The highlight of our visit to the Port Dickson area was a visit to the Sky Ladder Pineapple Farm, guided by the owner Dato Lee Mok Foong. We arrived late afternoon so got to enjoy that beautiful golden hour when the world seems richer and more colourful.
You can take tours around the farm in this open-sided bus which stops at all the best places for photos as well as to learn about farming as part of the burgeoning eco-tourism business in the area. This is ideal family entertainment and a great alternative/addition to the beach as a destination for a holiday in Port Dickson. You can get more information from the Sky Ladder Pineapple Farm Facebook page.
Since this is primarily a pineapple farm, let’s talk a bit about pineapples!
The farm has a cafe/shop where you can enjoy pineapple-related products and learn a bit more about pineapples. Of the six varieties (shown right), the main crop here is the Moris pineapple, and it is very sweet and quite delicious. Pineapples take a whole year to produce a fruit, then the plant has to be dug up and replaced with a new plant. The waste vegetation is then composted to be returned to the earth later. Note the serated edges of the leaves: these fruits are well protected and workers picking pineapples need tough gloves and sharp blades.
To enhance your experience in the farm, sets of stairs (ladders) and colourful buildings have been placed so you can have plenty of Instagramable moments! Below is a photo of Lee with one of his staff Gordon, as well as one of the several farm dogs on site. This is just a selection of many photos taken on this afternoon, as there are more stair options for which I do not have photos.
Another photo oportunity comes from a Minangabau-style wooden house amongst the pineapples.
In addition to pineapples, you can also see how sweetcorn is grown (as well as lemongrass and choi sum).
We walked between the plants and quickly saw how much non-humans, i.e., rats, also like eating sweetcorn! This corn cob (photo right) has been devoured by rats and this picture demonstrates the problem that farmers worldwide have in protecting their crops.
The bus tour will take you to a lovely lake, with swifts flying out from their home on the hill opposite. All the lakes on this site are leftovers from the open cast mining of tin in the past. They really make you think of the scale of the tin mining operations in this area of Malaysia.
There is also an ATV bike ride facility here, a fish pond, a prawn farm, large vegetable plots for local farmers, cows on the road, old rubber trees plantations, and durian orchards. I may have left something out, but I hope you get an impression of all that can be done and seen when visiting the Sky Ladder Pineapple Farm.
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