On Monday night, it was the second night I slept ALONE in the 12 beds dormitory in Hamin Lodge. It was eerily quiet and I was not used to it. The first two nights I had a filipino auntie on the opposite bed who spoke to me in heavily accented English. After she left, it was clear that no one else stepped into this room except me as they never cleaned my room. I was disgusted but it was just one more night left so I decided to bear with it. They didn't have any other dormitory with other people and so I couldn't move to another room, I was stuck basically. Sometimes I wondered if I was really alone... a few times, the bamboo door of the cabinet would suddenly swing open, but I just took it that it might be a bit loose. I was brave but when I was there alone I actually felt timid. It was this kind of spooky.
I actually felt great to wake up in the morning and get out because I didn't want to spend too much quiet time in the room itself!
Woke up at 5.30am, it was the day to head out to Kinabalu Park. We have gotten a car rental, all ready to drive up the mountain! Poor B had to drive 2 hours there, and poor me had to navigate with a clear mind at 6am. The map was lousy and the signage in Sabah was very poorly done... but we managed to get by with a bit of luck. We didn't lose our way, got to the park and realised the weather was a bit too cool for our dressing! LOL. It didn't matter much since we would be trekking and then we would be heated up pretty fast. We did 2 connecting trails. Afterwhich I decided no more, they went ahead for another while I found a convenience shop and bought myself a Berry Twist ice cream. How cooling! An ice cream up the cooling mountain, that would wake me up!
In Sabah, after the admission fee to an attraction, you had to still pay for more admission within the place. It's ridiculous! Why don't they charge an one-off fee! They made us want to skip so many things just because they wanted to make the tourists pay for every single thing. We skipped the Botanic Garden (Mountain Garden) because we wanted to head to Poring Hot Springs which was 45 mins away. So we left...
At Poring Hot Springs, we were really starving so we had to lunch at the only restaurant in this place. It was a buffet, we didn't have any other choice but 35RM for a wide range of selection sounded reasonable. I particularly like the wings and mini burgers. Then we did the Canopy Walk which is pretty challenging, it's so high up and you are practically walking on a plank held on by strong ropes! We didn't take any pictures because they would charge each of our camera a fee! But I was glad we didn't want to take the cameras because we would be too damned nervous to take it out during the walk anyway! We went around to see the hot spring area and missed the butterfly park because we wanted to visit the tea planation. But sadly we didn't have enough time as we needed to get back before 6pm. It was already 2pm and tea planatation was probably another 45mins away.
So we headed back. Both the girls dozed off when B was driving, poor him! He got lost and had to wake me up eventually. The map reader. So there I was, and we managed to get back into the city just in time for a nice hot shower before returning the car. The car got into a little accident (scratch) earlier during parking but all is covered, so everything was fine! Phew!
A last dinner by the coast, followed by a Green Tea donut... mmm, it didn't make my stomach feel better! LOL. I also made a trip down to the bakery to buy home a few of the chocolate balls! After some last minute souvenir shopping and an hour of card games, we knocked out. No more spooky night finally... I woke up earlier the next morning to pack, had my breakfast before we cabbed to the airport where we bought ourselves a last sinful meal in Kota Kinabalu - KFC!
Back home to Singapore on Tigers. All in all, a nice relaxing but muscle aching trip! I'm happy I get some sun, have a bit of a tan now!
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