Trip To Cameron Highlands 2014: Tanah Rata - Silverstar Apartment @ Greenhill Resort
By Elin Chow - Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Photo By: Elin Chow
During the Deepavali holidays this year, my colleague and I decided to visit Cameron Highlands for a day. It was an impromptu trip and not much planning had been done. Since Deepavali fell on a Wednesday, we decided to drive our way to Cameron Highlands immediately after we ended our work at 5.30 pm on the Tuesday evening. After a 5 hours drive, stopping once to have our dinner settled, we reached our destination at 11.30 pm.
For accommodation, we decided to book a night with Silverstar Apartment @ Greenhill Resort through Agoda as we feel that it was a rather great deal. Indeed, it was.
Silverstar Apartment @ Greenhill Resort
Situated in the heart of Tanah Rata, the Silverstar apartment @ Greenhill Resort is a private unit of a vacation home that is owned and operated by an individual owner. The apartment, which consists of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a small kitchen is the ideal place to stay for families or large group when visiting Cameron Highlands.
For meals, you would not need to worry as there are plenty of eateries around the vicinity. Although it was named as Greenhill Resort, look for the 'Heritage Hotel' signage on the main road instead.
There are ample of free parking space available in the apartment for you to park your car. However, as this is a residency area, you will have to share the car park with the residents of that apartment block.
For those who had booked your stay with the Silverstar Apartment @ Greenhill Resort, please note that there are no check in counter for you to collect your keys. We actually have to call the owner once we arrived at the apartment. Surprisingly, the owner told us that he had left the door of the apartment unlocked. We could just take the lift up and enter the apartment once we arrived.
To be frank, we were not very impressed with the appearance of the building and to a point of time, we did regret. We thought that the lift is seriously in need of maintenance. It looks like those we would commonly see in horror movies. Really dark and eerie.
However, we were even more shocked when we realized that the owner has not only left the door unlocked, but has also left the keys in the apartment!
The living room is equipped with a 5 seater sofa set, a glass coffee table and a flat screen satellite TV. Just the perfect place to stay for a family holiday.
Unfortunately, the TV was not in working condition even after we have tried every possible attempts to fix it. So, what is the purpose of having a satellite TV in the living room when it is not working at all?
We did not inform the owner of the apartment about the faulty TV as it was already past midnight. Perhaps the owner has long been informed of the non-working TV, but could not be bothered to have it replaced. Or probably the TV was not faulty to begin with. It might be just us who could not figure out how to operate a satellite TV. Whatever it was, the non-working TV did not really bother us since we arrived pretty late and will be leaving very early the next morning.
Comparing to the TV, the absence of Wi-Fi was actually the bigger irritation for us. Well, at least for those who did not have a mobile data plan like me. The apartment actually provides free Wi-Fi access for all its guests, which annoyingly is only available upon request. However, we still decided not to call and disturb the owner at such a late hour just for the Wi-Fi password.
The owner should have left the password for the Wi-Fi in the apartment. I wonder why he did not when he had left the door of the apartment unlocked, with its keys hanging on the wall, next to the entance. So, what is he worrying about?
The bathroom is really cramped and when you shower, everything just gets pretty wet and slippery. Please note that there are no bath towels provided, which means that you will have to bring yours along. This really annoyed me too as I have to pack in extra weight in my small backpack. But luckily, we actually called the owner two days before we arrived to enquire whether there are any bath towels in the apartment. If not, we can just forget about showering that night. But we still glad that the owner has actually provided us with a hair dryer in the bathroom to dry our hair after bathing. There were also bars of soap provided as well, but you would have to bring along your own shampoo if you are intending to wash your hair.
As for the kitchen area, it is pretty well-equipped with refrigerator, electric water boiler, microwave and some basic dining utensils. However, it does not come with a stove, which somehow discourage all guests from cooking in the apartment. Well, not a bad thing actually. At least this will keep the entire apartment free of oil and grease most of the time.
Even so, do not feel too disappointed if you prefer to enjoy dinner with your famiy or friends in the comfort of your apartment. You could still bring your electric cooker along and have a wonderful steamboat session together.
That was actually part of our initial plan. However, since we arrived at the apartment very late at night and left really early the next morning, we could not have the steamboat session as planned. How I wish we could stay for one more day!
Being hungry at 1am, we headed out and bought some Roti Canai (also known as Roti Prata) and cup noodles to fill up our stomach. Such a sinful supper!
No matter how guilty I felt, I still ate 2 pieces of Roti Canai for that night. Or should I say for that morning since it was already an hour past midnight? We finished our very unhealthy supper at around 2.30am in the morning and decided it was time for bed. It was a really long and tiring day, but luckily, it was all worthwhile since we managed to have our fun.
The next morning, we glanced out of the large window in the living and were delighted to greet by a stunning view of the surrounding landscape.
Final Thoughts
Overall, we have really enjoyed our stay at the apartment and would recommend to anyone who is looking for a spacious place that can accommodate as much as 10 people in one space.
The Silverstar Apartment actually feels more like a home stay than a resort to me. It actually makes me feel like home. Price wise, it was rather affordable. The apartment only cost us about RM 230 a night for the 5 of us.
It was quite a comfortable night stay at this apartment. Everything was clean, well-maintained and nicely furnished. It will be even better if the Wi-Fi and satellite TV were in good working condition during our stay.
However, please keep in mind that this apartment does not have any hotel-like amenities such as a pool, restaurant, gym or room services. The Silverstar apartment is not suitable for you if these amenities are of a great importance to you.
Oh, not forgetting to mention that we only realized that we selected the wrong date after we completed our booking? We actually called Agoda customer services centre right away after realizing the mistake to request for an amendment for our booking. The staff told us to wait on the phone while he contacted the owner of the apartment. Surprisingly, the owner was very accommodating and allowed us to make amendment to our booking. Although Agoda has a non-refundable policy, they still took extra step to refund the over payment to us as we had paid much more for the wrong date which we had booked. Thank you Agoda and the owner for making our trip to Cameron Highlands great. If not, we might still be blaming ourselves for having to spend so much more due to some stupid mistake we had made.
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