Day 4: To the Mountain!

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Finally is day 4, the scheduled climbing day~

Thanks to Mr. Weather, the sky is clear, no rains.

So here is the plan:

1. Get transport to Kinabalu Park,

2. Start hike.

Of course step one is quite troublesome: take taxi to Kinabalu Park is about 2 hours, cost about RM180; or take minivan, RM15 per person. We took mini van for sure. However, mini van will only start when the vehicle is full…

waiting. It’s 6am in the morning.

There will be daily mini van to Ranau from Kota Kinabalu, which will pass by Kinabalu Park.

Our talkative van driver who likes to share his experience with us. He shown us his saman, his rubic cube, his 8 times Mount Kinabalu hiking experience etc. (Locals always hike Mount Kinabalu, like pass time)

Finally the van is full, start driving. On the way saw this Mount Kinabalu from far. It looks small, I know, wait till you climb it.

This Mr Russian is teaching me how to solve Mr. Driver’s rubic rube. I am noob, I still can’t remember the steps.

Reached Kinabalu Park! Nana, Bobby, and Kelvin, and camera man Me. FYI, Kinabalu Park is located at roughly 1950m above sea level, higher than Genting Highland.

This is the closer look of Mount Kinabalu, marvellous.

What the process at Kinabalu Park?
This is the place we report our arrival, hire a mountain guide, get our packed lunch.

There are 2 trails for climbers to chose, 1 is from the Timpohon Gate (left side), and another is the much harder one from Mesilau Gate (right side).

Mesilau Trail is 2km longer, but with more beautiful scenery than Timpohon Gate.

Since this is not the always opportunity, let’s take the hard one up, and come back down from the easy one, hoho.

To start from Mesilau Gate, we need to take transport to there for 20 minutes, cost us total of RM85 per van, kena chopped…

 
Reached, Mesilau Resort signboard.

Hiking Starto~ It’s already 11am, quite late.

The trail consists of all sort of surface, like the above one.

 
Our mountain guide, Simpson. He is like a super human, won’t tired one.

 
Nana with his super camera. The scenery is very beautiful, and there his camera start working.

 
Look down at KM1. HAHA.

 
KM2, hoho, still can smile.

 
Some random waterfall in the forest.

 

Starting, the road is going upward, after 1km, it going down until starting altitude… then going up for about 1 hour, then going down again!!!! Shit, this is killing my knees!

 
KM4.5, out.

 
This is the packed lunch from Kinabalu Park, not something special, but in hungry time, anything taste nice, plain water can taste like 100 PLUS, tea can taste like beer.

 
Along the trail can easily spot this kind of toilet. I wonder where the waste flush to….

 
My hiking permit card.

 
With names one, precious~

Like Alice in Wonderland.

 
Can’t smile anymore…. tired.

 
Big flower!

 
The background is awesome, we are above the cloud finally~

 
This is the water tank that can be seen along the trail. It written: “Air tidak dirawat; Untreated Water”. but it is safe to drink.

 
Beautiful…

 
Turn left to Timpohon Gate, turn right to the peak? Turn Right!

 
One of the hell terrain. Our steps are getting heavier and heavier, slower and slower, and the terrain is getting harder and harder… where is the end point?

 
Kelvin with his “lunch”.

 
Another terrain. The trees are getting shorter and shorter..

 
This is the white tree.

 
The air is getting thiner, breathing is getting harder. I need to inhale and exhale faster, else the dizzy feeling strike on me. Finally, reached Laban Rata Resthouse! It is already 6:08pm, a 7 hours non stop climbing, just to get our dinner on time, because the dinner will close on 7pm.

 
My first proper meal of the day, not very special, but is super delicious when hungry!

 
People playing sepak takraw on the cloud.

Check in, get room key, put down stuff… huh, tired! I shall bath first before sleep, the water is… VERY FUC***G COLD! The feeling same exactly like soak your hand into ice water, 5 seconds can make your hand numb!

So… It’s the fastest bath I ever had in 21 years.

Slept at 7:30pm, got to wake up at 2am tomorrow morning to conquer the rest of the mountain.

Stay tune!

Day 3: Do nothing Day.

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Damn the tent is so hard to sleep without a pillow, my bag is still too hard as a pillow… Kakak said the tent can sleep 6 people, but 4 people already damn cacat.

Small rains happened twice during the night, so got to wake up to close the tent, and reopen when rain is over.

Woke up by Bobby in the morning. When I opened my eyes, it’s already sunrise. WOW, Sabah sun raise at 6am, let’s breakfast~

breakfast is actually some leftover biscuit from yesterday: Chipsmore, Tiger cracker, etc, no shops on the island open yet. After that we visited another side of island. Sadly, my camera out of battery… but lucky is, Nana super DSLR still in business~

Till the next boat is 5 hours more, let’s get wet, hoho~

Again, damn my camera out of battery!

The sea water in the morning is quite calm than afternoon, so we can see clearly those creatures in the seabed. Fish started to appear, the further, the bigger and colourful.

I saw many kinds of fish: Retard-Fish, Zebra-Fish, Red-Fish, Long-Fish, White Fish, Blue-Fish, Oren-Fish, and many more~ (names come in my first impression, no offense to those fish).

Retard fish like to bite our legs; zebra fish is the super Tiger Cracker consumer; Red-Fish is red; Long fish is long; bla bla bla.

Again! Damn my camera with no battery! Else I can show you all how are those fishes look like.

Looking at those fishes, I feel that all lives are so miracle… After billion years, whole world is full of life.

 

Back to KK
Sun is getting hot, and it’s time to back to Kota Kinabalu… Oh man, I love these islands! Still stay back in the same X-Plorer Backpacker Lodge, missed their service.

 

All the food above was introduced by the friendly guy at X-Plorer, yummy, but, expensive la… After is a straight 2 hours sleep, never sleep well last night, with rains, wild boar, and hard pillow.

 
Malaysia Monument. Seems like abandoned, poor place.

 
Milo Cincau.

 
Cooks in prison.

 
“Tolong display kalau da jual  Kalau tak, potong gaji. – Arahan Anti Max” (Please display the unit after sold one, else, deduct salary – order from Aunty Max)

 
Pork soup.

Then shopped for a pair of shoe for tomorrow hiking, and a shirt printed with Orang Utan, satisfied~

Stay tune for tomorrow main event~

Day 2: To The Islands

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When I woke up at 8am, Calvin was watching TV at outside. After woke everyone up, we went for breakfast. Luckily, we found 1 popular Pan Mee shop.

But I didn’t see where is 家嫂 … This shop has slightly expensive price, maybe to their reputation, or they chopping tourists.

But… it’s delicious~ With Aloe Vera drink.

The boss is a 70++ year old granny, who talked a lot of story to us.

Some things he told us:

1. Stephen Chou been to his shop.
2. 香港无线电视 crews and actors eat at his shop while filming in Sabah.
3. And other actors etc.
4. He hiked Mountain Kinabalu twice in his life.
5. He has an illegal Philippine worker, who married at 12 year old, and has 18 children now… wow.
6. Sadly, they can’t afford to send them to school, and even worst, they don’t have birth certificates, makes them no proper identity.
7. bla bla bla.

Later on, is to shop for Nana’s contact lens. Because we are going to island hopping, spectacles are very troublesome. Lucky I already got my free contact lens sample.

After that, back to our room, checked out. X-Plorer backpacker also allow us to keep our luggage there after check out. So we can go for our activities without our heavy luggage~

 

Next planned destination is Island Hopping. We drove our rented car back to airport, and get a cab to Sutera Harbour Resort. Cost us RM30, if not mistaken.

Kota Kinabalu International Airport Terminal 1. High class.

Sutera Harbour Resort entrance.

Harbour at noon time. Undescribed beautiful.

I feel like want to jump into the sea right now.

Big big boat!

Price:
The price for island hopping is RM35 for 1 island, additional RM10 for each island. By the time we arrived at first island, we need to pay RM3 conservation fee to the park administrator. (all prices are for each person)

Boarding time. Everyone carrying few bottles of drink water and food, because we going to overnight on island, and the food there is crazily expensive.

Moving~ The boat driver is shy.

Call me dump, but I just never see sea water in blue colour. And when the sea water splash into my mouth, then only I remember: sea water is salty! It’s about 10 minutes boat ride, and we reached Pulau Manukan~

Pulau manukan

Bikini girl is having sunbath. The first thing in my mind when I step on the jetty, I want to jump in the sea right away!

FYI, Pulau Manukan is one of the 5 islands that formed Taman Tunku Abdul Rahman marine park. Another 4 are Sapi, Mamutik, Gaya, and Sulug, each with different properties.

I bought Dicapac, some plastic container that can put camera inside and use under water. But sad is, the performance suck, but still better than nothing~

Anyway, this is Mr. coral.

Wa, never play in sea water for years!!!

Little Coral on the shore.

Crystal clear water.

Bobby and Nana.

This is the only resort on the island, cost minimum RM700 per night. For non Malaysian, even more expensive.

Quite a lot of Koreans visit to Islands, one of it is in the above picture.

Nana feeding fish with himself.

Small fishes swim around me. Fish naturally afraid of anything, they tend to swim away when you approach them, but after you stay there for a while, they get familiar, and start to swim around you.

Fishieeeeeee!!!

Trying to catch them. But human reaction can never faster than fish… So far only Nana caught one, with a big plastic bag.

Bigger ikan bilis (is it ikan bilis?)

Retard Kelvin stared at the fish, and start to sing song: “I wanna eat you, and you, and you and you and you~” yer.

Collections of fish that appear in this park. See there is shark in the list.

It’s about 4pm, we waited at the Jetty to hop to another island – Pulau Sapi, and the time we spotted these fishes.

 
Fishes from the Jetty.

All sorts of fish.

 


Good bye Pulau manukan…

 

Pulau Sapi
This is one exciting island, with not much people, and we are gonna overnight here.

We rented a 6-person tent for RM30, saved a lot of money~

 
Done. Doh, where enough for 6 persons?

 
Water here is not as impressive as Manukan Island, but the sand is much finer and white.

 

Sunset.

Kinabalu City at night. Sun set 1 hour earlier than here, it’s only 6:40pm.

There is no food on the island, so we already prepared damn lot of biscuits as our lunch, dinner and tomorrow breakfast.

After dinner is some nonsense activity…


Clear water at night.

We tried to dig a deep hole, hopefully will reach water, but we never expect, at night sea level is reducing… so, no water.
 
There are a lot of activity happen on the island at night, crabs will only come out to play water and find food at night.

Mr Crab smile at my camera.

Some funny incident in the night:

This island has not much infrastructure compare to Gaya Island and Manukan Island, so at night, the total people on the island is less than 10 I guess.

There is only 1 spot light on the island at night… Nothing much can do, Bobby and others wanted to sleep early at 7:30pm.

While my pants still not yet dry, so I decided to walk a while on the beach. Suddenly, I heard some noise in the dark trees, some rubbish bins being push down.

WTF? I looked in the shadow, and saw a big creature is searching for food, around it still have another 3 small creature… Damn, a family of wild boars.

I SMS Bobby not to come out or make noise, because they are just about 3 meters away from our tent. And also tie our biscuit tight, so they can’t smell it.

While I stay under spot light, holding my phones. When the wild boar leave, I quickly changed my wet pants, and sleep.

Wild boars came and leave, came and leave, the whole night is an excited one.

It rains lightly at night, twice, and the sandy tent is really not comfortable to sleep in, especially without a pillow… but is indeed an unforgettable experience~

Finding Electricity
I can’t sleep so early, and my phone out of battery, so I holding my charger walking around the pondok, hoping to find 1 electric port that can charge my phone, and I saw 1 only.

Damn, used by spot light, out only light source. If I pull it off, means if anything goes wrong, the wild boar came out again, or alien attack, we all mampui (in deep shit). So, after wandering until 11pm, I went to sleep.

Stay tune for day 3~