Day 1 -- Reaching New Heights: Mt Kinabalu (4, 095.2m asl) Borneo

Mt KK Trip: Day 1-Singapore-JB-Kota Kinabalu (26 Oct)

This is it! Exactly 4:00 am I jumped from my bed when I heard the sound of my alarm clock. Wake up! wake up!, O yes I am awake. 

Honey and Michael woke up at around 4:30 am. Honey cook some breakfast. Guess what tocino and longganisa. I think these are enough.

The group will meet at Woodlands Checkpoint. That would be our jump off. Meeting time 6: 30 am. Ryan is super early, early bird award for him.

We arrived next to him and the rest of the group also arrived.

We board a bus from our jump off to Johor Bahru Sentral and from JB we hired 2 taxis at RM 50 to take us to Senai International Airport. All are sleepy!!! So sleep. We arrived there at around 8:00 am and ate some light breakfast.

AirAsia flight to Sabah.

At 9:00 am we started to print our tickets and check in our baggage. Of course picture taking is always there.

At 10:30 am, Air Asia flew us to the State of Sabah. We touched down at 1:00 pm. Tommy, our tour guide and driver fetched us there. Hu! all are hungry and Tommy mesmerized us by telling us some of the features of their placed. He shared about their way of life, main transportation, food and religion. After a short conversation, we stopped for awhile somewhere Kota Kinabalu area to buy some stuffs. I forgot the name of the convenient store. Alama!. After this, Tommy drove the group to KFC, (our request) to have our lunch. Since we are all hungry then we eat. Hmmm we had nice food.

After 30 minutes, Tommy's back to drive us to Strawberry Garden. About 2.5 hours drive from the city.

So early but the rain poured so hard that Tommy slow down. Almost zero visibility at first but later on a clear way for us. We dropped by to Kinabalu HQ for registration and picture taking, also we purchased some stuffs like t-shirts and badges.

After the registration, here we are,"welcome to Strawberry Garden Hotel." This hotel is situated at 1390m asl. We arrived there safely (Thank u Tom) but still raining. The temperature hover up to 16-19 degrees C. At night time, wow damn cold. Anyway, thank you for the Westcomb Polartec Neoshell jacket. I felt warm. It's waterproof and breathable.:-)

We spent time together by talking whatever topics under the roof. We watched movies, picture taking and of course we eat.

The staffs served us good food at around 7:00 pm. Wow, chicken adobo, omelette, chopsuey, rice, and fresh papaya. Catered for Filipinos.

Bon Appetit.

After eating, some of us enjoyed the night with cans of beer. But we slept early. Our stay there was awesome. Staffs are friendly and accommodating. Amenities are good and Wi-Fi signal was strong.

I slept at around 10:30 pm and woke up at 4:30 am. My room mate, guess who, Allan. A very good friend of mine.

Enough for now. See you guys on the 2nd day of our trip. Allez!!!