Bali trip

It has been a busy days for 2 months to work as a general clerk in a plastic product factory in Shah Alam. That makes me fail to update my blog for this Bali trip post for the past few weeks. 5th to 10th of April I went to Bali with my mom and sister. I shall not write anything much as I feel kinda lazy to write it all and just share some pictures.




































































































































































The video is noisy as the strong wind blows makes it. The video is the overview of Mount Kintamani. The arrangement of the picture is a bit untidy especially the vertical pictures because it has been rotated from the original display of inverted image and I have to adjust the position because of the format.

It was a really enjoying trip to Bali with mom and sister. Balinese are friendly as they give warm hospitality and service willingly. They are open-minded and strongly uphold their religious beliefs and rituals in their daily life without being bias towards other cultures.

Thanks to my mom and sister brought me to Bali.

Zi Yang back to Malaysia

It has been a year since Zi back from Australia. He is taller and looks fit.

His return just last for 2 weeks. It was not enough time for my gang and I to spend some quality time with him. However, we are glad to see he back to Klang Valley.

The following are the pictures of our 1b5 gang with Zi recently.

























































































He is pursuing engineering course currently. We wish him all the best in his pursue and hope to keep contact more often.

Kota Kinabalu trip

20th-27th December 2008, my friends and I went to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah for year end vacation.

20/12/08, around 5.10a.m, we reached at LCCT. We are supposed to check in by 6. However, the funniest part is the person in charge told us that our flight need to be delayed for 5 hours and then he check again, he says our flight does not even exist! Thanks to Samuel and his brother, Johnathan managed to solve the problem and make us arrive at KKIA Terminal 2 around 12.30p.m. We stayed at Wakiki Condominium which is opposite to the local famous beach, Tanjung Aru beach. Nothing much on the first day, just walk around city center. At evening, we enjoyed sunset at the beach.










Second day, we went to the market to buy some equipment for Mount Kinabalu and check out the budget for the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park. We brought special local shoe for the climbing which is named 'Kampung Adidas'.



Kampung Adidas. Not a good picture of it. It is a rubber shoe with some plastic nail at the bottom.





After that, we went to the Jesselton Point for the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park enquiries. Finally, we are able to get someone for us to 3 island for a whole day with RM 75. With this rate, we booked a boat, snorkeling gadget and banana boat. With a booked boat, there is no time constrain for the duration we stay at each island. It is really cheap.

Third day, 7.00a.m, we reached the jetty and go for a day trip in Tunku Abdul Rahman Park.




Jesselton Point entrance arch





There are 3 islands to go for the day. The islands are Manukan, Mamutik and Sapi. We went to Pulau Mamutik first.







Up (From left) : Keenen, Wei Jiat
Down(From left) : Samuel, Me, Calvin












(From left)
Keenen, Calvin, Me, Samuel, Wei Jiat











When we want to snorkel, we saw a notice. It is written there : Jellyfish season. We are a bit scared, in the end, we didn't see any.

Next, we went to Pulau Manukan.





(From front)
Johnathan, Adelyn, Deborah(down), Samuel, Wei Jiat, Calvin, Me, Keenen









Apart from snorkeling, we sand buried Wei Jiat, Calvin and Samuel.

































































Later, we go for the Banana Boat in the middle of the sea.


























Before we go for Pulau Sapi, we saw a headless turtle in the middle of the sea.





Poor turtle.......




It was raining when we reach Pulau Sapi, after some time, rain stops. Around 5 something, we back to Wakiki. The 3 islands have nice beach, clear sea water and lots of fishes. We are able to see sea urchin, blue starfish, rainbow colour fish, clownfish (Nemo), some nice corals and lots of aquatic organism.

















Fourth day, we didn't really have plan. We just go 1Borneo for movies and hang around. 1Borneo is the local shopping paradise. Back to Wakiki, we enjoyed sunset in Tanjung Aru beach.










Christmas eve, our main plan for this Kota Kinabalu trip - Climb Mount Kinabalu. Morning, 2 vans drive us to the Kinabalu Park away from Wakiki about 60km. It tooks 45 minutes to 1 hour to reach there.

Once arrived, we are at Balsam Cafe. Haven't start our climbing yet, need to 'check in' at the counter. There, we have our guide, Ben and Dominic. They are really friendly and nice. Soon, the driver drive us to Timpohon Gate, 4km away from Balsam Cafe.

At Timpohon Gate, we need to trek 6km to Laban Rata, our base camp. There are some stops in between the 6km trek.



Left Picture: I sit on a weighing scale. End up got scolded.

Right picture: At Balsam cafe





























In front of Timpohon Gate. Here we come! Starts our trail after the Gate.

At start was ok. After 30 minutes, started to feel a bit tough. After the first stop, the trail is full of rocks, high, wooden and uneven height stairs. A step of stair needs your leg to be almost 90 degrees with your knees. Furthermore, with the bags needed to be carried make us more tired. It is really not easy. Most of the trail you see from bottom is really high. Sometimes I see it, I feel like want to give up. We really need to rest after few ten metres and take some pictures. It took 5 hours to reach our base camp. We reached there around 5.30p.m



















Nepenthes rajah. Endangered
species of insectivorous pitcher
plant.




























At Laban Rata, we have our dinner. Then without shower, we sleep at 7.00p.m and wake up at 2.00a.m. We need to climb 2.7 km more to reach the summit to see the sunrise. The trail is steep along the way. However, there are ropes for us to hold and the granite floor of the mountain is not slippery where our 'Kampung Adidas' grips it well. We reached there 5.00a.m.










It is Christmas Day we reached the summit. The wind is cold and strong along the way. I can feel a bit levitated and pushed forward when the wind blows for awhile. The sunrise was really nice.










We going down to our base camp after that as many other group is at the summit and also for our breakfast.










After having our breakfast, we check out Laban Rata and go down back to Timpohon Gate. Intially, we wanted to go Poring Hot Spring, but the transport to there is expensive. End up we didn't make it. Then we back to Wakiki and have some rest.

Wrong public information about Mount Kinabalu
I want to add on some additional information about Mount Kinabalu. Most Malaysian thinks Mount Kinabalu is the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. However, it is a myth. The plain truth is The mountain is the fourth tallest in Southeast Asia behind of Hkakabo Razi (5881 m),Myanmar, Puncak Jaya (4884 m) and Puncak Trikora (4750 m) of Papua, Indonesia. Therefore, Mount Kinabalu is only consider the highest mountain in Malaysia.

Mount Kinabalu is also one of the highest trekkable mountain in the world. Not only that, it is 20th highest peak in the world in terms of prominence. What do I mean by in terms of prominence? I can't give you a summary. If you're interested to know more please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_prominence.

















This is the hall of fame for the climber who made record. They are seriously fit and mad. They have to climb from sea level to the peak and back down to sea level. 8km I already feel like half-dead.... Moreover this is 21km, half of the Marathon distance.........

At evening, we went to 1Borneo New York New York (NYNY) restaurant to have our Christmas night dinner.


























It is the first time we went to New York New York restaurant except for Keenen. It is a nice place for family and friends for dinner. We really enjoyed our meal there.

26th, morning wake up, leg ache. It is really pain and ache. I need to bend down upper body, make leg straight, and raise my butt to walk down the stairs. Although we suffer leg ache, we still go to Lok Kawi Wildlife Park to fill our time. Nothing special except for the Proboscis Monkey and Orang Utan. Depart from there around lunch time, we went for movie - Bedtime Stories. It is previewed in Cathay cinema in KK much earlier than its original preview date.

















27th, last day in Kota Kinabalu. We pack our luggages and clean the room. Have some walk along the Tanjung Aru beach, have dinner, fly at 9.30p.m and home sweet home.

This Kota Kinabalu trip is consider a budget-wise trip. We only spend around RM 1100 for the whole trip. We no need to worry about the accomodation thanks to Samuel's uncle. His generous offer helps us have a nice place to stay. Another special thanks for Samuel and his siblings who spend time and effort to make this outing smooth and organise. I also not forget Wei Jiat, Keenen and Calvin for their contribution. Last but not least, thanks to our parents who let us go for this trip willingly.

I hope we can have this kind of great trip with my friends in future.