Today I’d like to tell you about the stunning tea plantations we visited during our short trip around Malaysia.
Malaysia’s tea plantations are in the Cameron Highlands (Pahang state), and many travellers include these unusual places in their itinerary. After the rest of Malaysia (Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Kota Bharu, Ipoh), the Cameron Highlands seem like a completely different world. Everything is different here — the air temperature, the plants, the weather, the food, the surrounding landscapes and the local people.
What you need to know before your trip (checked in October 2026). The BOH tea company has two gardens open to visitors. Sungei Palas near Brinchang has a café on a balcony overhanging the slopes (built in 2007, with a terrace added in 2019), a gallery about the history of tea and a shop. BOH Tea Garden near Ringlet is the company’s largest and oldest garden (over 465 hectares) and home to its first tea factory, dating from the 1930s. Both are open Tuesday to Sunday from 8:30 to 16:30 and are closed on Mondays (except for some public holidays and school holidays). According to BOH, factory tours run at both gardens. If you are travelling in winter, bear in mind that Chinese New Year in 2027 is celebrated on 6–7 February, and Monday 8 February is an additional public holiday across almost the whole country (except the state of Kedah); the gardens may be open on such holiday Mondays, but BOH gives no guarantee, so it is best to check the opening hours for public holidays on the BOH website a week before your trip. Before departure you also need to fill in the free digital arrival card MDAC. Entry to the Sungei Palas centre is free, according to the local directory Cameron Highlands Online — you only pay for tea in the café and any purchases. Below is the story of our 2014 trip.
The first thing you feel as soon as you arrive here is the cold! Sweltering in the heat of Kuala Lumpur or Ipoh, we could never have imagined we would be THAT cold! Luckily, I had bought a warm wrap in Kota Bharu, and we always carry hoodies with us. Our feet still froze, though, because tourist sandals were all we had — up there, it seems you can’t manage without insulated rubber boots.
So, if you want to visit the tea plantations, you have two options for where to stay — the small towns of Tanah Rata and Brinchang. We had read that Tanah Rata is apparently cheaper, while Brinchang is a little more expensive. In any case, they are not far from each other, and from either place you can take a tour of the tea plantations.
We stayed in Tanah Rata, so that was where our route started. Having bought a tour right at our hostel, we set off the next day on an exciting trip to the tea factory (the tour also included other interesting places, but those are covered in other articles).
The road itself is simply stunningly scenic! Tea-covered slopes in different shades of green stretch all around, the road runs along steep hairpin bends, and it is only wide enough for one car — to let oncoming traffic through, you have to pull into the special passing places that appear every so often.
Our first stop — actual tea bushes:
They say the best tea comes from the top two leaves of the bush; I don’t know how true that is, but the top leaves really do differ from all the rest — they are very tender and soft. Fresh leaves have no smell at all, so you can’t even tell straight away that this is tea.
Our bus driver (who doubled as the guide) told us that tea varieties differ greatly depending on how long the leaves have matured, and the tea is mostly picked by hand. Some tea bushes are not pruned, so they grow into tea trees.
We weren’t very lucky with the weather — it was very rainy that day; when we set off, the rain was pouring down non-stop, and one couple even refused to go.
A huge black cloud heading straight for us:
Through the window of the minivan taking us to the factory, the rain made it hard to see much, but the scenery was still spellbinding:
At last we arrived at the BOH — Best of Highlands tea factory:
The BOH tea company’s official website: bohtea.com (the old address, boh.com.my, now redirects there).
BOH’s tea plantations were founded in 1929 by British entrepreneur John Archibald Russell together with A. B. Milne, an experienced planter from Ceylon — it was the country’s first highland tea garden and the first tea plantation in the Cameron Highlands. Today BOH tea is supplied not only to the domestic market but internationally as well.
The tea factory is always full of people — lots of Malay and Chinese visitors, and you do come across Europeans too, though we didn’t meet any Russian tourists there, for example. The plantations are especially popular with locals, who come as whole families or school classes and spend weekends and holidays here:
When we were there, entry to the plantation and the visitor centre (part of the factory) was free, and according to the local directory it remained free in 2026. On the factory grounds you can drink fresh tea in a café with a picturesque view and buy various kinds of tea to take home.
The queue for the café is simply enormous:
The menu has nothing but tea, but so many kinds that it’s hard to choose — there’s plain black tea, teas with all sorts of tropical fruit flavours, herbal teas and iced tea:
We decided we could buy tea and try it back home, whereas we might not get another chance to look around the factory museum. Time was limited, as we were on an organised tour and only about 50 minutes had been allotted for the plantation visit (once again, it is always better to visit sights independently rather than with a tour, but this time that was how it turned out for us).
A view over the tea plantations:
Stunning colours, with absolutely no colour correction:
The colours are different here because the tea on this plantation has already been harvested — there are no young, bright-green leaves:
The viewing platform (the café is right there, so the view really is excellent), where everyone wants their photo taken:
It’s amazing how all these hills took shape, as if someone had moulded them out of plasticine and covered them in velvet:
You can walk along these paths — there are special hiking routes through the hills of the Cameron Highlands — but you do need suitable footwear, closed and waterproof:
Having admired the surroundings, we head inside the museum:
Posters about the flora and fauna of the Cameron Highlands and about how tea leaves are picked and processed are hung everywhere, and the walls are interestingly decorated with tree-trunk cross-sections:
We step into the tea shop:
Every imaginable tea is here — plain and with all sorts of flavours, in different packaging. Even if you’re not a tea drinker yourself, it makes an excellent gift:
You can also buy strawberry jam made from local strawberries grown on the highlands’ strawberry farms:
The prices didn’t seem cheap to us, which is rather surprising given that the tea grows right here. In 2014 a packet of ordinary black tea cost 7.65 ringgit.
Besides tea, you can buy souvenirs and postcards featuring the tea factory and Cameron Highlands imagery:
Incidentally, you can also taste the tea for free — there’s a teapot of freshly brewed tea right there in the shop.
We leave the shop, having picked up a couple of packets of tea (tasty, by the way), and carry on down the corridor. In one of the rooms you can rest on a little sofa and watch a film about all the stages of tea production:
And here the displays tell you about the factory’s social projects to develop and protect Malaysia’s wildlife:
Information boards:
An unidentified machine used in one of the stages of tea production:
You can book a tour of the factory and plantations:
A tool for picking tea leaves — by hand, only the most tender leaves are picked, for the premium varieties:
A notice explaining that, because of the low harvest, the tea production process can’t be seen today (apparently the tea leaves are not processed every day):
To go inside the factory, you had to wait for a member of staff to give a tour; in 2014 the factory tour was free:
Unfortunately, the factory was closed, so we couldn’t get inside:
We went back down to the viewing platform one more time:
Here you can see that the café sits right in front of the tea plantations (it’s in this very section of the building):
An “ancient” artefact:
And one more postcard-pretty view of the plantations:
If you’re wondering whether to include the Cameron Highlands and its tea plantations in your Malaysia itinerary, don’t hesitate — definitely come! Just not on a Monday: both BOH tea centres are closed that day. There’s an amazing atmosphere here, with clean mountain air, freshness and unforgettable views that are well worth seeing in person.
