A Weekend Dash-away to Fraser Hill

Another weekend didn’t just slip by without me doing something quite out of the ordinary. This time, I went to Fraser Hill to do a little bit of trekking, something that I’ve been quite crazy about doing since – well – not so lately. As one of those names that I kept hearing about when I was still a school kid, I had always wanted to go there, together with the likes of Penang Hill (checked!), Cameron Highland (checked!) and Langkawi (probably soon).

My imagination of Fraser Hill had always been that it was located somewhere in Johor and it had remained so until I checked it out on google map and found out that it was actually in Pahang. So, off to Pahang we went.

Driving to Fraser Hill had proved to be such a beautiful ride with beautiful countryside and eye-soothing greenery along the way. It took us past the beautiful Hulu Selangor dam – something that I didn’t expect of bumping into thanks to my lack of research. Judging from the water level, the reservoir was clearly on a decline so the issue about a looming water problem in Klang Valley was not made up after all (kah?).

But seriously, the view that we were served with as we drove up to Fraser Hill was so breathtaking I had to keep reminding myself over and over again that I was in Selangor (and later Pahang) and not in Sabah. The road was quite much of a zig-zag which reminded me of the road that connects Tambunan and KK via Gunung Mas. Every now and then we’d bump into a group of monkeys monkeying around on the road so we had to slow down and wait for them to let us pass.

We arrived in Fraser Hill when the sun had already made its way down behind the hills but the visibility was still good and clear.  Thinking that sleeping in the car wouldn’t really kill us if the worst case scenario was to be considered, we didn’t bother to pre-book for accommodation so we took a little bit of time surveying around before settling for Puncak Inn. Located very much in the middle of town, there’s no way you can avoid seeing it when you come to Fraser Hill.

Puncak Inn was surprisingly not bad at all for a hotel. It has a selection of 4 room types, namely Standard, Deluxe, Family and Junior Suite. Each room comes with free breakfast for two so we had to pay an extra of RM12 so that everybody could have breakfast (there were 3 of us).

We picked Junior Suite for the fact that everybody would get a bed of his own except that one of them was not really a bed but more like a couch. Whoever took the couch would get the whole space of his own (separated by a wall from the other two) PLUS a full view of the television so it was actually quite fair for everybody. Heh.

Fraser Hill that I found out is a little town consisting mostly of hotels, chalets, leisure apartments and bungalows – both private company and government-owned alike. Despite its little size, it has pretty much everything for a basic life – a post office, a clinic, restaurants, mini-markets, ATM and even a golf course.

The temperature wouldn’t really kill you but you might want to wear thick clothes for your own comfort.

Restaurants are quite limited in number but sufficient. Prices vary but mostly affordable. There is a Chinese restaurant called Restoran Hill View that serves you with refrigerated beer so you don’t really need to fear death due to lack of alcohol in your system.  LOL!

If you are there on Sunday, it might be closed. But another restaurant called Scott which is heavily English in deco is always there to serve you with some although it might be a little bit more expensive. You may want to have a taste of its Banana cake.

Fraser Hill is more like a retreat centre where people come to run away from hustle and bustle of urban life. If you’ve come to Fraser Hill expecting to bang your head over Oppa Gangnam Style right until morning, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. In fact, the whole town falls asleep when night comes so there really is nothing much to do at night but zzzzz.

But of course, we didn’t go there to just sleep overnight and return to KL the next day and proclaim to everybody that ‘I’ve been to Fraser Hill’. No. We went there carrying a mission to accomplish. A BIG one. But of course I’ll spare it for another post.