On our third day in Sabah, we rented a car and made our way up to Kundasang for a nights stay at The Pine Resort which is halfway up Mount Kinabalu. I was super excited coz i have baby pictures of me up here at the same resort when i was barely learning to walk!! The wonderful concierge at Sutera Harbour drew us a simple map to help us get there with some pit stops along the way. We hadn't intended to rent a car so we didn't bring along the gps. Our initial plan to get there by bus was scraped when Sabri the Super-concierge explained that it would be majorly difficult to get around if we didn't have our own transport- boy were we glad we listened to him!! More on that later.
After another huge breakfast we went up for a short nap before checking out and going on our way. I love the Sabah coastal roads. They're so picturesque!! But i imagine it would look rather scary when a storm is brewing- coz the sea looks to be really close to the road!
We swung by McDonalds for a quick bite and ate while we drove to save time and made it to the Borneo Upside Down House at about 1pm- with the sun right over our heads. It was super super suuuuuuuuuuuuper hot. Sabri had insisted we make this pit stop as he himself has not visited it before. This attraction is new- having only been in operation since September last year. The name is self explanatory- the house was literally upside down, furniture, car and all!! It was interesting but it got old quickly as it was rather small and the heat did nothing to help.
Our next stop was the Jambatan Gantung Tamparuli or the Hanging Bridge of Tamparuli. Lagend has it that a virgin was sacrificed in the making of this bridge. Apparently the bridge was washed away many times as the spirit of the river wasn't happy about it. The girl was sacrificed as an offering to appease the spirit. Must have worked coz its still standing! It seems that if you were to swim underneath the bridge, u would see the name 'Solungkoi' engraved on a plaque underneath it. Solungkoi was the sacrificed virgin's name. I'd take the historians word for it. No way am i going swimming in that river!
After leaving Tamparuli town, we begin our climb up the mountain. The road leading up was in pretty good condition- think Simpang Pulai Cameron Higlands Road. We took a slow drive up and savoured the beautiful sceneries we saw along the way, stopping occasionally to snap a pic. Before checking in, we stopped by Kinabalu National Park. Hubs was under the impression that i wanted to go for hike. I don't know where he got this idea coz with my backache from the long drive and aching feet- i wasn't gonna walk 3 metres let alone 3 kilometres. So we drove around inside the park with d windows down then headed straight for the hotel. This turned out to be a blessing coz it started raining soon after.
We got a room facing Mount Kinabalu!! I was so happy!! Even tho the room was a far cry from the one we had at Sutera Harbour, the scenery more then made up it. It fogged when we arrived so we couldnt really see the peak, save for some peekaboo's here and there when the clouds broke.
We drove around a lil later in search of dinner and omg- ranau and kundasang just dies at night. Like seriously the town just dies!! We drove quite far out looking for restaurants before stumbling across Ranau town n saw a couple of restaurants which looked barely promising. After going around for a bit we settled at a malay eatery where i had the meehun soup n hubs had the chicken fried rice. Both turned out to be yucky! It seems that there are no good eateries up there- you're lucky enough to be able to eat at all!!
We took a walk later that night coz hubs had trouble sleeping and it was dead silent- well cept for the annoying karaoke going on next door and i looked up to the sky and it was dotted with millions of stars- it was really beautiful. I hardly even see stars in the city and to be able to look up and see so many was just breath taking.
Tune in for our next and last edition of our Borneo Babymoon coming up soon!!
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