Friday
Morning in the bus
With our lecturer who decided to send us off
Compulsory fansu photo
Half asleep Tiing Jen sometime into the journey
Jia Jia in a good mood :)
Arriving at Langkon Palm Oil Mill
Note to self:
Never stand next to Jaclyn anymore
In danger of looking
humongous.
Very educational visit.
I now know I never want to work there.
It's noisy, smelly, oily and so extremely friggin' hot,
taking into account Malaysian weather.
Because of the palm oil extraction and refining, everywhere is so greasy and oily.
Climbing up and down steep steep staircases was quite the nightmare.
And the extremely hot and stuffy environment
makes you feel quite claustrophobic (or maybe just me) for some reason.
Us
before the tour of the factory.
(note the happy faces and unsweaty conditions)
My hair was plastered to my head and neck after the tour.
Worst and longest hour ever.
Never felt more uncomfortable or wanting to be somewhere else in my life.
(and I was wondering why the guy who was giving the tour mentioned that if we felt really uncomfortable and couldn't stand it anymore we should voice up and asked to be taken back)
They made us wear these construction hats.
Haha, there have probably never quite been workers like us :P
I'm quite sure construction workers do not wear buggy-eyed sunglasses.
After the horrible afternoon it was back to the bus feeling so hot, sticky, sweaty and downright uncomfortable, mostly because I was not prepared for the condition.
Worst was not being able to take a bath when you need it so badly :(
Somehow though, I managed to sleep.
Being hot is tiring.
Slept and slept and woke up to this.
Girls on the bus were making a lot of noise about something,
found out they were all gushing about the view and beautiful Mt. Kinabalu (Mt.K)
She really is so captivating.
So even in the moving bus I tried to capture a picture of her.
That was the best shot I got.
On the way to the next destination, I noticed many kampung houses by the side of the road.
You know, those wooden houses, some in better condition, and some really old and run-down.
The kind you expect to not have electricity and running water in the house.
Partly too because there were no street lamps but there were some electric poles.
What made them very noticeable though was not their condition,
but the very ostentatious, unusual and bizarre fact that there were Astro receiver dishes sticking out somewhere near the roof.
Almost every house.
Some even with multiple dishes.
After what seemed like an extremely long, cold, dark, hungry and urine-retentioning journey,
we finally arrived at our destination.
Sabah Tea Plantation.
Place of longhouses, toilets, shower, running water, electricity, food and beds.
Y.A.Y.
Do not be fooled by the bright morning picture.
This signboard was taken the next morning when we could see 2 feet in front of us.
So fast-forwarding to after a nice hot shower and changing into clean, fresh clothes,
Roommates for the night:
Phebe, me and Ah Boo
Posing with our beds
Posing with other people's beds
(aka beds of people in the next door room)
Me in the proton shirt for fear of being found sucked dry by mosquitoes the following day
Dilly-dallying before going down for dinner
Barbecue for dinner!
This was sometime around 9 or so.
Hungry people
F.O.O.D.
Dinner ended for me sometime around 1.
After cleaning up and brushing and carrying out bathroom rituals, it was nearly 2.
Then I find out we need to gather outside for our morning walk at 6.30am.
Fuck.
Saturday
So bright and early the next day,
(actually at 5.30am, but snoozed till 6)
forced eyes glued together to open and limbs that refuse to cooperate to move
and woke up to this:
Morning mist and brown water;
the pond that we didn't even know existed the night before when we arrived.
It was that dark.
And also to a bridge that did not exist the night before.
Directly in front of the longhouse.
The corridor in front of the rooms.
The end that led to the barbecue pit and covered hall.
The end that led to the toilets and shower area.
More scenes involving brown water
People trying to look excited for the 6.30am morning walk.
I like this picture :)
View of the longhouse before we left
Warning: Pictures ahead contain a lot of mist, shrubbery and tea bushes.
The morning air was really so refreshing and cool :)
Can you see Mt.K peeping from behind the mist?
There is just the faintest outline of its looming shape.
Not Mt.K by the way, just a small hill I found interesting.
Path leading to god-knows-where.
Didn't have time to explore, checkout time was at 7.50am
Pretty mist and sun rays :)
Longhouse pics that should be somewhere above to introduce the place we stayed,
but is too lazy to shift them up.
Longhouse 1
Longhouse 2 with adjoining walkway to hall and barbecue pit,
where we stayed.
My room
Beds with overhanging mosquito netting to prevent unwanted bed-mates at night.
Convenient sink in room with a wire strung up so we can hang towels and clothes
The flooring of the place.
So to all you butterfingers out there, try not to handle anything small that's too important.
Group photo on the bridge :)
Pretty flowers amid the tepid water
Bridge that led to the barbecue pit
At Sabah Tea Garden
Resident restaurant/cafe/eating place where we got our summary on the tea plantation
and gathering place before the visit to the factory
The view from the wide balcony there
I don't know how to do the panorama thing Ziggy baby does,
so you have to look at 3 pictures depicting the whole scene I saw :P
And of course, how can I miss the opportunity to catch the lovely Mt.K?
Faint backdrop of Mt.K
View exiting the factory
In total contrast to the horrible experience I had the day before at Langkon Mill,
the Sabah Tea factory was so immensely pleasant in comparison with cool breeze and simple small machinery and raw material that smelled better and better as you got along and of course, the lack of anything resembling ear-deafening noise.
It was a happy morning for me, as I was feeling all nice and pleasant, unlike the previous day.
After the visit it was back to the bus to say goodbye to Sabah Tea and off to Poring.
Place of hot springs and Kinabalu Park.
As usual, I fell asleep.
When I got woken up, naturally I was not in a good mood.
I did not like the prospect of playing in the hot springs because we only had one hour to play and visit, and that was not enough time to change and bathe later.
So on general agreement we decided to just go for the canopy walk, which involved walking on a suspension bridge overlooking treetops.
Quite a view, I was told.
What I was
not told was that it would involve hiking.
Quite a lot of hiking.
400 meters up of hiking.
Naturally Joyce does not like hiking, due to the fact that she has explored the depths of how unfit a human being can be and has found herself at the somewhat dodgy end of it.
Started panting at 150 meters.
Couldn't breathe properly or take deep breaths at 300 meters.
When we finally reached the base of the suspension bridge I think I almost died.
Just kept going and didn't stop all the way up
because stopping and starting will make it harder to go on.
Thighs started shaking from the exertion.
Did not take any photos because they charge rm5 to bring a camera up there and stupidly and obediently did not whip out my camera the moment authorities were out of sight.
The view was beautiful and pretty amazing, but not good enough in my opinion to warrant an impromptu hiking expedition.
Especially NOT in jeans and thick T-shirt and sneakers.
Was pretty unhappy due to feeling extremely unpleasant from all the sweating and exertion
when there's no opportunity to bathe afterwards.
The same reason why I did not want to play in the hot springs.
Walking the canopy wasn't all that exciting,
so as long as I didn't look down and started my heart into V-fib.
The walk down was just a haze of tiredness and felt like I had really no energy.
Not enough sleep and breakfast is not a good recipe for hiking.
Hobbled down one step at a time.
Strangely though, Tiing Jen got more excited the higher we climbed,
and by the time we were going down, she was leaping and bounding,
laughing all the way.
And she was wearing slippers.
Yes, the dodgy end of the the fit scale is probably an understatement of my physical condition.
Was so extremely hungry and tired after that.
Upon reaching the foot of the hill it was running back to the bus because we took one and a half hours to complete the 'walk'.
Of course, with the exception of Tiing Jen who had already reached flatlands way earlier than us and was playing in the river you see in one of the pictures above.
Waiting for us to catch up.
So after drying up in the air-cond, fell asleep (surprise! surprise!)
and got woken up for lunch.
Was so sleepy and tired I was so tempted to forgo lunch, then remembered being hungry the day before and decided to go and find food with the rest.
Had something that was a sorry excuse for char siew rice.
Food disappointment in Sabah is nothing new to me.
Anyway, after the disappointing meal, back onto the bus and back to bed.
Got woken up (again) and told by Tiing Jen that we've arrived at the shopping place.
Shopping in terms of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers.
Decided to give it a go even though I wasn't in the best of moods.
When I got off the bus first thing I felt was cold, cool breeze.
Colder than the bus air-cond.
Looked to the right, and I saw this:
Joyce immediately woke up and took out her camera.
Its just one of those scenes you absolutely have to take.
For me at least, with my fascination with Mt.K.
The most up-close, beautiful view I got of the lovely lady.
Naturally, the second thing that caught my eye were flowers.
Lots,
and lots of them.
Potted plant with cute leaves
Of course, there was a row of shops with produce like those below, all selling almost the same things, pretty much like Camerons.
What happens if you sit down in a place for too long; i.e. the bus.
You grow fungus.
(I know it's a mushroom, just an illustration. It's fungi of some sort anyway)
Pretty veggie
Love the colours, the white rose just looks so pretty
Very fascinated with the small, tiny flowers :)
They're so cute.
There is just something about flowers that lights up the heart of all things female,
or possibly all humans female.
Little girls love to pick em, ladies love to receive em,
and a majority of women love to plant em.
Aren't they so pretty altogether?
The sellers refer to them as plastic flowers.
They're very much alive, but the petals are very hard and feel dry, much like plastic.
But they have green stems with ends dipped into water.
Apparently even when they dry up the colours do not change.
Hmm.
Since the photos end here, for reasons I will mention later,
we shall have one last look at the beautiful Mount Kinabalu.
Once I got back in the bus I was told it was just back home all the way, no more stops.
In her heart Joyce went hip hip hooray and settled off for some undisturbed sleep.
However, the bumpy road was not going to let her have her way, but that's okay.
Then she got woken up and told that those who stayed outside of campus were supposed to shift to the other bus while those that stayed in campus were to board the current bus she was in.
But that's okay.
Then she got shifted to the back of the bus where the bumpy road made trying to sleep like sleeping on a trampoline while jumping.
Sigh.
Naturally no one takes pictures upon waking up from conditions such as those :(
Got home around 6.30pm or so.
Dead tired, dead hungry and very sore from hiking.
I wanna wear oversize robes, and a square hat
I wanna receive so many bouquets and soft toys that I can barely carry everything
