Advertisement
Published: August 6th 2007
Edit Blog Post
After an awful night in Pulua Labuan we were grateful to arrive back in Borneo, but this time in Sabah. We had bought first class tickets so managed to get a bit of sleep on the boat, but as the air con was turned up full pelt we were freezing. They also had a film on but it was the cheesiest kung fu film ever, with Holly Valance and some other flakes in it.
We stopped at a cafe on the pier for breakfast before the ten minute walk to our hostel. As out lonely planet is a few years out of date it was no longer there but we did find a little gem of a place called the step up lodge. Very nicely decorated, clean and cheap, a right touch!
We decided to read up on what to do here before heading out as the lady in the guesthouse informed us that we were unable to climb Mount Kinabalu as the lodge you have to stay in half way up is fully booked until August. The two of us fell asleep however so an hour later we finally headed out.
We decided to Kinabalu Gold
Resorts office which was a fifteen minute walk away as they organise accommodation in the National Park, but when we got to the Kompleks Karamunsing it was no longer there (out of date lonely planets for you). Instead we visited Sabah Museum and the State Mosque which weren't that far away.
On the way back we decided to get something to eat in Central Point shopping centre which has a large variety of food stalls to choose from. It also had a wide variety of clothes shops too which I just couldn't resist, especially at those prices for Diesel clothes, geez! I also got some eye shadow and lip gloss, I miss my make up!
On Thursday morning we decided to have a sort out as we wanted to send our new clothes home and also clear our backpacks out of some of the crap we have accumulated over the past few months, they are getting harder and harder to zip up! I managed to get rid of a quite a bit, a lot of rubbish I hold onto to put in a scrap book when I get home, like tickets etc.
On the way to
the post office we passed a beautiful souvenir shop which would have been rude not to look in. Erica and I ended up buying yet more things, for houses that we both don't own yet. But when we do they will be very nicely decorated, little Asia style, or in my case massive Asia!
We then decided to visit the other shopping centres before posting our stuff home just in case, but I made no further purchases. The other shops were roughly the same price as at home and I didn't need anything else to wear for my travels.
In the evening we decided to do our make up and have a girly night out, which we haven't done for ages due to there always being someone traveling with us or we met on the way. We were planning on wearing our dresses but we get enough attention when in our scruffs so decided to just do our make up. We went to a bar/restaurant called Rumba for our tea and had a bottle of wine, lovely! Just as we were leaving a dodgy Malaysian band started, so we timed it perfectly. We then headed to Cocoon bar
for a beer but the prices were just like home. They did have a good band on but they stopped for a break and by the time we had finished our first and last beer they still hadn't come back so we left and headed home. We hade drink at ours and were joined by Maria (our room mate from Mexico) and Chris (London). We played several games of cards before Erica and I left them to it.
On Friday we had booked to spend the day on Mamutik Islands, it is the smallest and closest Islands to KK. We got picked up in the morning and hired fins, face mask and snorkel. I took my camera and underwater housing and managed to get a few good pics. There were plenty of large anemone fish, parrot fish, a couple of puffer fish and sea slugs. We had to be careful as it was jellyfish season, I personally didn't see any but one unlucky lady got stung in the face, over her eye socket, ouch! I bet she didn't want any one urinating on that!
Around 2.30pm we'd had enough, snorkeled for a few hours but the sun was too hot to lie in and I had burnt my back, so we headed back to the mainland. Once we were back in our lodge we were shattered and decided to have a cat nap. Erica woke me up at 6pm; I couldn't believe I had slept that long, I could have quite easily slept through till the following morning. We headed out to eat and use the internet before returning back to bed as we had an early start.
On Saturday we had another day trip arranged, this time to Poring Hot Springs which was a three hour drive away. When we finally arrived our guide, a term I use very loosely as he gave us no information and his role barely extended from being our driver, took us to the entrance to the canopy walkway and waited there for us. It was very similar to the one in Taman Negara, but this was 41 meters high and 157 meters long, so shorter than the other. With it being weekend the place was heaving with people and we had to wait a while, so we got talking to a lovely family in front from Perth.
We then met our guide (whose name we never found out) and made our way to Kipungit Waterfall where he told us to meet him back at the minivan in a few hours time, great guide. The waterfall had a small lagoon at the bottom, which would have been nice to swim in it but again there were too many people there so we settled for a paddle instead.
We then headed to the hot springs for a dip, but they were rather disappointing. We thought that they would be natural, but they were personal tiled tubs, with the spring water coming from a tap… It could have been the local swimming pool! By the time we had managed to find a half decent vacant one and partially fill it was time to head back, so we had 5 more minutes.
Our final destination was Kinabalu National Park where we were going to visit the Botanical gardens. First we went to the visitor’s centre which was full of old pictures they obviously couldn’t be bothered to climb it again to get some recent photographs! We then walked towards the gardens only to discover that they were closed, which was rather disappointing as if we were only going to the hot springs we could have done the trip independently for a lot less money, but by the time we had got back home we had been out for 11 hours and I didn’t have energy to argue over the price.
In the evening we went to the Pilipino market, but we were not impressed, ever we had turned up at the wrong one or all they sold was food, half of it not very appetising so we headed to Central Point instead. WE had planned to go to the cinema but the only films we fancied watching were in Korean or Spanish.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.18s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 24; qc: 104; dbt: 0.1132s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb