Kota Kinabalu

Date: 24 November, 2007

Kota Kinabalu, Gunung Kinabalu and Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park

Our primary target for this trip is to conquer the peak of Gunung Kinabalu. Known to be the highest mountain in South East Asia and also the Kinabalu Park which is listed in the Unesco Heritage Site.

Kinabalu Park

After so much hassle on the air (one of us suddenly decided to go nuts), I have managed to calms things down at the airport and continue to make our move to Kundasang. We have rented a Proton Saga for the whole trip. It’s a long way trip from Kota Kinabalu and we arrived a few hours later at the Kinabalu Park Headquarters. After confirming our bookings and paid for the guide and permit, we’re off to our cabin. The climate is cold at 4 degrees Celsius and the room has no heater, at least there is hot water. As a malai chai, I really not use to this kind of weather. The resort is so beautiful and the surrounding is serene and green. We went to bed early that night as to prepare for tomorrow’s journey.

Trekking

Woke up early that morning, As and Era complains that they cannot bath in such cold weather, me neither. After breakfast, we headed to the Park HQ and our handsome guide (the girls think so!) named Roger Sipat greeted us. Well he is a Kadazan Dusun and his father also works there before him. I suggested to the girls that Roger has a resemblance of Yem (laugh), but the girls say that I am just jealous. Era has annoyed me by refusing to bring her bigger backpack to assist me on the trip after agreeing previously. Again, I gave in; men are supposed to assist the woman don’t they? We were brought to the gate buy a shuttle van and starts trekking to Laban Rata. I can safely say that the trek is clear and easy compare to the rainforest in the peninsular. We can see there are lots of Mat Salleh coming here and from what I heard they loves the place. On the way up, the scenery is out of this world and I can’t wait to reach the peak.

Laban Rata

After four and a half hours walking, we reach Laban Rata. It was drizzling then and the coldness is unimaginable. The Mat Salleh and the Korean are use to this though and just gave me a cheeky smile. When we reach our hostel that is the Gunting Lagadan Hut, the strong winds starts to blow. We took off our wet cloth and wear a few layers of t-shirt to avoid the cold. Again, there is no heater here and I started to wonder. I cannot sleep the whole evening and we were supposed to trek up at 2.30am. I can feel that we are ill equipped to weather this storm. The cold wind is getting stronger by the minute and carries some water with it.

The Gunung Kinabalu Peak

Our guide Roger, has strongly advice us to cancel the trip due to the bad weather, but as always, hard headed, I refuse and ignore his plead. I've said to him that we love the challenge and wanted to have it a go, guess what happen? Bad call. Well, what is install for us is one of the most challenging experiences in our life. For the first time in any trip that I felt our safety had been jeopardize. With the cold wind continuously hitting us together with the cold rain, I felt exhausted and drained. I'm not able to take care of myself let alone the other team member. The easy trek up became a nightmare trek, there is nothing we can see in the storm and our flimsy rain jacket cannot stop the wind from hitting our body. Era meanwhile has again turned into a zombie (laugh).

As we reached Sayat Sayat, half way point to the peak, As headlamp became unusable and most probably our camera don’t works either. In the storm, I can hear Roger getting angry and uttered the word "sendiri pandai naik, sendiri pandai turun". I have said to myself, no we can’t give, we have come a long way, the Mat Salleh and the Korean don’t give up, so why should we? Malaysia Boleh!!. I gave Ija and Era some words of encouragement as they seem to be completely drained. I told myself, we could do it. We trek slowly and as I managed to get to about 200 meters from the peak suddenly the storm hit really hard and my view of Ija and As totally gone. There is when I have decided to stop as the situation have been life threatening. I prayed Roger would be able to take care of Ija and As. With a tinge of sadness I asked Era to forget it and turn back.

On the way down, and when the weather cleared, I am happy to see Roger, Ija and As are safe. Miraculously, Ija and As managed to reach the peak. Ija and Era is quite happy when Roger took them down the mountain with words of encouragement borrowed from the Titanic film "kau pegang kuat-kuat ya, kalau kau jatuh, aku jatuh sama". Well, thats certaintly keeps the girls going. Thank God, by 9.30am we're back at Gunting Lagadan Hut. As we did not have dry cloth and the place has no heater, we continue to trek down and by 3.00pm we reached Kinabalu Park. Before we left, I thank Roger Sipat, our guide for taking good care of us.

Summer Lodge and Filipino Market

After that incredible experience, we continue our journey to Kota Kinabalu town and scrap our plan to go to Poring. I guess we are quite worn off after facing such extreme ordeal. We checked in at Summer Lodge. Most of the tenant here are Mat Salleh backpacker. Nice, clean and cheap place to be. After having a nice seafood dinner at Kg Air we headed to bed. In the morning, I had a shocked and disappointed when some of our item send for laundry found missing. Well, that’s life, after lodging a formal complaint we headed to the famous Filipino Market. The market is called by that name because most of the trader there are from Philippines. They trade a lot of things such as handicraft and jewellery. As and Ija is really interested with the swarosky crystal bracelets and spend quite a lot on them.

Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park

By 2.00pm we were off to Jeselton jetty and book a boat trip to Pulau Sapi. Roberto, the marine park guide, accompanies us. We are disappointed as the water is murky (cause of the weather, I presumed) and we have not been able to see a thing while snorkeling. Most of the coral have been destroyed. Roberto did guide us to go to deeper water and still we were unable to see anything. By 5.00pm we headed back to KK and went on to the airport.

Conclude
I can really say, despite everything we went through, this is still by far the best trip to date by the Cool Trekkers. I am proud of the girls and hope we will be able to beat this in our future trip.