Mercure Waterfront Kota Kinabalu

... to the hostel to read a book ... It is now raining ... absolutely pouring in fact and it has been since about 8pm last night ... what a storm!!!

So now i am just waiting til this afternoon when i shall take a taxi to the airport and then fly back to Singapore

Chat soon everyone ... please sign the guestbook so i know who the over 1000 hits on my blog are from ... WOW over 1000 in a month!!

Thanks

c xxx

... looking at crabs and lizards and the couple of birds we could find. We sat in an otherwise empty hide for a while, that’s when I decided to make my move, again. I got down on my arthritic left knee, it being slightly less painful to kneel on than my still bloodied right. She said yes, more because she felt sorry for me than she thought this was finally the perfect proposal. I had in fact asked a few times since we left home, but ...

... that, taking a leisurely 5 hours to reach the hut.

There wasn’t much in the way of views as the afternoon mist came down but it was a friendly walk up with different groups chatting as we passed going up or down and wished each other luck (Sarah, still not feeling great felt in need of this!). We kept meeting the same folks at the rest stops.
As we slogged up to Laban Rata the porters who carry up all the supplies passed us at times ...

... up by a second boat. We were all totally out of breath after being under the water and then swimming as fast as we could back to the boat as we reached the next set but the 4 of us managed to safely get to the bottom of them anyway. Later on in a smaller set of rapids i looked back and noticed that the japannese couple that were in the boat with us weren't really paddling at all, just kind of lightly pushing there paddles through the water with no real effort and i wondered if there were ...

... rather territorial Trigger fish, who insisted on escorting her off 'their patch of turf'. Mabul is a great place to see all types of sea-life, but best of all are the dozens of beautiful sea turtles you see all around you, watching them gracefully swim alongside you in the water is breath-taking! :) Last stop in Sabah, we headed north again to try climbing Mount Kinabalu - 4,095.2 metres of granite-faced fun. After a 4-hour climb in the day to Laban Rata, (our base ...

... We saw some funny rock formations: happy Buddha, E.T. and Karma Sutra rock. Also, we experienced total darkness, which is something us city folk rarely enjoy. Most importantly, I took a picture of Matt with four arms. Apparently action photography in caves is rather difficult. Lake Gardens From the caves we taxied back to Chinatown with our Dutch companions, ate, shopped and parted ways. Matt and I decided to take the Monorail. As an above ground public ...

... views from the base camp, which were normally seen, were certainly not apparent now. It began to dawn on me that if we were in the majority of people that got to the summit at sunrise, then we would probably be met with shrouds of mist and cloud, seeing nothing at all and it would all have been a pretty expensive waste of time. Its pretty tough trying going to bed at 8pm with 5 others in the room trying to sort out their stuff for the 2am ...

... enormousness! We felt obliged to eat the meal so we tried our very best, and with full bellies our intention was to roll on into bed...however on our way a man called us over to have a glass of wine with his family so off we went, and joined him and his family for a really lovely Christmas Eve. These people were unbelievably friendly to us - their whole family met up every year and they treated us just like one of their family. Each of the kids came over and spoke to ...

... d been teasing them and poking them a bit, trying to get them to do something. We fed one a beetle which munched it good and proper and there was defintely an evil one that looked at you weird! We then spent 5 days chilling out on a small island called Siquijor in a nice little resort, much too nice for our type, but being the low seaosn it was dead cheap. We had the pool to oursleves for the best part of 5 days, which we made full use of. We were also ...

... Tawau' or its airport but we finally set off on the fifty mile country road, our return driver being just a little more cautious about overtaking anything in front of us. At the airport it was the usual efficient scan before a busy check-in and security. As we waited in the departure lounge, a great bank of black cloud crossed the airfield but it was not until the grey, following cloud reached us that it poured down. We thankfully boarded the ...