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HELLO I WILL UPDATE THIS THING SOON (:
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Friday, December 14, 2007
So... read the title.
Actually, I came back on Thursday, not Friday as I thought, because my parents misinformed me. Anyway, yesterday I wasn't on MSN or anything becoz I wanted to stay offline until Friday, for some reason.
And...here's a short summary of my time in Kota Kinabalu.
1st Day.
Well, we left our house at 6 or so, and took a taxi to the airport. The taxi driver kept talking and talking and talking about how hard it was to be a taxi-driver.
Anyway, we took the SilkAir MI391 plane bound to KK (Kota Kinabalu) and had lunch on the plane. Chicken omellete, if I'm not wrong. How do you spell "omellete?"
The flight was a couple of hours long and we were delayed by half an hour for some reason. The runway was bumpy- apparently there's a 1.2 billion RM renovation going on.
So, we met the tour guide who brought us around the city to see some markets. It's just like the ones in Singapore: bunches of bananas hanging around and fruit everywhere. Then we went to our hotel.
From our hotel we took a taxi to the Zoo. It was quite cool, but I think Singapore's zoos are better. Anyway, we took some pictures there and arrived in time to watch the animal training.
Oh, and one of the staff was pretty cute. It was the one who told us that the animal training show was starting soon. Not really chio-cute, but sporty-cute. If I was around her age I'll be going for her type. =D
No, she wasn't a mat.
Sorry, digressing. The zoo closed at 5.30 so we called the same taxi driver (He went home to nap because he lives near the zoo) and started driving back. It started raining and I took some cool sunset pics from the cab. Posting pics later.
The taxi drove us to some nice seafood restaurant where we ate crabs. I'll post pictures later if I can find them.
Then we went around shopping and buying Christmas stuff, then bought some cup noodles back to the hotel. The noodles sucked.
In Kota Kinabalu, the taxis don't use the meters, even if they have them. We just say our destination and then haggle the price. Normally around 10RM.
-------------------(Oh fine. This'll be a pretty long post.)
Day 2:
Today was a long day! We woke up at 7-ish and ate breakfast at our hotel.
Our hotel was some palace hotel that was surprisingly decorated like a palace. The outside had turrets and stuff. Pretty cool. Still, the interior was not much different from normal hotels.
I just love being a tourist. It gives you a lot of freedom to go around looking like shit. You can just jump out of bed with shorts and an oversized T-shirt and eat in the hotel restaurant.
Which was exactly what I did.
The breakfast was kinda nice considering that it was a 3 or 4 star hotel, not some posh 5-star one. There was noodles, rice, porridge, nuggets, grilled chicken, fishballs, bread, pop-up toasters, omelette and wafers. And they are good at BBQing chicken. Post pics later.
So, after that we went for a really long tour around Mt Kinabalu, about 3 hours worth of driving. We stopped by at some tiny town to buy sovenieurs. Nothing much there except for the view. We were driving at cloud level most of the time. Either cloud or fog. Anyway, it was pretty cold considering that we were in Malaysia. 13 degrees or smth. And I was wearing an oversized T-shirt and shorts. Once again, pics later.
Then, we went to KK Park and saw interesting plants like the world's tiniest orchird and the most expensive one. There was a Mickey-mouse shaped flower.
I can't really remember the order now, but we we went to eat at a restruant near the base of the mountain (but still really high up) and the food was kinda lousy. Nice view, though.
After that (I think), we went to a canopy walk and saw a lot of nice-looking plants, and took a lot of pics. The canopy walk was 41 meters above the ground. I camwhored a lot on the canopy walk.
Then we went to some Hot Springs bath with apparently sulphur water or something. Kinda dubious at first because it was a room with a bathtub and taps. And the water looked exactly like normal water.
Anyway, after that there was another looonggg drive back to the city which I slept through while my sister lubbed my earphones. Amazing view as well, but the coach windows were fogged up most of the time.
At night, we took another taxi to some new mall called the Wisma something if I'm not wrong. Shopped a bit and ate at a high-class chicken rice shop.
Remember the Hot Springs bath? Well apparently there was sulphur in the water. We washed our wet clothes in the hotel and surprise after about 20 minutes of soaking while we watched TV all the water in the basin was yellow. I took a really long bath after realising I've been soaking in that stuff for an hour.
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Day 3:
There was no guided tour today, so we booked a little tour of our own: Whitewater Rafting.
And shut up, Anurak.
Once again stumbled into the hotel restaurant for breakfast, with oversized Tshirts and shorts, messed up hair and bleary eyes. (There was Twins Effect on TV, and I stayed up after that to read my Chinese book for the book report.) Those guys in suits there looked at us funny. But hey, tourists have this privilege so why not use it?
So, we took a bus ride to the rafting spot.
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The tour group we joined used a very loose, "School Bus" kind of policy. They just act as our bus drivers, picking us up at the airport and dropping us at our different hotels. Then they pick us up again if we're doing the same activities that day. So, they can serve a lot of people at the same time, while making it like a "free and easy" trip.
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Thus, we met up with a pair of people that ate with us on the second day at the restaurant. Apparently they wanted to go rafting too! They're from Hong Kong but educated in Australia so they can speak Cantonese and English really well.
So, we went rafting. It was bloody fun. Sadly, a bit tame even though it was my first time going. I wish I could have gone for the 18-and older one with damn rough waters.
Basically, the rafting was like sitting in inflatable boats and paddling downstream with a fast current and a lot of rocks under water that create a lot of rough water, hence "white" water. The boats have to be inflatable and rubbery to go over the rocks. A hard boat will just crash into the rocks and tip everyone overboard, while a thin float will just rip.
We should have gone the previous day though, because it rained, and that would have made faster currents and a longer trail. The guide told us that we could have paddled all 14 kilometers to our eating area if it rained instead of the 7km we did. And in the same time. That means we would have gone a lot faster.
To make up for it, the guides really made a lot of fun. We paddled around and splashed other boats with water, pulled people overboard and sang songs. Quite fun. There was one guy who fell overboard and everyone just continued on and daoing him. The guides only went back to pick him up after about 5 minutes.
Then we jumped off the boat at a designated point to swim around for a while. In the end the current was too strong for us to swim to the bank. We were like swimming at the same spot for 5 minutes. My mum had to be pulled by the life vest back by a guide. For me, I just swirled around in an eddy for a few minutes before the current brought me back to the bank.
Then there was body-rafting. We stopped at a place with really fast current but relatively smooth water and jumped into the water. The current brought us to the bank where we got into the boats and continued.
Why am I being so detailed? Because we didn't take any pictures of the rafting itself because our camera would be wet. However we bought 4 high-quality pictures that they took of us. Post later, too.
After that, we were driven to our hotel, and we walked to the nearby shopping centre to shop.
Again.
There was a Giant in the basement.
Not a GIANT, a Giant!
The supermarket, not a big guy.
So anyway, we bought more cup noodles (They had only 2 types of noodles...) and some drinks and headed back to the hotel for dinner. We also brought 2 nice glass bottles of drinks (My sister brought Red Bull while I brought some Malt drink.) to bring back to Singapore. All my siblings collect bottles, see.
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Day 4:
And then it was back to Singapore!
Finally, I wore more presentable clothes. Not during breakfast though, because I was wearing my PE shirt and track pants. But anyway, we left the hotel at 10.am and went to the airport for the 12.oclock flight.
They didn't let the bottles in!!! NOO!!! So we left them with that person that monitors the X-rays. We drank the drinks at the hotel, though.
So, we boarded the same flight and ate chicken noodles on-flight. Taught my sister a bit of Rubik's cube before she got bored and didn't want to learn.
Also, we planned to buy stuff at either of the airports, but because KK's airport didn't really sell anything, and we couldn't buy stuff with a Singapore Passport in Singapore, so we didn't buy wine for our relatives like we do about every year.
Then it was back home to appear offline and watch TV.
-The End-
I'll be posting pics in the next post.
11:28 AM
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