Betau Valley

Betau Valley

Saturday 17 October 2015

Adventures to Bukit Cheeding on a hazy day

I've always wondered where is Bukit Cheeding situated because of the labelling on BOH Tea's packaging (looks like that would lead to the next adventure, to find Bukit Chantik...). I remembered having googled it some years back and there were suppose to have some visitor center there but a recent check didn't turn up quite the same - in fact there isn't any info on their site on the subject of the place. Curious, and with a day's break last Wednesday, I went there with a friend using GPS in his car (Garmin). What an adventure it turned out to be as we were directed to the back of the estate with no link road at Jenjarom and later another maze of toll gates and link road, finally found Bukit Cheeding (by entering SK Bukit Cheeding!). The plantation was a few kilometers before the school and is discreetly tucked away inside an oil palm estate next to Sime Darby's. No price for guessing - it was just a dirt road leading into the estate through 2 guard houses but beside some worker's quarters, there weren't anything to see. The tea plants were planted under the shades of old oil palm trees and weren't as healthy looking like those at Sungei Palas. Nevertheless, the place still exudes an old colonial planter charm the moment one drive into the estate...




 The buildings reminded me of my childhood days playing around old government buildings in Raub, and my school used to have windows and corridors like these (the old hospital too...).




The tea plants were still young and do not have the robust looking shades like those in Sungei Palas. The tea labelled as "Bukit Cheeding"is a very distinctive dark tea.


This is what the fuss was about - an English breakfast tea grown in the lowlands of Malaysia.

The Ant Lion

This alien-looking dragonfly is in fact unrelated to the dragonflies but belongs to the family of Antlions of the Owlfly family of the Order Neuroptera. At a glance, they look like dragonflies but have two long lobed antennae and when they are at rest, their wings are folded differently. Their larvae are predacious and are hiden at the bottom of a sand pit with gaping jaws waiting for their next meal to pass (probably the inspiration for many science fictions)...

 

This rather small one was attracted to my porch light and landed on the wall...