Mount Kinabalu

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So another early start to try and find the best transport to Mount Kinabalu, as we had been told that most of the minibuses leave early in the morning. We left Hotel Eden 54 at 7am and went for our usual Fook Yeun brekkie, then onto trying to find transport. We had a rough idea of the where we needed to catch the transport from and headed in that direction, which was about a 5 min walk. Upon arriving at the car park there were hundreds of minibuses and taxis, with each driver trying to get our attention! We found one minibus that was about to leave, they were just waiting for two more customers! Ideal, we had just walked up and we would be off in no time at all without having to wait. We agreed with the taxi driver that we would pay the 15MYR fare and Jane went to climb in the bus, only there were no seats available (any that were visible that is!) The driver told everyone to squash up and make room for us to fit in!! I think he was having a laugh, there was just no way we were going to fit onto the seat next to the rather large lady! We polietly made our excuses and looked for another minibus, much to the drivers disgust. We walked a few steps and were surrounded by taxi drivers offering their services. We negotiated a 60MYR fare for the both of us, with just us in the vehicle. It was a two hour journey to the mountain but the scenery was beautiful . Mount Kinabalu (Malay: Gunung Kinabalu) is a prominent mountain on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It is located in the east Malaysian state of Sabah and is protected as Kinabalu National Park, a World Heritage Site. We completed a couple of the treks around the base of the mountain and were extremely thankful that we had decided not to do the climb (well, at least Ange was!) It was quite a cool day (for Asia) and the clouds were low, completely covering the top of the mountain. Jane was only wearing a t-shirt but spent most of the time wishing she had brought a fleece. We decided to leave the mountain after a few hours and made our way back to the entrance to try and find some transport going back to KK. There was a couple of taxis waiting for customers but they wanted to charge an outrages amount. I guess they thought we would have to use them if we wanted to get back! How wrong they were, we walked across the road to a car park and approached a minibus with a driver but no customers. We asked if he was a taxi but he said 'no', although he was a tour guide and going back to KK. So for a nominal fee we had ourselves some transport back to KK. He was onto a winner, getting paid for a journey he was going to have to do anyway and we had cheap transport. The driver even dropped us off back at our hotel. After putting on some warmer clothing we headed out again for some lunch, at Fook Yeuns of course! We had a stroll around KK and went into some of the shopping malls trying to avoid the rain. Yes, once again it was raining in KK! After wandering aimlessly for a few hours we decided to go to one of the bars on the waterfront. We sat (with beer in hand) outside under one of the umbrellas whilst watching the rain! At 6:50pm we were starting to feel a little peckish so decided to go to a hotel we had seen doing pizza's at half price until 7:00pm. Typical Ange and Jane always on the look out for a voucher, voucher code or some type of offer!! So, the dash was on to try and get to the hotel in time, unsure if we had made it and out of breathe we asked one of the waiters if we could still have the offer. Yes we could, so pizza for the second night it was going to be! The pizza was delicious and we were extremely pleased with our choice of restaurant. After our feast of pizza we walked down to one of the shopping malls to have our pudding. The local ice-cream parlour was once again just too enticing. We sat and ate our ice-cream sundaes and then slowly ambled back to our hotel. Another day over and our last full day in KK, we are looking forward to tomorrow and getting to Singapore.

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