A View of Mt. Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu, March 30th 2011

We took a one-day tour to take a closer look at Mt. Kinabalu. The tour was organized by Borneo Trails, but I booked it through Air Asia Go. Air Asia had been so kind as to ring me a couple days in advance to require the address of my hotel where we would be picked up. Since I was in a middle of a meeting when I received the call and I didn't remember the exact address either, I negotiated to give my hotel address by email. The voice over there agreed. When I returned to my desk, I noticed an email from an Air Asia personal whose name was very familiar to me. It was familiar to me because I had had a long frustrating problem with her in the past. Therefore, without much expectation, I replied her email with my hotel address.

This March 30th morning, I tried to call the number given on my voucher in order to give the address of my hotel. I used both my Malaysian number and Indonesian number, but none worked. Much in panic I asked our front-desk-staff where the public telephone booth was. I half ran to the direction.

I rang once, twice. No answer. My panic doubled. What if the tour agent thinks that we've canceled the tour for we didn't confirm our pick-up address to them? The last time I went to Kuala Selangor, I did the same thing, but it worked immediately just with one call.

Suddenly I saw a tourist minibus passing by. It headed to my hotel's direction. I ran after it.

Yes! It stopped right in front of our hotel, Crown Borneo Hotel.

Very unmistakeably, the bus came for me and Dina. Hah... this time Air Asia didn't fail me at all, but it seemed that I've lost so much trust in Air Asia. It's obvious that the lady staff from Air Asia had forwarded the address of my hotel to Borneo Trails.

This is the view of Mt. Kinabalu from our tourist minibus.

It was still cloudy. Therefore I cut off the sky and turned the pic into panorama format. This is still from the car.

 RK, our guide and driver, let us stop here. Many tourist bus (Bas Pesiaran) stopped here also. Lots of restaurants and souvenir shops were to be found here. Even the fishmonger, was here!

Once again, I heartlessly cut off the sky from the picture. Sorry, Sky...

This is still at the stop over, but from another side. Do you see that bluish green color behind the mountain? That's South China Sea!

 There! That's South China Sea. I could see the waves rolling through my 200 mm lens. Amazing! The view, I mean. Not my lens.

 You know what, I wish to return to Kota Kinabalu when weather is clear in order to make a more thrilling shot of Mt. Kinabalu.

 I shot them while Dina gave them a shot. Just as we were, they were getting excited as the clouds started to clear away a bit.

"What a wonderful band of cloud!" Peter commented.