery
After dinner we went straight to bed even though it was only 8 or 9pm, the jungle trekking, dinner, and the perfect temperature was too conducive to sleeping I guess.
The next morning we took a short drive up to the paddock. Our first activity of the day was archery. RM 8 for 10 arrows, and the idea is to not miss the target completely. I got 10 out of 10 on target, yey!
Cost - RM 16 for two.
horse back riding for only RM 5
4. Horse back riding
And since I had not ridden a horse since I was 5 (with my parents in Medan, I think), it was a perfect chance to do so again. It was slightly anti climatic to be honest, you sit on the saddle, and the dude guide the horse making a round, and that’s it.
The good part is, my balls didn’t have to suffer, and you can’t be the price of only RM 5!
Cost - RM 10 for 2 pax.
boating at Allan’s water for.. RM 6
1. Boating at Allan’s Water
Believe it or not, there is actually a lake of sort (I think a dam) at Fraser’s hill by the name of Allan’s water. You can rent one of those paddle boats for a good 10-20 minutes of pleasure boating on the water. It’s kinda like taipeng lake but minus the mosquitoes and hot sun, a semi-romantic thing to do too.
Cost - RM 6 for a boat
So there you go, a wonderful weekend getaway that costs less than RM 200 including hotel, food, and activities. Add in perhaps another RM 50-80 for transportation, it is still a bargain.
I think I want to go back to that place for a longer stay next. 
Pulau Aur is one of the Southern most diving destination in Malaysia, as a result, the island is probably more popular to Singaporean than the average Malaysian. Which explains why Gab, who used to work in Singapore helped organize this trip right after our Redang Project AWARE dive trip last September.
The operator was FWS, and we stayed at Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge.
the journey to Pulau Aur via Mersing
Racheal who missed the Redang trip due to illness was able to join us on the last dive of the season with her boo Norman. Terence, Gab, Irene, Horng, and myself fit into 2 cars and started our journey to Pulau Aur on Thursday evening, taking advantage of the holiday on Friday (Deepavali.)
While the road journey is only some 360 KM, the east-west bit was through old trunk roads and thus it took a good 4.5 hours to get there while driving relatively speedy. This is evident from Irene’s constant exploit of the poor IKEA soft toy to cover her face over the windier part of the track.
Port Cafe by Mersing Jetty
We arrived at Mersing just before midnight, parked the car and took care of supper in the TSH (tourist slaughter house) looking restaurant that is the Port Cafe. As it turned out, food wasn’t all too expensive at less than RM 10 per plate, and the nasi goreng Cina was exceptionally tasty too!
slave style boat transfer from Mersing to Pulau Aur
The boat to Aur left Mersing just past midnight. There wasn’t any real seating space on this boat, there were 2 “decks” of sleeping space instead. If you’re like us and got on the boat late, all there’s left would be the rear upper deck that has about 3cm headroom.
The experience was a bit like sleeping in a coffin, except there’s an additional falling hazard and the aircond was too cold. It was still fun though, I slept through most part of the boat ride, bliss!
the resort at night, we arrived before day break
We reached the resort before sunrise. Being ushered down the boat onto another platform in the middle of water while still super woozy was certainly an experience. The resort wasn’t even really in sight at night, it felt like we were on set for Pirates of the Pulau Aur or something, that sorta woke me up.
Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge does look a lot more inviting in daylight
This is the view of the resort taken from the small jetty that’s only good enough to park a sampan (shallow water). The seating area’s for moonlight BBQ dinner, with Narcosis bar on the left. There are altogether 18 rooms in 9 different semi-d chalet.
Our rooms were located on the 2nd level and it was already too high to climb after exhausting dives. I’d appreciate an escalator around here, but the view is fantastic though.
breathing compressed air – bliss!
Diving is done from the very same boat that we took from Mersing. We set up our gears and left them on the big boat, but going to and from the diving boat to resort had to be done via the sampan. A bit of a hassle but we weren’t really complaining.
nudibranches at Pulau Aur
There were 9 dives scheduled in 2 days, I did 8 and skipped the last night dive mainly due to exhaustion. Over here there was no time to do anything else, it was dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, and with some naps in between.
This was really a proper diving trip, there weren’t any activities for snorkelers.
we take a sampan to the bigger boat before each dive
Besides the platform, Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge does not really have a beach. There were, however, two very short stretch of beaches at each side of the resort accessible via the very poorly maintained wooden bridge (one of which already completely destroyed). The resort owner explained that maintenance of these bridges/walkways are done by the Malaysian government…
tranquilizing seascape
Since it was the last dive trip before season ends, the water condition was not exactly the greatest. We were in fact pretty lucky to not have to deal with any thunderstorm or crazy huge waves when we had to be under or on the ocean.
Visibility, as a result, wasn’t too great either, and most dive sites had mild to strong current, not particularly friendly to beginners.
Terence with his new gear, weird sea creature, color-coordinated Racheal
That said, we still had pretty decent dives that could have been even better if not for the fact that our Dive Master somehow always think that fighting the current head on is such a great idea.
There were the usual suspects under the sea – several types of nudibranches, bat fish, cleaner fish, clown fish, baby baraccuda, puffer fish, angel fish, and so on. Horng even spotted a cuttlefish!
Our hope of swimming with a whale sharks though, will have to wait for future trips.
awesome food at Pulau Aur Diver’s Lodge
The food at Diver’s Lodge was really way better than our expectations. We had moon light buffer dinner the first night, and really awesome BBQ dinner the second night. There were unlimited grilled prawns, beef, squid, cuttle fish, and so on. I still miss the sliced fried potato there.
Even the lunch/tea time food were pretty good, fried chicken, fish, and of course, that awesome homemade donut with Hershey’s chocolate sauce.
earth is 70% water, don’t always be land bound
I think I’m done with diving for 2010, next year we’ll get the girls to learn diving too! Kerol, Kim, Haze, Diana and more (and also the return of Gareth), can’t wait!
and boy it was a tiring but satisfying dive trip over the long Deepavali weekends (don’t you love the way we celebrate every cultural holiday here?).
The journey to Pulau Aur was one of the most interesting I’ve been to any islands. Since there’s this thing called day job, the dive trip report will have to wait. In the mean time, here’s a photo of the boat we jumped off to breath compressed air.
How was your weekends?
Just got back from Redang island for Project AWARE + diving trip. 2010 is now officially a diving year for me since this has turned out to be the 5th diving trip of the year after Sipadan/Mabul, 2 trips to Tenggol, and a previous trip to Redang in June.
Haze, Joel, Wan Czin, Yuki, Horng, Ian, Irene, Vinn, Zess, Gabriel, Terence, KY
Project AWARE is also known by the less glamourous name of International Cleanup Day whereby beach enthusiasts all over the world come together and basically spend a morning clearing up a section of beach from things that shouldn’t be there.
Our group managed to picked up some 500+ cigarette buds from just one small stretch of beach in front of a resort, and there were 5 other teams that picked up similar amount of ciggy buds and other junks too. One other interesting thing we picked up, among ropes/bottle caps/slippers/etc was a piece of soiled underwear :S
Project AWARE is usually partly sponsored by the resort, and hence we also scored 3 dives at a reduced rate. However, the visibility weren’t great, and our instructor too were reluctant to take us to some of the more interesting/challenging sites due to the larger amount of divers on each trip. This was actually my 2nd participation of Project AWARE, with the previous one all the way back in 2004 at Redang, my 2nd dive trip.
After this trip, I now logged 45 dives in total, with 31 of them from this year and 14 from 2004.
Since this is a space is sorta known as a food blog, I shall also introduce the best 3 layer tea from this side of Malaysia – the little kopitiam at Redang Beach Resort manned by an uncle. The blend of evaporated milk, tea, and palm sugar’s perfect! The lor mai kai (steamed glutinous chicken rice) is pretty awesome too!
As for accommodation, we stayed at Pelangi resort, which in my opinion is a bit better than Redang Beach resort. There’s attached toilet on each room instead of communal hostel style arrangement, for example. Food wise they’re both similarly sad though.
There’ll be a bit more on this trip in the coming post(s), but in the mean time, please help complete the survey on Shark’s fin on the side bar on your right. I need the information for an upcoming post, thanks!
The photo below depicts two girls screaming on top of their lungs, the background you see behind those tiny windows is not an illusion, the earth was not parallel with the pint size airborne vehicle we were in.
cheesie & Haze screaming their lungs out
The little plane was a Cessna 172, the girls Haze and Cheesie, Reuben was our tour guide by air, and I was riding shot gun.
The following video condensed the 45 mins or so flight trip into an easy to digest clip less than 2 minutes. The screaming girls in action, watch it.
Departing from Sg. Besi airport gave us the opportunity to fly closer to the city than any other airport. Though the check-in procedure to get to Royal Selangor Flying Club was a bit of a drag (it’s a military base after all), it was worth it.
Reuben the pilot
Reuben took us around Mid Valley, banked over the iconic Batu Caves, and over quite a bit of KL landscapes I don’t actually recognize. There was no air conditioning on the aircraft, but it was breezy, and the temperature drops a few degrees due to the altitude.
some 1500 feet below, we have Sim City MidValley
It was comfortable, we had headphones on, allowing chatters without being overwhelmed by the noise from the single engined Cessna.
And then there’s the stunts, of course. Reuben will perform several acrobatic maneuvers (or just 1-2 if you have overly loud screaming ladies) over the “training area” where you feel the effect of 2G, and 0G too. It was quite a lot more fun than roller coaster rides. Cos you know, there’s no track and it’s a 1500 feet down to solid earth below.
i get to be a fake co-pilot
Before it all ends, I even got to be a fake co-pilot for a bit, getting a feel on how the steering turns (while not actually turning it at all).
The experience in available at KL by Air for RM 600 per hour with up to 3 passengers. Reuben is a certified pilot and a soon-to-be flight instructor.
