Now’s as Good a Time as Any

Drunken Master

August 27th, 2007 by Greg

We arrived in Kota Kinabalu in the early evening and were lucky enough to have a relatively short walk from the bus stop to our guest house. It was already late in the afternoon, so after getting settled in, we went out and had dinner at a nearby barbecue. Upon arriving back at the hostel we met a Canadian couple who’d been staying there for about a week, and they gave us a glowing recommendation of the proprietor, Vincent, and told us to put our plans in his hands if we weren’t sure what to do. It was definitely good advice.

Having no idea what to do exactly (my original plan of trying to find us a 3 or 4 day jungle trek became quickly unrealistic when prices for these types of things in Borneo are around $1000 US!!), we asked Vincent for an idea. He suggested we check out one of the nearby islands for the day, and as Juliana was really looking forward to at least one day of doing nothing at the beach, we accepted the offer. He drove us to the ferry pier and we caught a boat to the island, one of several off the coast near KK and sharing it with us were several hundred Korean and Japanese tourists. I did a bit of snorkeling, navigating through all the Japanese and Koreans floating by in their life jackets and snorkel gear, while Juliana enjoyed her time just laying around in the sand. We caught the last boat to the mainland and Vincent was waiting there to take us back to the hostel.

The next day he suggested we take a tour to see the Proscibis monkeys, leaving in the early afternoon. A couple hours on a minibus got us to the park, where a tour boat took us up and down a river, stopping every time we saw some monkeys in the trees. Unfortunately they were usually a ways off, so you couldn’t really see the big floppy noses that make them unique, but it was still a nice little jungle adventure. The boat took us back to the dock and we had a buffet dinner, returning again to the boat to go firefly watching after dark. We went the other direction this time, again stopping when we saw the fireflies in a tree, which looked almost like Christmas lights flickering in the branches.

Juliana only had one more full day of her trip left, so we wanted to do as much as possible. Again Vincent came through, inviting a Belgian couple that was also staying in the guest house with us to do three things: visit Mt. Kinabalu park, see the Rafelasia flower, and visit the nearby hotsprings. It was a long day so we got started fairly early.

Our first stop was Mt. Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in southeast Asia. Lot’s of people come to this area to climb it in a two day journey, but like a lot of places in Borneo the spots to sleep near the peak were all booked out well ahead of time, and while you could get on a waiting list, that just meant climbing to the top and hoping there was something available, or spending a cold night outside waiting for sunrise. In addition, the day we went was the day of the annual race up and down the mountain, where a bunch of crazy people run up and back again in 3 hours (again, this is a climb normal people do over two full days!). Arriving 11:00am, we were in time to see some of the last finishers of the race cross the line, having started at 7:00am. We did a little walk through the park at the base, trying to find a good view of the mountain but constantly being thwarted by the looming clouds. A quick lunch at a cafe in the park and we were off to see the flower.

One of the largest flowers in the world, the Rafelasia blooms for only about 5 days before dying, and only in a few parts of Asia, during late August. We happened to be in luck to come during a time when they were blooming, and this park had one that had opened about 3 days prior. While not nearly as large as the flowers can get, it was still impressive at about 3 feet across. They also had a couple local jungle cats and a little lemur in cages. The cats looked like cut little house cats with leopard spots, but at one point the cage roof got knocked open just slightly and I’ve never seen a cat move so fast as this one jumped and attached itself to the wire near the opening, trying to escape. Sad to have them caged up like that, but a good reminder that these aren’t cute and cuddly pets.

The final stop was the hot springs, where there was swimming available and a “jungle canopy walk”. We hadn’t brought our swim things, so we decided to just see the canopy. There was a small butterfly house we walked through first, though it had begun to rain slightly and not many of them were out. The line for the canopy walk was long and slow moving, up a narrow stairway to a ledge where a small rope bridge connected with several others through the canopy. Unfortunately, it was raining hard and most of the bridges were under repair, so the wait wasn’t exactly worth it in my opinion. I also couldn’t help but thinking how funny it was to be waiting in line for an attraction that was basically the same thing as the bridges I had to traverse to get across various gorges in Nepal while trekking, but now for novelty value instead.

Early the next morning, the arranged car came and picked Juliana up for a ride to the airport, and I found myself a lone traveler again. I took the day to try and catch up on blogging (didn’t get as far as I would have liked, maybe you noticed…) and for general relaxation. The morning after I was going to take a boat to Brunei for an overnight stop on my way to Miri in the other Bornean state of Sarawak.

Photos
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia