Land Below The Wind - Part 1

Yes, I am back from KK after 6 days, in 1 complete piece！ Hehe… 2 weeks before the trip, I was still worrying about my sprained ankle (I fell at the staircase), and 1 day before departure, I was down with sore throat and flu. With all these hiccups prior to the trip, I still managed to enjoy the white water rafting on the Padas River and conquer the summit of Mount Kota Kinabalu, the highest peak in South East Asia. Not bad though. It seems that determination prevails.

Brought back loads of fun memories. At the same time, loads of work awaiting me too, after I am back. Life has restored its busy nature, and I have not been blogging for quite some time. Think I have to break the 6 days trip into 2 parts because I don't really have the time to complete writing about the whole trip in 1 shot.

Trip Participants:
1. TBK – our organizer
2. TBH – TBK’s pretty sister
3. KYY – our co-organizer, 1 of the key persons of the trip
4. Spring Pocket – The humorous and acting talent
5 CCW – Pig Head
6. TLC – Mrs Pig Head
7. NGW – Mr. Kuan’s replacement when he’s drinking or hot
8. LML – me
9. Xena – The female warrior
10. Thong – Xena’s friend

10 May (Thursday) – Lepak-lepak
Flight delay seems to be an unspoken tradition of Air Asia. The flight that we took was having 1+ hours of delay. Instead of 1415, 10 of us departed at 1520 with AK5108 and landed at KK airport at around 1810. We then took 2 cabs to Hamin Lodge, a quite new budget guest house that would be our accommodation for the first 2 nights of our 6 days trip. It’s opposite Ruby Hotel, and next to ‘Seong Tin’ (双天) Restaurant, 1 of the hot spots for seafood in KK town. It is located at the first floor of a corner shop lot and it is quite clean and not too bad for its reasonable charges.

After dumping our luggage into the rooms, we went downstairs to wait for Mr. Little Tiger, YY’s friend from KK, to join us for dinner. He took us to a night market near the Le Meridien hotel for dinner. We had some hot food: grilled fish grilled ‘carbon’ chicken wings (too much honey I guess, burnt in black color), fried mee & fried rice under the hot weather. The weather was freaking hot till ice kacang also couldn’t save the day. After dinner, some went back to the lodge for shower, while some of us went for some fresh coconut juice at a stall at the road side near the night market, to quench our thirst. Suddenly, there was a loud sound of fireworks. We stood up from our tools, trying to check it out but just couldn’t get any sight of it but the sound. After that, Little Tiger aka the ‘Mini Bus Driver’ drove YY, GW, Xena & me to wander around KK town in his MyVi. He took YY to buy dried meat (the local production), made a pit stop at Sutera Harbor, 1 of the luxurious hotels there for a luxurious toilet break. We also toured round the area where the rich locals reside, and some corners of the town, and made a pit stop at Sunny Supermarket (YY’s favorite there) for some shopping and ice-cream before heading back to the lodge. Everywhere Mr. Little Tiger drove passed, he would labeled it as red light district (鸡窦) if he couldn’t tell more about the place, what a funny KK tiger. Hahaha…

11 May (Friday) – White Water Rafting at Padas River & Luxurious seafood dinner

The excitement started today. Bus from Riverbug picked us up at 7:30am in the morning to head for White Water Rafting at Padas River, the highlight of the day. Apart from the 10 of us, there were also ‘Ms. Big Earring plus Hair Band’ & bf from Macau, and 3 other Malaysian guys in the same bus.

Padas River is situated at the interior of southern part of Kota Kinabalu that is only accessible by train (used since the late 19th century in Borneo). Basically, this trip will give you an excursion of class III-IV river, and a ride in an antique train in this new millennium.

The bus journey took us 1 & ½ hours overland through the countryside to Beaufort town. We took our breakfast there before boarding the train. From there upon, adventure began with 1 & ½ hours train rides tracks along the Padas River that gave glimpses of the thrills and excitement to come. This train ride was really one of its kinds. There was a big crowd of passengers, including local Malaysians and foreigners, heading for the Padas River rafting as it’s the peak season. The antique train (shorter than a Putra train) is not air-conditioned and there are not many seats. It was so crowded that one was lucky to get a seat. We didn’t manage to get a seat and stood all the way till the destination. It was packed like sardine and very stuffy in the train. Putra, Star and Commuter in KL have become luxurious when it comes to comparison with this antique train. We got to hold on to whatever supporting material that we could grab hold of as it was very shaky as the train moved. I was almost suffering from internal organs dislocation with 1 & ½ hours of shaking. Haha…

We made a pit stop at Rayoh Village, the ending point, which is also the Riverbug base Camp to place our bags before proceeding to Pangi Village, the starting point. Upon arriving at the starting point, we were given safety briefing before going down the river. Before the briefing started, there was this unanticipated scene, starred by Mr. Spring Pocket, conveniently hitting someone's life jacket, at the chest level saying, ”Very tight what (referring to the wearing and tightening of the life jacket)”. Some of us, who witnessed the incident, were laughing our heads off as we never expected that Pocket would conveniently/unintentionally/spontaneously acted in such a way. Ahahaha…

After the briefing the real fun and excitement started when we went down to the river for the real battle. BK, GW, BH, YY & I were in 1 boat with 2 guides while Pocket, Xena, Pig Head, LC & Thong were in another boat. Apart from us, there were easily more than 5 other boats heading for the same raft.

The adrenaline rush excursion covered a distance of 9km of this rather muddy 200 km river that holds 7 exciting and tough rapids! These rapids carry amusing names such as Merry-Go-Round Rapid, Break Point Rapid, Scooby Doo Rapid, Cobra Rapid, Curve Rapid, Lambada Rapid and Head Hunter Rapid. Each rapid gave us the feel of the motion as what the name means. It was exhilarating when we paddled past each rapid. I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride on the water. At each rapid, being skinny and underweight, I felt like almost being thrown out of the boat. I got to really hang on and tried to lean my body towards the centre of the boat to stabilize myself, or else I would be thrown out without our boat being capsized. There a few cameramen shooting video along the whole journey of the rafting. The video was clear and I really salute them for shooting so professionally and managed to capture those crucial moments as the boats paddling through the rapids or capsized.

When it was near the ending point, the rest all jumped happily into the river to enjoy the body rafting. I am not a water person, can swim a little bit but not so good at reacting in the water, decided to stay on the boat with the guide till the boat embarked. Who knew the guide said, “Ah, kalau you tak turun, you tunggu lah.” Alamak, the rest were already far ahead. Spotting Xena around, I quickly jumped into the water and rafted till the ending point with her as my body guard. It was so rocky down in the water that I had to always keep my legs pointing forward or else I would be knocked by those rocks and hurt my legs.

We had buffet lunch at Rayoh Village, the ending point. While having our lunch, the video shot during the raft was shown. In such a short time, they had already edited the movie, added it with background music and put it on show with a big TV. Of course, it’s for sale, with a ‘not cheap’ price. Photo shots were already developed and displayed for sale. Wow, Riverbug’s people were really efficient! Wanted to buy a T-shirt, but too bad, it was selling at a cut-throat price at RM50 per piece. Thus I got to forget about it.

After lunch, we changed and boarded the crowded antique train, stood and swayed all the way back to Beaufort town. We were tired but just couldn’t really sleep a little in standing and swaying motion, almost looking like Orang Utan, for those hanging on to the bar at the ceiling of the train.

After 1& ½ hour, we reached the Beaufort train station. The weather was hot and we were thirsty. We had ice cream in swift action as the bus was already outside waiting for us. We jumped into the bus and headed back to KK. For the challenge at Padas River that we had gone through, we were given a certificate of achievement that was distributed in the bus. Everyone started to doze off after a while of chit chatting, with a tired body.

I woke up after more than ½ hour, feeling the slight urge to pee. Oh shit, there was no toilet on the road before nearing KK town as the route was quite outskirt. I closed my eyes again, hoping that I could sleep and hang on till reaching KK town. The bus continued moving and the urge to pee gradually increased! I could just acted like a Ninja, holding on… 忍忍忍忍忍！Finally, we reached KK town, but too bad there was slight traffic jam as it was after office hour and it wasn’t convenient for the bus to stop for a toilet break. So shit, I could even feel a slight pain in my bladder as a result of holding the urine which was about to come out for too long! Finally, the bus stopped at Berjaya Hotel to drop the 3 guys. I rushed into the toilet, couldn’t even walk straight! What a relief after settling the business. No joke, man! It was my worst experience, ‘detaining’ my urine.

Finally, we got back to our lovely Hamin Lodge, took our refreshing shower, getting ready for an interesting seafood dinner, courtesy of Pig Head’s kind sponsor. J We headed for Port View (不夜天) seafood restaurant. We had green lobster sashimi, lobster head soup, scallop shark fin soup, ‘seven star grouper’ (七星斑), chilly crab, and vegetable with rice. Yummy yummy! Guess what, the bill came up to RM600++! Hahaha… Was sure pig head felt the pinch though he’s earning SGD. Anyway, we were not that cruel to let him bear the full cost, we paid him back about ½ of the cost later.

After dinner, Pocket wanted so badly to have some beer to reduce his fire caused by the freaking hot weather. We proceed to 1 of the pubs, with sea view. We had some Qin Dao (青岛) beer. It was quite smooth and soothing. Again, Little Tiger was joining us for the beer session. He turned up close to 11pm as he was supposed to appear at 10:30pm. I asked Little Tiger what the name is of the place that we were having beer (with pubs and café, with sea view). Again, he irrelevantly answered “Oh, this place ah, is red light district (鸡窦)”. Everyone burst into laughter and I was speechless…What a tiger!

We were tired, and headed back to Hamin Lodge to call it a day while Little Tiger, YY & Pig Head continued their second round at other place.

12 May (Saturday) – Tour De KK town and Kundasang Leisure Stay

It wasn’t a good day for YY for she was down with food poisoning, probably due to the Teh-Si she had the night before. She was having diarrhea and vomiting.

Mr. Ying our agent came to pick us up with a van around 9 something in the morning. His surname is actually Toh, and his last name is Shu Ying in Mandarin, thus we gave him a new name in Cantonese, Ying Goh for easier addressing. He is a PHD student of UMS and has been residing in KK for almost 10 years, 1 of the pioneer badge of students when UMS first started. He is a Fu Chow, thus calculus & making business must be his areas of expertise I suppose. Thus, he takes up part time agent/tour guide job on & off. He took us to tour round University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) campus which has a very nice sea view (无敌海景). Weather was freaking hot, we stopped at a few spots, mechanically snapped some pictures and jumped back into the van for shelter from the hot sun. After the campus tour, we headed for Tuaran for Tuaran Mee for lunch. What a unique town name of Tuaran. What if people mistakenly pronounce it as ‘Tualan’? What would it sound in Hokkien? “Tualan Mee”? Hahaha… Anyway, I found the Tuaran Mee nothing great, just a plate of super dried mee with few pieces of ‘char siew’ (colored till super red), fish cake, and veggie.

After our lunch, we headed for Kundasang, a Cameron Highland like town for our 3rd day of stay. On the way, we stopped at the road side (which looked like an abandoned desert) for coconut pudding highly recommended by Ying Goh. The coconut pudding comes in 2 forms, in cup (RM2) and in a complete coconut (RM4). It was cooling, the texture was fine and it just tasted superbly great, in the hot weather. We also ordered some fresh coconut juice and lokan (a type of clam) bakar, eaten with lime juice and the super powerful chilly sauce. The lokan bakar tasted delicious, we just dared not take the risk of having diarrhea by having too much of lokan bakar as we were having our climb to Mount KK the next day. Poor YY could only stare at us having the lokan bakar, while she could only have some coconut juice.

After satisfying our stomach with the makan-makan, we headed to Kundasang, about 1 & ½ hours of journey.

As we moved, we were going up hill and the route got more winding, temperature was dropping, and it was getting colder. The journey was long, YY was sick and silent and most of us dozed off.

When we were near our destination, we made a pit stop for some grilled chicken wings, at a place similar to Kea Farm in Cameron Highland, with stalls selling fresh veggie and flowers. We then made another pit stop for souvenir, where Xena was the champion, taking over YY’s reign as the Shopping Queen.

Finally, we reached the Kinabalu Pine Resort. It was really a nice place, with cold weather, and nice pine view, just nice enough to do nothing and relax.

We had steamboat dinner in the cozy weather and it seemed that YY had regained her power and was recovering. Anyway, she had decided not to proceed with the Climb the next day for safety reason.

We had an early sleep as we got to wake up very early in the morning to start the climb.

Land below the Wind: Part 2 - To be continued…

13/05 (Sunday) – Started Climbing from Mesilau Track

14/05 (Monday) – Conquered the Summit & Funny Proposal Story

15/05 (Tuesday) – Shopping, Coconut Pudding & Lokan Bakar again, and urine detention story