8 posts tagged “travel”

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.

We were running late. And we were lost. It was the middle of a cold night in Tokyo and the place we were supposed to spend the night in had strict rules about not letting guests in after 10pm. The directions they gave us were simple enough, in fact it was so simple that we didn't bother asking for specific road names.

After you get off the train station, walk down the main road for 10 minutes and you'll see a convenience store. Make a right after that, walk another 5 minutes and the hostel is on a street on the left of that road.

Its amazing how something completely obvious becomes a heap of doubt when you've lost your way. We found the convenience store but the hostel was nowhere in sight. Did we take the correct road to get here? Was this the right store? Could there be another convenience store ahead? Did we miss a store because it was closed at night? We had to carry a ton of luggage so what exactly is a 10 minute walk? What was supposed to be 15 minute stroll now dragged on for an hour as we tried to look through every single street within a 5 minute radius of the store. We weren't panicking but we were really getting desperate. We didn't even know if we were in the right area. For all the information we had it could've been 30 minutes in the other direction.

"The baggage is slowing us down. Why don't you wait around here while I check out that side? I'll be back in a minute." I said

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" She said

"Yeah I have a good feeling its nearby, once I find it I'll let them know we're coming in a bit late so they'll keep the doors open for us k. I promise it'll be fine." I said.

"K." She replied.

And then I started running through the rest of the streets we missed. I remember thinking that every street I ran through that didn't have the hostel meant that the next one was likely to have it, so that hope kept me running for the next 15 minutes. It took me that long to realize out that leaving my girlfriend in the dark, deserted street with our luggage was a really stupid idea.

Experienced long distance runners will tell you that there are only 2 things that will keep you going once your energy gets low. Hope and fear. Hope's the reason why runners find that that extra boost of power when they see the finish line. You can bet I was running like a mother fucker because of fear. I was afraid that she'd be screaming her head off by now because she was left in an alley. But mostly I was afraid that I was going to lose the one thing I loved because I was too damn stupid to know. You know when they say that you only realize what you value most when you're about to lose it? It's true.

When I got back she was calm and doe eyed, oblivious to everything I was going through. I was sweating under the coat and my legs were starting to cramp but damn she was the most beautiful sight in the world. While I was still high on the adrenalin but we hugged, and I'm pretty sure I told her that I loved her. If this was a test then I think we passed. It was the day I knew that I loved her.

Stars right through it

Everyone loves to travel but only a few think of it as a life mission. I started thinking about traveling again after chatting with a couple of interesting people. One quit her job to be an air stewardess and travel the world. The other treats work as a way to fund her travel cravings. These folks get me excited since I can relate. I'm pathologically addicted to seeing new things and need to be in new places just to feel normal.

I moved three times in one year, then spent the next one traveling through three more countries. I only stopped because I ran out of money by joining a startup and running my own company. Now that I have a steady paycheck I'm infected with the travel bug again. I'm thinking of a trip to hong kong in august and maybe, just maybe spend a few months in France once I'm done with KL. Anybody else interested?