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Published: September 9th 2009
our snake
we were told it could be a common tree snake by a guide who admitted he knew nothing about snakes!We left the Uncle Tan Adventure Camp at 10am on day three of the 3D/2N trip. So as you can see, its not really a three day jungle adventure! A quick ride up the river brought us back to the jetty where we were met by some 4WD utes, rather than the minibuses that we came in. A much better ride through the plantations, then we transferred to minibuses at the road. We had lunch at the operations base near Sepilok then walked to the main road to wait for the express bus towards KK.
Luckily we were only going as far as Ranau, rather than all the way to KK. The air-con was on full blast and the movies were bad! So it was scenery watching as we wound our way round and over hills, with a bus driver who liked to throw the bus round the corners.
We called our CS contact when we got to Ranau, and he sent a friend to meet us and bring us to his shop. Carl owns a private optometrist business in Ranau. After chatting for a bit in his shop, Carl kindly took us
the trail
no trick photography, steep withh switchbacks! to Poring so we could stay there. Carl is living with his parents and has no spare room for guests at the moment, so we couldn't stay with him. After a sleepless night in the jungle, finding dinner and organising the laundry was about all we could manage. We shared a lovely vegetable and cashew nut claypot for dinner.
Wednesday 2nd September 2009 We spent the day in the Poring Hot Springs complex, part of the Kinabalu Park world heritage site. There are various activities other than sitting in hot water, and we tried some of them. And sat in hot water of course!
We started with the more energy consuming activities and followed the trail past the first waterfall to the bat cave. There is another waterfall further along the trail, but neither of us fancied the hike along the slippery trail in the heat. We must be getting old ;o)
Part way to the caves, we spotted our first wildlife for the day - a snake. We havent identified it yet, everyone we spoke to at the park claimed not to know much about snakes. It was about 1.5m long and “slim”, a dark
greeny-blue colour, it was just sitting in a tree watching us walk past. I saw the tail hanging down first, really skinny like a lizard, then saw the rest of the snake in the branches. Being sensible old people, we didn't get very close!
We could see a few bats in the cave, some hanging from the roof and some flying about, and we could definitely smell them! We turned around at that point and went back to the first waterfall, carefully passing the snake again. We both got attacked by a leech, Colin was bitten but I felt mine as soon as it landed and flicked it straight off again. They are funny to watch (when they arent on you!) as they sit there with one end moving round, seeking a victim. There were some tiny fish in the pool at the base of the falls that nibbled the skin on Colins feet. Had there been more of them, and had they done a better job, we could have sat there for ages!
Back by the springs, we climbed up to the canopy walkway. This has recently reopened and was quite neat. It was just aluminium ladders
strung across the gaps between trees with planks on them and rope sides, but it was nice walking through the trees tops rather than under them. We didn't see much, a few small birds, and some nice views over the valley. It was probably too hot for anything else to be out.
At this point we also decided it was too hot to be out doing anything so we went back to the springs for a soak. We tried the unheated pool first, but even in our hot state, that was too cold! The open air hot pools are free (you have to pay for a private, indoors pool) and you fill them yourselves. The pools are quite big, deep, and take an age to fill. Ours didn't even begin to look like it was deep enough for real soaking, and it had been filling for an hour! So we sat in the 6” of water in the bottom and pretended to relax! We managed to soak off the rest of the jungle sweat and grime though.
After that we wandered the butterfly enclosure a few times to get our moneys worth, it is pretty small. We saw
some cool butterflies though, not sure about the photos as some were a bit far away.
We went to go visit the tropical garden quickly before we left Poring, but got waylaid by the resident orang-utan. Her name is Jackie, and she looks so mournful. According to the guy in the small museum / visitors centre, she was given to them 17 years ago as a baby when her mother was killed. She had been injured, and I guess there isnt a market for injured baby orang-utans. So the staff in the park had raised her. She wasn't in a cage or anything, and was free to come and go into the jungle if she wanted to. We got the impression that she only came back to the park for food and a bed. She was peeling and eating an orange when we saw her, looking content enough, just sad. But then a lot of the orang-utans we've seen have had a sorrowful look to them. The young male we watched for ages on our last trip in the jungle was the only one to look happy - we're sure he kept grinning at us! - apart from the
Kipungit Falls
by Poring Hot Springs two who play fought at SORC.
The last bus back into Ranau was meant to be at 4pm. However, the driver had had a few drinks and wasn't going anywhere. Even if he was, we weren't going anywhere with him. So we ended up having to get a taxi back. We checked into the basic but clean Rafflesia Hotel, cleaned up and went to meet Carl again. He took us for a ride towards the National Park HQ, as far as the town of Kundasang, where we stopped in a hillside restaurant for dinner. Carl is off to Europe at the end of the week, but is having problems finding couches to surf.
Thursday 3rd September 2009 We ended up buying rolls and juice from a shop for breakfast as neither of us fancied the local style noodle breakfast. We tried to get some info from the tourist info place too, but the girl in there was less than helpful. Much if it was language problems, her English was only slightly better than our Malay, and she insisted on talking through a face mask muffling everything further.
We also didn't get far with a bus to
the national park. It would have taken ages for a minibus to fill and we didn't want to waste that much time. So we had to take another private car/taxi. The price seemed steep, but then it took ages to get there, and the park entrance was a fair ways on from Kundasang where we were last night.
It was noticeably cooler in the park, I'm not sure how high we were. Carl seemed to think that Ranau was at about 1000m, and we have climbed from there to the park HQ. It was a bright sunny day though, and still far from cold. We walked parts of three trails, making a nice loop starting and finishing near the entrance. We started on the Pandanus Trail, a long, steep climb up to a ridge where the trail joined the Kaiu View Trail. This trail flattened out slightly, or at least, had some less steep parts. It followed the ridge line for a while, up and down, with some nice views out through the trees. We didn't see a lot of wildlife, although we did keep stopping to look in tree stumps and banks trying to find some more weird
and wonderful insects. We could hear the birds chattering away in the trees but were lucky to get more than a quick glimpse of anything. At times this trail followed a stream bed, or a stream had decided to come down the path, and it got wet and slippery. We wore our leech socks finally, but didn't see any sign of the little suckers.
Across the road from the end of the Kaiu View Trail was one end of the Silau-Silau Trail. This headed back towards the park HQ. It was a much nicer trail, easier to follow, less up and down! We saw a bit more too, some more butterflies, a black squirrel and some black & white bird. There were also these really annoying flies, a similar size to house flies but skinnier, that persisted in pestering us, somehow fascinated by our ears, wanting to get in behind them or get stuck in our hair.
The cafe up by the park entrance was a bit steep for our wallets - buffet lunch for RM50, so we went to the restaurant just outside the boundary where some of the guides were eating. Much better value! We had
what was advertised as a toasted club sandwich. A processed cheese slice with a small bit of lettuce, tomato and cucumber. On toasted bread.
We headed back down the hill to Kundasang after lunch. We had a look round the outside of the ANZAC memorial then round the fresh produce market. Kundasang seems to be the fresh vege centre for Sabah. There are terraced plots all over the hills round here, shade houses too. We picked up some yummy looking carrots and tomatoes, most other things would have needed cooking. Getting back to Ranau was much easier than leaving. The minibuses left from the edge of the market and didn't take long to fill.
Friday 4th September 2009 The first in a couple of days of not doing heaps. We had bought tickets of the express bus out of Ranau at 10.30am. The ride was as cold as the last one, and even more windy, the driver throwing the bus all over the road.
We were dropped off on the side of the road outside of a place called Tuaran, where we planned to catch another bus to Kota Belud. We had to catch a bus
into Tuaran before we could find anything leaving. Everyone we asked said there were no buses / minibuses to Kota Belud and that we had to take a taxi. A taxi was all we could find, at least it was a shared one.
We got a room in the second hostel we tried, the KB Lodging House, and that was about all we did. We had a wander round town, found out where taxis leave from to get to where we are headed next, found the “supermarket” and the market, found the street stalls for dinner, watched a lousy movie on tv.
Saturday 5th September 2009 There doesn't appear to be a lot to do in Kota Belud! We found someone in another hotel that told us if we'd planned ahead we could have booked a trip to see parang making (machete/knife) or done some horse riding. Or we could drive to the beach. He'd made the assumption that we'd hired a car, and was slightly incredulous that we'd walked the 2km from town to his hotel.
We wandered round some more in the morning, completely failing to find a barbers so we could get Colin
a hair cut. There are plenty of salons and saloons, but nothing manly enough for him.
We blogged and emailed for a bit, then hung out in the air-con luxury of our room. The free wireless isn't working at the moment either!
We went back to the street stalls to pick up some bits for dinner. We ended up with appeared to be cabbage fritters, some slightly sweet deep fried black bean somethings, pancakes filled with sugar, peanuts and chocolate powder, plus a few bits for breakfast tomorrow, best of all some spicy kumara pasties. Colin also had a battered and deep fried chicken drumstick.
So it was back to the bad movies again.
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Ferdi and Talita
Ferdi & Talita de Lange
Asia, Oh what fun!
We think all Asian bus-drivers go to the same driving school! They're all mad! Love the butterfly pictures, especially the dead leaf one! We're currently enjoying Wanaka. Weird to be reversed like this! Enjoy! See you soon!