Seeing It Is Enough...For Now

After months of promising a colleague that I'd come to visit her in KK, I finally made it yesterday. What I told her sometime last year was that I'd visit her and also do the Mt. Kinabalu thing. Unfortunately, before I made plans for the trip, another colleague of mine brought me on a hill-climbing expedition. It wasn't a really difficult climb (even old fogies did it) but the 20-30 foot drops on either side and relying solely on your grip on the rope just scared the hell out of me. She also said Kinabalu would be worse. So I vowed to never again climb a hill/mountain.

Thus, I ended up in Kota Kinabalu without any hiking gear and just planned to chill out.

And chill out we did. We arrived at Le Meridien around lunchtime and it was just too hot to look for lunch. So, room service it was. At first, it was a club sandwich. After that, English tea. All this done in a very nice room with a beautiful sea view. Yeah you can also see the f@t people swimming in the pool but what to do? I'm not really a fan of hotel food but I must say, the food was excellent. They even serve Illy coffee (boo hoo Onn).

At night we went for dinner with my colleague beside the sea and as usual, we over ordered. Ended up stuffed. Got back home, had Starbucks (I know, I'm addicted to frapps) and slept. Today, we didn't really have anything planned other than having a look at THE mountain. So took a drive to some lookout point and took a photo just to show that I actually went to see it and that was it. Bought some souvenirs for everyone at home too. AND GUESS WHAT? Whilst we were there, also met the very same couple I sat next to on the plane. And going off I thought I saw somebody I knew from work. After checking it out, yeah...turns out KIMIA also organised a trip to KK and there was a busload of people from work. KO-INKY-DINKY.

Anyway, after the lookout point. I managed to cheekily get my colleague to also drive us like an hour away to Kota Belud just to see some Bajau dude making parangs. Unfortunately, these Bajau people also happened to have some sorta sports day or something today and no parang was being made. So we made the dudes come back and sell us some. Bought 2 and was off back home. Slightly disappointed that I didn't get to see it being made but hey, there's always a next time.
Above is the photo of the parang Bajau which I bought. Tested it and it was sharp and well made. Definitely a user. The sheath and blade had intricate designs on it but I would have preferred they didn't do the g@y smiley face on the blade. Hell, it'll probably go away after some bushwhacking.

Anyway, gotta go research some seafood restaurants for tonights dinner and tomorrow will have to buy some biscuits and stuff for people.

Lata