I felt so vexed from preparing tomorrow’s lessons that I took a piece of 8cm spring onion (葱) and tried using it as a straw to drink a cup of water.

It worked. For half a cup.  

Oh well, school has reopened, and I’m really exhausted from all the work! (and it’s only the 2nd day.. =.=" )

Anyway, this last part of my KK trip is gonna be a short one, just because I have just that little bit of energy left to blog. On the 3rd day evening, my buddies and I went to camp overnight on Sapi Island (one of the 5 islands at Tunku Abdul Rahman Park). Guess who we met there? 3 girls from England! And one of them recognised us and told us that they were climbing the mountain the same time as us one day ago. Coincidence, yah? heh.. They were also there to camp, so we tried very hard to set up fire after the sun set, and had some bread and canned food for dinner (as you can see in the picture below).

After eating, my buddies and I couldn’t find much stuff to do, and we resorted to catching crabs on the beach. There were really a lot of crabs crawling in and out of holes in the sand!! And we were busy chasing after them. haha.  

So we slept at like 1130pm, and woke up at 5+ in the morning to catch the sunrise. As I wasn’t in a "picture-taking" mood, these 2 pictures were about all that I took for the 2 days on the island. Of course, we did enjoy ourselves from playing water sports (snorkelling, swimming, feeding fishes, etc).

Hmm.. guess that’s about all that are worth mentioning, yah? And finally, we flew back to Singapore.. Sg is still the best!!

(Below are pictures of KK airport. Well, not that grand, yah? =P)

It was around 8pm when we reached our hostel. Since we would have to wake up at 2am the next day to resume the climb to the summit, we were supposed to sleep early. But, after unpacking our stuff, bathing, and chatting for awhile, it was soon 10pm.. which means I could only get 4 hrs of sleep at most before continuing our journey up the mountain!!

It turned out that it didn’t matter what time I got to bed in the end, because the room without heater is simply TOO COLD to sleep in! Temperature then must have been below zero degree, and my winterwear (+gloves+socks+blanket) wasn’t enough to keep me warm. And so, I spent 3 hr plus fidgeting in bed without much quality sleep.

***

It is 230am, and my friends and I had finished our maggi mee breakfast. We had our bags ready, headlamps strapped onto our heads and were ready to do the 2.6km climb to the top. The way was easy at first, but it got difficult gradually. After what seemed like an endless flight of stairs, we reached the granite part of the mountain (where there isn’t any vegetation). Now, instead of walking on paved steps, we had to walk with our bodies bent forward to lower the centre of gravity (physics!). As most part of the climb was very steep, we often had to use ropes to assist ourselves to ascend.

3-4 hrs after climbing, we’ve finally reached the summit!! But I wasn’t happy. Guess why? Cos.. it was raining rather heavily, and I couldn’t have the opportunity to take pictures with my camera (So you won’t see any pictures of views from the summit). Sounds terrible, when my main objective was to take pictures at the summit, yah? But nevertheless, it was a good experience being able to conquer the mountain.. heh. And then we spent the rest of the afternoon descending the mountain and went back to our hostel in the city.

Ok, since I didn’t manage to get any nice pics at the top, I shall put up some pictures of Kota Kinabalu (city area). Hope you people will enjoy it.

The last pic shows an iconic statue of a swordfish at a turn-about in Kota Kinabalu. At the far end, you could see some "mountain-like" feature. That is actually one of the 5 islands that people go for sea sports (snorkelling, diving, etc).  

Guess that is all for this third instalment. I should be wrapping up the details of my trip with 1 more post soon.. Keep a lookout!  

Early in the morning next day (at 0545), the three of us woke up and headed down to our hostel lounge to have breakfast. Though it was still not yet six, the sun was already up! We had to get up so early because we needed to head to Kinabalu Park as early as possible. Taking a bus would have been a cheaper option but the first bus would go only at 8am.

And finally, we’re off to Mount Kinabalu! The journey to Mt K from our hostel was about 2 hrs, but we could already see the mountain peak after we set of shortly. This is one of the shots taken along the way.

After travelling up the winding road for 2 hrs, we finally reach the park HQ. Registration and hiring of guide were done in this building.

This is another view of Mt K from the park HQ. (I would be on one of the peaks there in the next day!)

And so, we started climbing the mountain (walking, actually) at around 9am (?). I didn’t really keep track of the time.

Okay, so it seemed like everything was settled, but I had actually made a mistake by not hiring a porter to carry our stuff when we climbed the mountain! Although my guide kept urging us to get a porter, we thought we could manage and declined his request. Turned out that he was just being concerned that we would get tired out easily by our load.

This waterfall was taken near the start of the summit trail. Initially having my camera and tripod hanging from my shoulder, I thought that it would be convenient for me to snap photos whenever I felt like it. Turned out that the load was so heavy that I packed all my camera stuff into my backpack and it was never taken out again before we reached the halfway mark.

Another mistake was made when we had some mis-communication with our guide. As the trip up was going to be very strenous, we were prepared to buy lots of chocolate and other sweet stuff to keep our bodies energized. However, not knowing where the shop is located, we asked our guide to bring us there. And I believe our guide assumed that we’ve already gotten what we wanted in our "extremely huge" backpacks, and so he didn’t remind us when we walked past the shop! Groanz.. Fortunately, our guide was generous to offer us a packet of banana chips (which was good to replenish lost energy). Also, 2 elderly trekkers that we kept meeting on our way offered us some peanut butter biscuits and dark chocolate kitkats. They’re so kind!

And so, after 5 to 6 hrs of what was equivalent to "stairs-climbing", we reached the Laban Rata Resthouse at 3272.7 metres above sea levels. At this resthouse, we could buy our necessities (food, gloves, etc) but at a much higher price. Since it was already almost 4pm, I settled for my lunch-cum-dinner while my two buddies waited for the dinner buffet (which is at 30rm per pax).

This is my dinner.. Chicken burger, fries and coleslaw! Looks good? Well.. after such a tiring walk, anything would have tasted good!

The weather was good when the sun was still up, so I got to the balcony and took lots of pictures. Here are some of them, hope you enjoy viewing.  

Can you see the rainbow on the pic above??? heh

And the sun sets… 

Temperature soon reached near zero degrees when I was taking the last few pictures. (In fact, my whole body was shivering uncontrollably when I was doing the last shot!) It was now about 7pm, and we were ready to head to where we were going to stay for the night, Gunting Lagadan Hut.

More updates soon! 

On 13th June, my two buddies and I left Singapore for our Kota Kinabalu (KK) trip. First, we went to Senai Airport in JB by bus. For your info, it takes about 45 minutes to reach the airport from the causeway, so it wasn’t really that near!

Since we reached the airport 2 hours before the flight, we had the time to idle around (not that there are many shops to look around, as the airport is way much smaller than the Changi Airport). I bought a cheesecake to eat since it was cheap. 2.50rm! lol

When it was about time, we checked in our stuff and got into the departure hall. This is how it looks like. Pretty pleasant and spacious. (I sat on one of the seats and slept for 1 hour.)

Finally time to fly off to Kota Kinabalu! This is how the airport looks like, from the plane’s window view.

Well, this is not my first time flying, but I had never been able to take pictures from the window seats in my previous flights from my past travels, so I started to get all excited and took some blue sky pictures from the inside.

After about two hours or so, we reached KK. As the hostel we engaged provide free shuttle service, we had a driver there to pick us up from the KK Airport. After a 15-minute ride, we reached our hostel (named Trekkers’ Lodge). It was pretty decent, with a large dining cum tv room in the 2nd floor.

This is how our room looked like. Each of us had a double decker bed at 18rm per person per night. Isn’t too expensive, yea? haha

Well, since it was already quite late at night after we’ve got everything settled down, we only went for a short walk to familiarise ourselves with the nearby amenities. We also had a KFC meal before turning in.

I guess that’s all that happened on the first day. Will be writing on what happened on the next 2 days soon (with more pics)!! 

Hi guys! I’m finally back! Had a hard time climbing Mount Kinabalu, and was quite disappointed when I reached the peak (with difficulty) as there wasn’t any photo-taking opportunity. It was raining quite heavily and there wasn’t any nice sunrise at all. Furthermore, my guide urged us to quickly descend the mountain as the weather wasn’t favourable. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience to complete the mountain climb, and I’ve learnt lots of things during my trip.

Well, too tired now, so I guess I’ll post the photos real soon, after I’ve finished post-processing them. Watch this space!  

Hey peeps! Sorry for not updating my blog so often. I was busy preparing for my trip, and also doing some other stuff. So, I’ll be off to Msia in bout ten hours time, and will be returning on Sunday.

Hope to get some really nice photos to share with you guys when I return. Take care!!  

Well, looks like it has been quite some time since I last updated my blog. That is because I had to go back to NIE everyday, and I’m lack of interesting stuff to post.

Anyway, I’ve done some still life shots of my violin some days back.

Since JC, I developed this sudden interest towards string instruments.  I began to listen more often to my classical music collection (mainly Vivaldi and Mozart), and finally saved enough money from my temp job to buy a violin after my A levels.

Unfortunately, after taking up violin lessons for near to 4 months, I had to discontinue because of NS.. and did not manage to find time to pick it up again. This is one of the regrets that I have (on not being able to continue learning), so I urge you people to enjoy and treasure the different extra activities and lessons (piano, painting, etc) that you have the opportunity to learn now. You never know if you still have the time to commit in future.

This is gonna be a short post, because I’m already tired after a whole day of activities.

And I gotta say I enjoyed the PHS concert in the evening!! Well done, people.. you all have performed well!! =) It’s so nice to see you students that I’ve taught, and also the teachers that I’ve been with for that 2-month stay in PHS. I was busy spotting those of you performing. Heh.

Just a couple of pictures to share. I apologise for the poor quality. They were taken from my hp cam. =P

3 cheers for you people!