BOH Sungai Palas Tea Plantation – Everyone’s Favorite Scenic Spot!
There are several tea plantations to see but almost everyone chooses the BOH Sungai Palas Tea Plantation for their first visit!
The facilities are nice, and you don’t even have to pay for entrance fees when you visit this place!
Is there anything you should know about before you come here though? Find out in this post!
High Traffic Area
It’s not just that everyone aims to visit this place, there is only one road into the plantation. And it’s the same one you need to exit as well.
Furthermore, if you choose the left of the first fork, that will take you to the Mossy Forest which is another highlight for many visitors to the highlands.
You can come early in the morning if you want to get here before everyone else does. There is a spot that overlooks the tea plantation and sunrise that is popular with visitors too.
The official opening time of the visitor center is 8:30am but the guards may let cars in as early as 8am.
Is this place wheelchair accessible?
If you are driving here on your own, there’s a boardwalk with stairs that leads up to the visitor center from the spacious open-air car park (no fees required).
But if you can’t walk the steps up, continue to drive on past the car park, and up to the visitor center. This way, you can avoid climbing up the steps to reach the visitor center.
The center has some slopes and ramps that make it possible for wheelchair users to utilize the facilities. But there are no dedicated toilets for wheelchair users. At least, we didn’t see any when we visited.
What to see and do here
BOH Sungai Palas Tea Plantation has good facilities and clear signage at their visitor center.
There are ample toilets (although you must bring your own tissue), an on-site café and not one, but two different seating sections that have views of the plantation below. Additionally, there’s a briefing room where you can watch a slideshow about the history of tea harvesting here.
We saw some relics from their tea processing years (almost a hundred years in total) like a tea leaf crushing wheel just before the Tristan Terrace.
If you’re keen on shopping, you can buy all sorts of tea at their gift shop. There are some samples to try and smell before you make your purchases. You might want things like limited edition packages that you can’t get elsewhere. But we did also see their sachet drinks that can be easily bought in most supermarkets.
There are free regular factory tours that you can join at the back of the visitor center. These are very short (under 15 minutes), and while the staff speak English, the factory is very noisy inside. A strong scent of tea leaves and the presence of tea leaf dust is heavy here.
They do sell packaged tours that run for longer too (shortest is an hour) and these, come with a tea tasting session which the free tours do not. To us, it’s not cheap though.
Other than this, you can’t do much besides enjoy the scenery with a cup of tea. There is a balcony where you can get nice photos of the plantation below. The stairs up to the visitor center go though part of the plantation too but the bushes here are slightly unkempt and overgrown since they are purely for display.
Note: There are many spots to take photos of the tea plantation up close along the way to the visitor center but just be mindful of not blocking the traffic
What’s on the menu
Whatever you do, avoid the scone set here. It’s not an experience we would like to repeat. It’s not cheap either.
We’re not big fans of the food here in general. The cakes are just ok – banana carrot cake doesn’t seem to have any banana in it. And the savory croissants would be a lot better if they were prepared on the spot rather than left to get soggy.
What we have tried before that was nice was their nasi lemak.
You can’t go wrong a with a cup of tea here either. We’ve been here several times (and also their branch at the Habu tea plantation) and the tea is consistently milky, creamy, smooth, flavorful, and not too sweet.
