Looking for fun attractions in the Desaru area? They don’t come bigger and with more things to do than the Desaru Fruit Farm.
Located a short drive from Desaru Coast, Desaru Fruit Farm is the place to learn about everything tropical fruit while having fun. In addition to a tour around the farm, you can take an ATV ride and eat a glorious 7-course lunch of fruit-infused dishes and soup. Of course, there is also a shop where you can stock up on fresh fruit.
Sound good? It did to us, so I visited here with my kids aged 6 and 11.
Below, you can read our full Desaru Fruit Farm review based on our experiences here. We describe everything there is to do as well as what it is actually like to visit here in this Desaru Fruit Farm blog.
We did have both EXCELLENT experiences here and a BAD one so make sure you read it all so you can make the most out of your Desaru Fruit Farm day trip!
Travelling to Malaysia? Click here to download your free Malaysia Trip Planning checklist. We’ll help you get ready for your trip!
Have any questions? Join our Malaysia Travel Planning Facebook group here now! It’s the perfect place to ask any questions and to be inspired.
Contents
Desaru Fruit Farm Review [2024]
The Desaru Fruit Farm Agro Tourism has won prizes for being the “best agro-tourism site” in Malaysia.
The farm itself is 180 acres and has a tropical fruit farm, agricultural gallery, fish pond and vegetable and herb gardens. There’s also a petting zoo and educational talks on bees.
Since there are a few different things to do here (with different Desaru Fruit Farm entrance fee costs), I talk about these things separately below.
Desaru Fruit Farm Tour
The main thing to do here is a fruit farm tour. They say this tour goes for 45 minutes to an hour and is a walking tour exploring the agricultural gallery, fish pond and fruit farm. There is a honey presentation as part of this too.
You also visit a petting zoo. As part of this, you are also given some fruit to try… supposedly! We did not get a “fruit packet”.
I also read that you visit herb and vegetable gardens, but we did not.
This tour went for about an hour and a half for us which was far too long and was quite disappointing. We joined this Desaru Farm tour as we love the fruit in Malaysia and we were excited to learn more and see it growing.
However, most of this Agro Farm Desaru tour is not actually fruit or the farm at all 🙁
The tour started with us being called up to get on a bus to the start of the walking tour. However, then everyone else was told to get on, and we were told to wait five minutes for the next bus.
Five minutes later, we hopped on the back of the truck to the tour starting point. When we got there, the people who had been on the bus were already on the tour. We took some photos while we waited for ours to start…
Then we realised we were meant to join the other people on their tour.
So we missed the first part of the tour. The guide could have at least told us to join them. We only did when we realised we were the only people left standing there and there was no more guide. Either if he had though, we still would have missed part of it.
We then walked through the fruit farm a little, and the guide explained about a few different fruits. Exactly how we thought it would be.
Except there was about 50 people on this tour, many were talking and the guide’s english was heavily accented so hard to understand with so much noise going on. He then took a call, and we walked along without any information. So we only had a few minutes of actual touring the fruit farm.
We arrived at the Agricultural Gallery where we were told we could buy food to feed the fis,h and we had 20 minutes.
Standing by a shed and a pretty pond with fish for 20 minutes was not what I imagined on a fruit farm tour, but we tried to make the best of it. There was a little bit of information and some old bicycles and equipment in the Agricultural Gallery.
We took a look, fed some fish and then looked at some chicken coops.
We then realised the guide was talking about a hive, bees and honey… Again, we missed out and what was going on was not clear. He said at the next stop, we could taste honey including some bitter honey. I was excited for that as I hadn’t eaten bitter honey before.
So we walked on but ended up a petting zoo. This was one of those animal attractions that made me feel awful. The animals did not seem to be in a great environment and the stop seemed to be about making more money from people buying pet food than anything educational.
My 6 year old fell in love with a rabbit so that was a plus. There were also turtles, goats and more. Unfortunately, there was no water or soap and no way to wash your hands after interacting with the animals.
The 5-10 minute stop turned into 20 minutes and then it took another 20 minutes for the buses to show up to take us back.
On arrival, we were led into a room to learn about honey. We went along as I still wanted to taste the bitter honey but ten minutes later when this still hadn’t happened, we walked out early. We couldn’t understand the guide and it had all got too much. Plus, we were hungry.
As you can probably guess, I really don’t recommend this tour. Pretty much all we did was stand around waiting.
HOWEVER, keep reading as we did have other experiences here which were great.
ATV Rides
You can take an ATV ride around the farm. We did this as we haven’t been on an ATV before and we wanted to try it.
We are glad we did!
It was lots of fun. The price includes a short training session, helmets and then you drive your ATV following a guide around the farm.
I did this with both my kids on the same ATV. We all had a lot of fun.
Lunch
I can’t recommend enough that you buy the lunch here. It’s detailed as a 7-course lunch of fruit-infused dishes and soup.
The lunch is well organised. You simply go the restaurant when you are ready, and you’ll be seated at a table.
You can then access a fruit buffet immediately. This has many types of fresh fruit chopped up and ready to be devoured. It was delicious 🙂 There was also roseapple juice and water.
They started bringing out our dishes quickly. It started with a Tom Yum soup which was the best I have had. Then many more dishes came out as well as rice. A few were spicy, the rest were not, so there were food options my kids would eat.
There were 7 dishes plus rice plus soup plus the fruit buffet.
They all had fruit in them. For example, the chicken had a passionfruit sauce.
It was a lot of food for one adult and two kids as you can see pictured here. It was so good and it felt like we hardly made a dent in what we were given.
It wasn’t just great food, but I liked that it was a bit different with the fruit fusions. Honestly, I think it is worth coming here just for the lunch.
While you couldn’t pay me to do the tour again, I’d happy return and pay for this lunch.
Shop
There is a shop on-site that you can visit even if you don’t want to do any of the activities. It’s a great place to pick up some delicious fruit.
We were also able to try some roseapple in here and actually, the worker who gave us that gave us more information on it than we got on the farm tour!
There are some other foods in here as well. It felt a little like a mini Chinese supermarket.
How It All Works
I had read about the tour options before visiting Desaru Fruit Farm, but it wasn’t clear to me how the place works. For example, could we just show up and do the tours, ATV ride etc or would there be long waits? Do you need tickets in advance?
It was very busy when we came here, but it was quite well organised. The tours all ran frequently, and we were able to do everything straight away without a problem.
So you can just show up and be on a tour, ATV ride or have lunch easily.
Note, there used to be paintball available here as well as a ropes course, but this is not available anymore.
Desaru Fruit Farm Video Walk-Through
In the following video, you can experience what it’s like to visit Desaru Fruit Farm as well as the whole Desaru Coast for a weekend. This is a video walk-through of all the top attractions in Desaru (including this farm) and a stay at the Hard Rock Hotel Desaru. It’s the best way to get an idea of what you’ll see here.
Make sure you subscribe to our channel for more Malaysian travel videos.
Where Is Desaru Fruit Farm?
Desaru Fruit Farm Johor Malaysia is about an hour’s drive from Johor Bahru. It takes about 15 minutes drive from Adventure Waterpark in Desaru.
It’s possible to get here by bus with some walking and a lot of time. However, realistically, you need to drive here or take a taxi.
We visited here as part of our journey from Singapore to Desaru. You can hire a taxi for eight hours that can take you to the main Desaru attractions, like the Fruit Farm, on your way between the two places.
We can book this for you with a safe and reliable local operator.
Desaru Fruit Farm Kota Tinggi address: 92, 82200 Kota Tinggi, Johor, Malaysia
Desaru Fruit Farm Opening Hours
The Desaru Fruit Farm Malaysia opening hours is daily from 8am to 6pm.
Desaru Fruit Farm Ticket Price
The exact Fruit Farm Desaru entrance fee depends on what you want to do when you are here. The base Desaru Fruit Farm tour package is RM30 for adults and RM25 for kids aged 3-11.
For this, you get the fruit farm tour and some cut up fruit to try.
Other activities are an additional charge, such as an ATV tour can be added on starting at RM55. As there were three of us, we could only do ATV2.0 which was RM220 for three people.
There are various other Desaru Fruit Farm package combos to help you save money by bundling some activities.
Final Words
Desaru Fruit Farm is an interesting place to visit with some solid options of things to do.
However, sadly the fruit farm tour is only a little bit about a fruit farm and mostly about feeding fish and animals. I really hope they change this at some point. We have been to some great fruit farm tours in other places, and I am sure this could be great too.
I do HIGHLY recommend the lunch though. It is fabulous!
The ATV ride was fun too.
So I recommend you go to Desaru Fruit Farm for the lunch and ATV, but skip the tour.
Looking for other things to do in Desaru? Find our full guide here. You can also find our full guide to where to stay in Desaru here and our full travel guide to Desaru here. You can also read about the nearby crocodile farm here and ostrich farm here.
Planning a trip to Malaysia? Have any questions? Join our Malaysia Travel Planning Facebook group here now! It’s the perfect place to ask any questions and to be inspired!
