2 weeks ago it was the mid-term break. while its means for local:working hard on project, it means for exchange students travelling more or less far away from Singapore!
It was hard to choose one destination...as i want to go everywhere :-). finally we decided Borneo.
Borneo is a big island on the left of Singapore, and upper. Borneo is well known for its wildlife nature, landscapes, animals and life :-). So, we went there for 10 days!! too short! from friday 22th of september till 1st of october...with the same team, and some welcomed extra people at the end!
Day 1.
Normally the first would have been a busy day: we should have climbed the mountain directly afterwards the flight. So we woke up at 3am to take the flight from JB in malaysia at 7.30am. But airasia, the lowcost we booked, decided it will be a unusefull day :-). 7 hours delay!!!7 hours in a small airport...Finally, we arrived at the down of the mountain it was already dark!!too late for us!!
picture:busy time at the JB airport
Day 2.
Impossible to have a place in the accomodation at the base camp in Mt Kinabalu! and as you climb the mountain in 2 days: no room, no climb!
So we went to the Hot springs...i was waiting for water springing from the ground (that's the point normally), but no. It was like my bathroom (in France) in public! i mean...we had a bath, and if you wanted hot water from hot springs we turned the tap!!! tourist trick!but i think it can be nice to do that after climbing the mountain.
We walked there, accross a butterfly farm, on a canopy and to a waterfall. Nice day...not very tiring, perfect before THE effort!
Day 3.
Big breakfast, before being at the feet of Mt Kinabalu. you have to pay a guide, entrance fees for the park, insurance..anyway, a lot of things, and at the end, only at the end, they give you a document with risk, problems you encounter, and some case in which you can't climb! Thank you for saying that at the end!!!!!
Mt Kinabalu...This is the highest mountain in South East Asia: 4 095 meters
you start at 1500 meters, and you stop for the night at the base camp at 3300 meters. Guides said you (i mean : non very fit :-) ) need between 3 and 6 hours to do that...For us it was 4 hours! It wasn't sunny for hiking, the weather was perfect:not too cold not too hot!and the landscape perfect as well!!!
Of course everyone is in bed latest at 9pm :-)...the next day will be hard!!
picture: views while the climb, and at the base camp(yes it was cold!)
day 4.
Wake up at 2am...hm i love that!!! light breakfast,and gooooooo. At 3 o'clock you start climbing for the last 2.7km until the top. It's pitch black...so you need a nice torch on your head (does it ring a bell to some people :-) )
The objective is to arrive before the sunrise, and watch it sitting on a rock....and we did it. we arrived 10 minutes before. we were lucky because it wasn't neither foggy nor rainy...just windy. So we spent roughly 40 minutes there to take picture, make some "ohhhhh" "aaaaaaah" "beautiful" ...it's beautiful overthere but you rae happy to go down because it's very cold!!
Finally we went back to the base camp for a real and huge breakfast...we deserved it!
Afterwards you go down...more or less slowy, it depends on you, on your ankle :-) and on the rain. It suddenly started raining when we went down, and we had to walk for 4 more km!!!so we ran...saddly Sandra, hurted herslef...ouch!!! :-)
When everyone was there, we took a bus to Sepilok...on the way i watched the landscape. Some parts are beautiful because it is rainforest, but most of the landscape is saddly Palm trees. They cut and destroy the rainforest to plant Palm Trees, because you can earn money with the oil palm.
Day 5
Wake up at Sepilok, one of the 4th Orang Outan rehabilitation center. It's a huge park where Orang Outan and others wild animals live. Twice a day, there is a feeding, and tourists can come, admire and take million pictures of them.
Afterwards, we took a mini bus to go for a 3 days jungle trek, at the river Kinabatangan, and the road to go there was...it wans't a road in fact, just a muddy pathway...very good for your bump :-)
just after arriving, we went for our 1st boat trip on the sungai kinabatangan, the largest river in Sabbah. We saw a lot of monkeys (long tail, short tail, probiscis -long nose-) birds, and even a crocodile (ok, half of the crocodile!!). As we are lucky, our boat engine just broke in the middle of the river...so we had to wait for the other boat. The other boat try to dragg us, but it didn't have enough oil...we stopped again, and we switched boat...we finally arrived, later than expected but safe!!!
Day 6
For this day the program was a boat trip early in the morning, a trek in the jungle and the last boat trip. While the boat trip we saw a lot of monkeys and so one...but the most impressive was the trip in the jungle. Full of big trees, leetches, flowers, big spiders, mud...we were like in Lost (without the others!). We didn't see any python, but the tenant of the hostel said he has already seen one huge swalling whatever animals...that's why when they are going to the jungle, they always have a knife: in case of a python would be hungry....brrr, freaking!!!
picture: early in the morning on Kinabantaga, lost in the jungle (we have the look..that kill!:socks on pant), and a big spider with a drawing of a skull.
Day 7
Last breakfast at the Sepilok jungle hostel before going back to the urban jungle. today is mostly a transport day: bumping mini bus first, then another crazy fully mini bus and taking finally another minibus to Semporna, lats destination.This town is not very special, but our hostel was great. it's a floating hostel!!! but...you have to take your "shower" in the toilet as usual, except...this time you have to flush yourself :-). it means, you only have a bucket that you fill to rinse and do everything in fact!!! but it was ok for 3 days...
we met again others people from NUS: Erica, Marlous,Eva,Owen and Cecilia. All of us slept in the same dorms, it was funny. my first night without being a "couple" with Kris. Quite nice actually to have some new people.
Day 8
Wake up early...today is the diving day at Sipadan. Sipadan is very (small) famous. it is considering as one of the most beautiful place to dive. It's quite far away from the semporna coast:1 hour by boat. You are not anymore allowed to sleep on the island, it's a protected place now. We have done 3 dives in a day: at the barracuda point, the drop off and another one (i don't remember!!). It was beautifull everywhere: i saw turtles, dorine starring in nemo, boxfishes,coral, barracudas, small shark and a huge guitare shark (around 3 meters!).
The drop off point is very impressive: you are near to the shore, and it is swallow but suddenly it's deep, a wall. 600meters deep...we didn't go so far of course. It was such an awesome day!!!
Day 9
crazy day. Normally it should have been the relax day in our trip: no travel, no hiking...nothing but laying on the beach. and it fact it was!!! We took a boat to go to mabul, another famous diving spot, but just for tanning a little bit. The beach was great...we saw some floating resort..with small hut on stild. if i have to go somewhere for my honeymoon i will think about this place.
Afterwards, we came back. When we disbarked at Semporna, a man came and invited us to go to a hotel for free food for dinner. It's a diving shop tenant. We went there with Uncle Tchan, and it was a charity fest...free food and free flow drink until the end of the party. It was amazing...we didn't know him and he invited 9 of them to eat with him there and payed everything. we were amazed!! When we were the last ones, he invited us to go to a bar...we followed him. Once again he payed the drinks all night long. The bar was a kind of deserted karaoke bar: so we were not ashamed to sing...even chinese song (with Marlous but i have to say, it was a disaster!!!when you don't know neither the lyrics nor the rythms...not good!!)...
It was our last day there, and we had really well finished with this unexpected night...
pictures: Girsl on the beach at Mabul, sunset, Uncle Tchan performance, something strong that Sandra experiment, Johann cheerleaders performance, cheers at the charity party
Day 10
time to go...the first day where we get up so late!!!took a bus to Tawau for catching the plane and going back to Singapore!!! Our plane didn't have any delay...it was even earlier at Singapore than expected!
These holidays were fully booked and really awesome...but 10 days it's so short!!!that's incredible; and you lose so much time in transport.
hope you enjoyed the picture and thank you to people who have read until here.
time to bed...next post:BALI!
good night and good appetit!
good night and good appetit!
