Legendary adventurous trip

In summer 2009, I went Sabah to visit Stephanie, one of our coursemate. The reason why I am only blogging about it now is that I just got the photos!

Remember the awesome to Arthur video? It was during this trip. The trip lasted about 10 days. During these 10 days, we went from learning how to dive, to climbing mount Kinabalu, and to getting an advance diving license.

Ah if I haven't mentioned, Stephanie is this person below, she is like the princess of Sabah!

By the way, if you have a very good impression of Sabah paradise beaches, I can tell you, Sabah's beach looks like this:

Oops.. actually this is one of the crappiest beach in Sabah by the roadside. Sabah beaches are really pretty!

Before I go into the beaches..... If you are hungry, I am sorry, but I have to spoil your appetite, because what you are eating now, might be just shitty as always. Welcome to the seafood heaven!

Lots of fresh living seafood caught from the ocean! Most of it you wont even see it in the peninsular.

Still not spoilt for choices?

Garoupas, prawns, shells, all types of seafood!

Look at this type of shell prawns? Its RM 100 for 1 kg. But we got lobster, which was double the price...

Now time to eat!

Buttermilk lobster!

Soft shell crab. Have you eaten this amount of soft shell crab like eating a huge tin of cookies? And we had a 7-star grouper fish too!


After filling our stomach with heavenly seafood for our welcome night dinner, things went serious the next morning as its our first day to dive!

We started off from Sutera Harbour.

Suit up!

Went to an island around the Taman Tunku Abdul Rahman marine park to confine water training near the beach.
In the afternoon, we hop on the boat to go for real diving in deeper waters.

Sadly, there was no underwater camera to take the pictures in the water.

Stephanie with her equipments..

A swim after an exhausting dive...

Thats the expression when you become pro.

Besides, we spend alot of time on different islands as well, sunbathing and playing volleyballs.

But sometimes you get distractions when you are trying to relax...
For example :

When you are happy happily sunbathing....

Suddenly you see...

Then the outcome...

Forget it if you see nothing in this 3 pictures story.

After diving into 20m underwater, we set foot to conquer the 4095m above sea level mountain the following day. Climbing mount Kinabalu requires a lot of training and determination. Even though before that I ran Menjalara park 10 times up and down the hill, going up the 1st 1km trail of the mountain has already got me draining all my reserved energy. All left was just the mind, to collapse and give up, or to thrive every one step further. And finally you step on the highest ground and shout: "TO ARTHUR!!". I was so proud to never giving up, carrying an extra 1kg bottle of Guinness up 8km of the mountain trail!
(the Guinness was a challenge/bet/joke.... when I brought out the bottle on the peak, people took photos of us..haha.... " What? You brought a beer !!?")

Because of the popularity of this Mountain, climbing it actually cost a lot. If you think you could train hard and give it a go, think again..... One night accomodation costs at least RM450 + guide + everything will round up to about RM600, even if you book early. So should you have this ambition, remember to save while u train!
The whole mountain was crowded with non Malaysians. It felt like I was in UK. I can tell there were lots of british, Americans, Japanese, HK, Singaporeans....

We started our journey all pumped up with "energergy", a special form of energy derived from our kind.

We were trying to do a chant to absorb some energergy.

And off we went.

The one little girl in the middle of this picture didnt follow us up.

This the begining of the trail, green,wet rainforest.

As you ascend, less and less vegetation.

They have pondoks (stops) every 1 km of the trail, each with different names. Like this one, pretty sure you are little dizzy when you reach here.


It took us about 3 and a half hour to reach the resting house and settlements. Faster than normal people do. It was more than exhausting. We took a nap and had a buffet in the evening, sitting and chatting with a New York couple.

The next morning, we woke up at 3am to continue, normally people start from 1 or 2 am, but with our overwhelming confidence and energery, we made it 3am.

It took us another 2.5 hours, again faster than normal to reach the peak and catch the sunrise at 6am.

Its the spot everyone takes a picture! See, we reach before sunrise, so energergetic!

And its time to celebrate!

Cheers!

After gulping down Guinness and got drunk...
We sat for 10 mins.....

And found out that it was actually very cold with all our wet clothing on this peak.

After a stunning and beautiful sunrise, we headed down. (we were lucky that the weather was really clear)

Down we went... rolling down..

And because we still felt energergetic, we did some stunts.

This is the view from the last "pondok", 7km up the mountain trail. The view of the villages and settlements down there could be seen clearly here.

We took an adventurous package, which include descending this part of the mountain like abseiling.

The people in this picture might seem to be in an awkward position, but its really steep and hard to maintain an upright position.

The descend only took like 2 hours, they were literally running downhill like a reward is waiting for them.
Tired and sluggish, we head back to the ocean the day after to complete our advanced diving. Walking and especially going down stairs had never become so hard. Our quadriceps and calf felt very painful. It made us hesitate for some time when we were going down steps.

That was, the legendary adventurous trip I had this summer. Never had combine so many adventurous activities within a trip.


Last but not least, let me introduce here a new award....
The Queen of sleeping.

She could sleep anywhere from land

To sea

To the mountains

Sweet dreamz..