Pictures from Kota Kinabalu trip 4-9Aug08

Finally! This damn shit of a blog is completed! Warning! Close to 100 pictures! Not for the impatient and oh-so-busy people of Singapore.


Here's a heavy picture blog cum guide to our first little budget backpacking trip to KK, Sabah. Nice, slow-paced city of warm, happy-go-lucky citizens; and of course the same bloody hot weather like Singapore. Just google it if you have no idea where. Took me so many days to complete it, what with the screwed up uploading and arrangements of the pictures.


Some of the pictures are orientated strangely cause all these are not taken by my trusty Nokia 6120 classic handphone camera, but from my girlfriend's digital camera, and the later rafting pictures from a photographer, which is 2mb each! I really can't afford such time so I only chose a few. Still, they're great pictures capturing moments that will be imprinted in our minds forever. Let's embark on our journey.....


First night: 040808 Monday, Singapore - JB

We left our home early in the evening so that we could do some shopping at JB, City Square or some shit like that. Took a train and bus and cleared customs then walked to the shopping centre. Bought some snacks for the climb and some useless accessories which Dy liked. Had our dinner at the local Kenny Rogers, which is cheap but sucked ass. Then it was taxi to Senai airport where we spent the remaining night sleeping on the floor near the check in counters; but not before loitering around the small airport with no shops in operation, and reading our recreational materials which didnt last 3 hours. There was also a lack of sitting areas. Ass. However we managed to nap for about 2-3 hours. Our flight will depart around 7+am. Along the way in cab we had to keep our eyes open and guards up in case we get driven to some ulu corner. Its quite scary actually but thankfully we're safe.






























Our Kenny Rogers dinner. So pathetic right.






Second night: 050808 Tuesday JB - KK
Alright so we took our Air Asia flight to KK and then had an arranged transport drive us to our backpacker's hostel. We couldn't check in yet as it wasn't time, so we left our bags and explored the vicinity. There's actually a few shopping centres around our hostel, which I believe was in the city area. And things are cheap. So when we finally checked in, it was almost time for dinner so we headed out to a local marketplace kind of bazaar where there's a lot of food and groceries, but everyone sells the same things. We had Mee Bakso, some fried and big seafood, and other snacks, but we stunk like hell cause of all the smoke. Had to retire early for our climb the next day. (This fucking blogger editor is driving me insane)

Third night: 060808 Wednesday Base of mountain to Laban Rata 'Resort'
Well like I mentioned the editor sucks a shit load of fuckanathan. I had to insert this commentary here. The picture of the potato chips shows that we were already at a considerable altitude and thats why its so bloated. And so we made our first step. Oh ours was a shorter route compared to another, I have no idea why. Anyway the mountain guide don't do much, we're just walking our own mountain. And we climb climb climb climb, and saw the very first creature, a big fat caterpillar. Thats was like almost halfway to our resort. Yeah there were no monkeys or other shit. Except naughty squirrels. And yup we were the first few to reach our resort, but it was quite a climb. We would be resting there until 2am the next day, so as to catch the sunrise.

4th night : 070808 Thursday Laban Rata - Summit - Base - Hotel

After a bad night's rest, we finally made our way to the summit at about 2.45am. It was a cold night, and obviously would get colder higher up. The climb was tougher mainly due to poor rest, if we had just gone up all the way yesterday it would be much easier. We made it up just before sunrise, but unfortunately it was cloudy so couldnt see much. I was freezing by then cos I wasn't wearing much protection and mainly due to touching the cold rocks for support with my bare hands, and there were so many people crowding around and there wasn't much to see so I wanted to get down ASAP. But it was scary. Haha. No shit. Anyway we took a few pictures along the way back and sort of ran down to base. So happy it was over. Yup, and we booked in again and had pizza hut for dinner. Haha.

5th night: 080808 Friday Hotel - Kiulu River - Hotel

This water rafting was quite a disappointment. Intially we thought we had booked for a full day 21km raft at a 3 star river, but found out that there were miscommunication and ended up at a 11km 1 star river, and the river wasn't active that day. But the lunch they provided was nice. All in all still a good experience. Also as a result of this full day-turned-half day event, we had to check in again. With our legs sore we had bak kut teh, some more bbq food from the market, and watched the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Haha.

6th day: 090808 Saturday KK - JB - Sin - NDP at SKA

I can't really say we're dying to go back home, since we were really quite enjoying the relaxed and cheap lifestyle, we even had a massage, and played quite a bit of arcade games. But it was good to be home. Because we had another event to attend to! Think the whole trip we spent about $1700 altogether? Good stuff. Be planning our next trip soon~