Its been years and I'll be making a move over to http://sengming.posterous.com/ . Thanks for the memories Vox.
]]>The first thing you need to do is to get a room at Laban Rata from Sutera Lodges. Book ahead because rooms are incredibly limited. We booked 8 months ahead and only managed to get a non-heated room at RM1,200. Try to get a heated room. You don't want to end up freezing cold, with altitude sickness and only a light bulb to keep you warm (like us). The heat probably won't help with the altitude sickness but at least you'll have your nausea and headaches in a comfortable room. Plan to stay a day before the hike at the foothill. For this I highly recommend the Kinabalu Pine Resorts. Not only do you get a great view of the peak before the hike, the hotel is only 10 minutes away from Kinabalu Park. Facilities and prices are minimal. To get to the top you first you need to get to Laban Rata, then go from Laban Rata to the summit. You want to start as early as possible during the first day in order to get to Laban Rata before it gets too cold. Food and water will be provided before the hike by the Sutera folks but feel free to bring more. They will also provide you a guide who doubles as your porter. It will take you a couple of hours of uphill hiking to get to Laban Rata but trust me when I say that this is the easy part of the trail. It's good practice for the summit trail later on which will be 2km of the the worse uphill hiking of you've had in your life. Bring along a headlamp, a walking stick, many pairs of socks, a warm waterproof jacket, waterproof gloves and waterproof shoes. Heck I even had a water proof zip lock bag for Maxie the iPhone. Realize that it gets cold and wet up there. I hiked up to Laban Rata on a T-shirt and a poncho and was soaking wet and freakin' cold by the time I got to our room. It was so bad that I couldn't feel my arms for hours and was shivering even while I was having a hot shower. Besides the mountain there are plenty of other things to check out around Kota Kinabalu. There are hot springs and various parks around the foothill, not to mention some wonderful seafood around town. I had the best prawns in my life over at KK. If you plan to stay in town I highly recommend the Kinabalu Daya hotel. When I was there the rooms felt like they were recently remodeled even though the lobby looked like pretty old. An interesting thing to do would be to stay a night over at the islands off the coast. Manukan island for example is a tiny 20 minute boat ride away from town and has a cozy hotel.
As much as I like to taste the local scene wherever I travel, I wasn't going to spend another dinner squatting on the ground chewing on some awful piece of grilled chicken. So I decided long before we got back to the hotel that we were going to have some decent food tonight at the air conditioned cafe across the hotel. "Are you sure you don't want to check out some place further down the road?" she asked. She was worried that a place so close to the hotel would be a tourist trap, a thought that I was inclined to agree with. But there really wasn't anywhere else to go to. So we went up, greeted by a couple of life sized statues of demon dwarves. You know those chinese restaurants with tables up on Petaling Street where only white folks go to? The ones you know will suck because no one you know ever eats there? Lucky for us we spotted some locals here, which to me meant that they probably served decent food. We had fish, lamb curry and her favorite, spicy stir fried Kangkung. I liked it but I could tell she wasn't happy. The food wasn't spicy enough. You'd rather be eating on the streets right? Yeah, I know. But she could tell I needed this today and she wants us to work out. I look at her to tell her how beautiful she is. Yeah, we're working out just fine my dear.
I answered a few questions about my recent trip to Jogja and was astonished that it amounted to quite a few words. Here's a revised version of that exchange.
We stayed at a hotel called Ibis. Expect a Holiday Inn type place, i.e. not 5 star but then again its not that bad either. Its main redeeming feature is its proximity to Malioboro Street, the main commercial area and tourist trap for the city. If you are looking for a nicer place, I've been told (and cannot vouch for the fact) that Hotel Phoenix will fit the bill.
There are two things that you must see while you are here. The first is the ash spewing volcano that can be seen from every corner of the city. However if your taxi insists on a name tell them that you want to go to Gunung Berapi, which translated means fire mountain or volcano. Indonesia is filled with volcanoes, so I was curious why the locals decided to name this particular one The Volcano. "Because it is the most active one in Indonesia and kills everyone around it every couple of years" our guide said. He also told us that it would take 4 hours to hike up to the top so please plan accordingly. If you are less curious (or suicidal) you can also spend your time instead on the observation towers located safely at the foothills. Personally I was disappointed at not having a chance to stare the mountain right down its mighty A-Hole. You might ask why a normally rational person would assume such a risk. Because I think it is cool. That is all.
Please visit the 2 major temples in the area, namely Borobudor and Prambanan. I prefer Prambanan but you will want to see both to decide for yourself. Each will take at least two hours to savor. Prambanan will have amazing night performances during the weekends so plan for that. What you want to do is spend the afternoon in Borobudor and then head over to Prambanan. Spending a few hours there till it gets dark enough for the dances. What you don't want to do is get to Prambanan at 2pm, then find out about the performances at night and argue whether its worth idling 4 hours till it starts then promising yourself that you'll come tomorrow night instead. And then missing it the next day because you had a massage appointment and then whining to your girlfriend every time you reminiscence about the trip, ruining your relationship and your only chance of having that one love of your life. No, you don't want that.
Crafts, especially things made out of batik are cheap there. I highly recommend a place called the Novi studio. It is a batik painting place that doubles as a batik school for local artists. They sell paintings with styles that range from traditional batik to all sorts of weird abstract art. If you are into massages I recommend a place called Griya Burga, which offers excellent Shiatsu massages and is as far as I know, not dodgy.
]]>The long road between high school and home meant that I had to take long bus rides across town everyday. Lucky for me I had a buddy along for the ride, and time of which we spent debating the merits of Juarassic Park, if Billy Jean was the greatest pop song ever written and other important topics in popular culture (if you think that growing older has changed our talking points I'd like to point out that we just spent the entire week raving about Zee Avi). Occasionally I had to take the ride alone and I'd start to wonder if I could read the minds of people on the bus. I'd focus on the cute girl up front, close my eyes, try to dig up her thoughts and then, nothing. I wasn't able to read a single mind after years of trying,proving once again that wanting and wishing for something just isn't enough. You have to wait for someone to build it instead. These days Twitter gives me all the psychic powers I need. With telepathic precision I can answer questions like: what are the cool people doing this weekend? (Star Trek, then drug induced raves) or who at this very moment is thinking about sex? The next time someone asks me about Twitter I'm gonna be like: "Twitter? That's like a mindreading psychic super power thing man."
]]>
Puduraya is probably the busiest bus depot we have. A hundred counters line up to sell you bus rides to any town on the Peninsular. Though the booths are stationary, ticket pushers gather around the main gate to get an upper hand. As I walk into the depot they try to sell me tickets to places I have no intention of going. They badger and follow me until they find other people to badger and follow. This place gets its smell out of a cocktail of car fumes and bus smog from below. It is hot. I doubt there is technology advanced enough to cool down an open bus depot crowded with hundreds of people. If there is we cannot afford it here.
Three counters tell me that they've sold out all tickets to Penang. I'm desperate and decide to get a ticket from a ticket pusher for double the usual fare. He says its because it is a special bus. This does not comfort me. I walk down towards the buses and wait beside what used to be a garden. I assume that all the plants were suffocated by years of bus fumes.
The other passengers and I start to worry after an hour's wait. But then things start happening very quickly. First a 3 foot tall midget comes round and demands that we pay him more money to bring us to our bus. He is the meanest midget I have ever met and we submit. Then he leads us up the stairs, quickly pass the crowds and out of the depot. Some of the passengers are left behind while we cross the street, walk up another block of buildings to get to a gas station where there is a bus. As we try to get on the bus driver starts shouting at the midget. Midget shouts back. I'm hoping this is about the extra money we paid him so we have a chance of getting it back. The shouting goes on until both decide to leave, leaving us stranded beside the bus. 30 minutes pass before a replacement driver comes to let us into the bus. I thank god the air conditioning works.
I have been having some trouble with sleep lately. Most nights I get to bed pretty easily and then I wake up at around 5 and can't get back to sleep anymore. My brain just turns on at the time and refuses to turn off. My mind goes on autopilot and starts to plan my day, solve programming problems I've found at work, notes how I'd need to call to the truck guys later to help with the dryer etc. I've tried counting my breath to cut off the thinking and ended counting till sunrise. I've tried changing sleeping positions on the bed, sleeping in the living room, skipping dinner, doing heavy exercise during the evening and cutting off all access to the computer at home. Nothing helped.
The only things that have worked so far are alcohol and sleeping pills. Alcohol gets me an extra hour of sleep. If I pop in a sleeping pill I get the best sleep in months. Trouble is I'd hate to grow a dependency on them. With @sexaybeast's encouragement I've started cutting down on sugar and caffeine (they mess with your sleep cycles) but it doesn't seem to be work. Give it two weeks he says.
I'm starting to suspect that this could be work related since I don't have this problem during the weekends. One theory is that I'm subconsciously worried about getting to work on time and the worry is manifesting itself by making it hard for me to get back to sleep. It doesn't make sense to me because I've never worried about getting to work on time.
One thing I've noticed is that I seem to get up at 5am no matter how early I get to bed. So the best solution I have right now is to get to bed by 9pm so I'd get a full nights rest by the time I wake up at 5am. The hope is that once I my full 8 hours of sleep, my sleep cycle will gradually get back to normal. I hope.
I had a chat with an apprentice fortune teller once and she told me that the hardest thing she's had to learn was how to tell people the things that they didn't want to hear. I think the idea is that you can read a person's future by observing the way they are now. The hard part is that some people will never be ready to know the truth about themselves. She never did get that chance to read my fortune but the awful truth for me would look something like this, You don't deserve any love. You can hide it but all the goodness in your life will drain away because you're a selfish bastard. You cannot change because you cannot feel. You will never accomplish anything.
I wake up. There's light coming through the curtains, which means it is a little pass 7 now. When I first moved in I got rid of all the clocks to see if it would help me sleep. I don't know whether the plan ever worked but I got pretty good at gauging the time by the amount of light that makes it into the room. Pretty soon it'll be light enough to see and then I'd really need to wake up. Her SMS says 'meow zzz'. It doesn't look like she likes waking up for work yet. She'll get used to it eventually. How many mornings have I spent in this bed alone? I'll need to talk to the boss about getting a new disk for the server. Will need to remember to post last night's pictures. And when is Eric's wedding again? Did I schedule dinner with Colin over the same night? It's impossible to rest when I'm already building a to do list in my head. Might as well get up. I brush, wipe cleanse and change. The whole shuffle took about a dozen minutes. Then I get the keys and head out. Almost forgot to type her a reply. 'How's my kitty? Wish I'm there to hug you awake right now.' Postscript: Remember the lame essays they forced us to write in school? Describe a day in the park. Or describe your ambition. In 200 words or more. They were easy to score with and easy to write but you can bet I hated them. This is something my English teacher would've titled 'Write about what happens when you wake up in the morning'