We stayed a night at Mesilau Park's Bishop's Head hostel. Cold weather was what we had encountered.
And the midnight symphony orchestra was what most people will face in the room with guys.
This day was the day when we will start our journey to the Mt KK.
7AM: Before taking breakfast, some random shot first :-)
With just-woke-up-faces for all
Chef preparing omelette @ egg station
While all of us were hungry and quickly grabbed the buffet breakfast
7.17AM: After having the breakfast, just take a photo of surroundings
Empty plates - everybody was really hungry in cold weather
Trevor VS Alex - you shot me, I shot you
7.42AM: We thought that there would be not enough porter for us. So we transferred total of 9 bags back to Kinabalu Park HQ.
The thermometer outside the Mesilau Park restaurant showed that it's 14ºC
And turned out to be, there were 16 porters waiting for us. Since we had packed and didn't need that many of porters, we let them rearrange their manpower.
While waiting for the porter to settle our baggage, we had our group photo taken as well as having some fun to make the time pass faster...
The banana girls, who have their own responsibilities, respectively - eat, carry & pluck
Is that Mount KK from far?
The ladies: Siew Kee, Siew, Pui Ying, Betty, Samantha, Sarah, Chiow Hun, Emily, Catherine
The gentlemen: Chun Hung, Alex, Gary, Benn, Fuihan, Kuan Yew, Trevor
We started our journey after purchasing the walking sticks.
9.00AM: A view of Kundasang valley (correct me if i'm wrong?)
But it was quite foggy it seems...
10:08AM: After having a short rest at the hut, the mountain guide told us to standby our raincoat. Everybody was busy taking out - just in case
10:16AM: A waterfall on our way
Where I dropped one of my gloves
Self-portraying with Sarah
There were some of the Francesco photos, which will be blogged by him, separately. (Who cares, I wonder?)
10.42AM: 3.5KM, I started to feel exhausted, and the rain started to fall
But the route is still O.K, even with ups and downs. Come to think about it, I felt lucky that we chose this route compared with Timpohon Gate's - which has a lot of (big & tall) stairs andit'll make our legs even sore
11.20AM: The rain stopped for a while, and it made the forest even foggier.
That, I think, it made this photo generally looks like black & white
11.45AM: I was tired and hungry. My brain started to think nonsense.
In this route to the peak, I had three "hallucination" (actually it's not that serious, just my brain was thinking nonsense)
This is the first one: When I looked at the ferns, I thought like, the guy who founded Fernleaf's milk powder must have been here before, and found the inspiration to make this leaf as the brand of the milk poweer.
Oh, whatever.
11:59AM: We stopped for our lunch. Our packed lunch - 2 spring rolls, 4 sandwiches, 1 egg, 1 fried chicken drumstick, 1 apple, 1 bottle of mineral water & 1 can of 100 Plus.
12.03PM: A random shot of the group having lunch. Benn was feeding Kuan Yew... how sweet... LOL
12.35PM: KM5 I still felt exhausted even after my lunch
But the valley view is like giving me a shot of strong caffeine, I felt so refreshed with the grand view and for that period of time, I felt it's worth the tiredness.
I can't tell much with the photos - you have just gotta be there to experience it on your own
1.06PM: I walked in pair with Betty. Both of us motivated each other to finish this never ending road. We camwhore a bit.
But realising that we're not supposed to smile that much with our real exhausting condition, we took the photo with "real" condition.
And from this point onwards, the plants started to have unfamiliar species, probably due to the cold weather.
Around this time I had my second "hallucination" - my sweat slipped into my mouth and I was like "yummy, this 100 plus is sooooo yummy"
-_-
The foggy forest made me to feel that as if I'm in the fairy land or something
2.20PM: Betty walked up to a steep and a slippery trek. Phew-wit! I remember that we motivated each other with this statement "We'd rather be slow, but able to make it to the peak tomorrow!"
While I took a rest and took some photo. So far, I had slipped once, and my legs almost cramped for twice.
2.52PM: I almost stepped on this frog.
Because of the slip I had earlier, I sprained a little bit of my left leg. I had to stop and rub the leg in order to keep walking
And not long after that, I left Betty and walked alone, because she had the handsome-cum-caring-cum-charming-cum-helpful mountain guide to help her from that point.
3.38PM: The trees had strange growing pattern and look,
Which I think it's not a problem to make the scenery as the cover for horror story?
3.43PM: LABAN RATA!!! I had finally reached the half mountain, where I can finally take a rest before tomorrow's climb to the peak.
4.00PM: While waiting for the rest to arrive, I took some photo at the balcony of the hut
I know it'll be even tougher tomorrow.
And bad news for that time being was that - I had to walked/climbed for another 5 - 10 minutes to get to our hostel at Gunting Lagadan
5.15PM: Our buffet dinner - I ate chicken ham burger, mutton, egg, fried noodles and soup
I tried to act cool but actually I felt very very exhausted and sleepy.
