Fathers Guest house has the perfect location on a small hill overlooking the tiny town of Tanah Rata in the Cameron highlands. Situated outside the town, but only a 3 minute walk into it, it has fantastic views and is tranquil but still has access to any activities the town has to offer.
If you call the owners in advance letting them known when you will arrive then they will collect you from the town and save the walk up the hill with heavy bags. They also tend to be one of the touts who wander the bus drop off area and so if you arrive by bus then there is almost always someone there who you can ask to get a lift up the hill.
Driving up towards the guesthouse the first thing that is obvious is that this is a beautiful area. The views from the top go right across the town and amongst the rolling hills of the area. The Cameron highlands are often visited as a break from the towns or heat of the lowland areas and Fathers definitely offers a place to chill out.
The guesthouse
sits in its own grounds with vegetable gardens and flower gardens that are well-tended and has a path cut out of the hill through gardens and then wild areas into the town making it a pleasant walk instead of going along the road. The main house is a colonial building that has largely been preserved as it was but modernised where need be. There is also all the additional facilities that would be expected in a good guesthouse such as a large common area with a TV and a good DVD choice, a book swap, internet and a small onsite restaurant. The restaurant has Chinese and western food which isn't fantastic but is very reasonable especially for being cheaply priced. The food was certainly better than much of that in town.
Fathers also has a tour office in the main building. Usually I am against this as I feel it pressures people to buy from the place they are staying in rather than finding the best option, however, I found that there was very little pressure and the advice given seemed genuine. For instance i said that I wasn't interested in walking tours so they provided me with detailed maps of the region and advice for walkers so that I could create my own trip safely. At the end of my trip they told me that getting onto my next destination of Taman Negara by public bus would involve a substantial detour back to Kuala Lumpur and so offered a minibus trip directly. As this is true and the trip was a good price, again, I didn't feel like I was being sold things I didn't want.
The guesthouse has a number of accommodation options to suit all budgets. The options and pricing currently is as follows (£1 is approximately RM5.7 currently): Main house Double room- en suite/shared-RM80/RM60 Main house Triple room (single and queen bed)-RM70 Hut Double room shared bath-RM30-40* Hut Triple room-RM45-60* Hut dorm-RM10 *Depends on the exact room and time of year .
The rooms apart from the main house are all within 100metres and in pretty whitewashed stonework that probably used to be outhouses or servants quarters for the old colonial house so 'hut' is a rather bad name for them. The prices I found comparable to other local places in Tanah Rata and in Malaysia generally whilst travelling.
My one disappointment and the reason I downgraded the rating from 5 to 4 stars was the cheap 12 bed dorm. Obviously I wasn't expecting too much but it really did feel like they had just slung 12 badly sprung beds into an outhouse and thrown some blankets on them. The room felt like an army barracks. It was also a bit damp when the weather is wet and I felt for such a good guesthouse even the cheapest rooms should have a little effort put into them although to be fair they were probably still among the top end of dorm rooms for the area. I was told by a few guests that the other rooms, even those in separate buildings from the main house, did not suffer from this problem. and from the brief look I had in them they seem to live up to the advert of being clean, cozy and comfortable.
Overall I would highly recommend Fathers Guest House as it has a fantastic location that lets you see the beauty of the local area unlike many of those cramped into town and it has everything a guesthouse could need. On top of that the staff are very friendly and happy to give advice or talk about the local area whenever they can. They really seem to try and help their guests which is not always the case!
For further information and phone numbers: http://fathers.cameronhighlands.com/
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