it's all about his busted knee...

the 1st trek in 2007 was a hard act to follow. if we'd recall, it was longer and it was a mix of KK and KL locations. definitely, there were more activities and highlights. so i must admit that when howlake told me he wouldn't be able to climb the mountain this time around, i was a bit worried that things wouldnt turn out so great. i reminded myself that it's not much of where you go or what you do, but rather it just adds spice to who you spend these activities with. we wished yang was there though .. oh wait, yes he was there again in the form of a tripod. hahaha!

upon learning that howlake busted his knee and we both agreed that we wouldnt want to inflict further damage to his ability to perform anything physical (especially in bed), we decided to cancel the mesilau trail trek up to the low's peak (highest peak of mount kinabalu) and arrange our plan B. ofcourse we did this a week before our set dates. it was a bit of a challenge for us, since we are limited by time and sabah's such a great island that there are a lot of adventure trips we could take. we finally limited it down to 4, which we eventually had to cut into 2 to fit our free and easy holiday. ofcourse, we wouldnt want to stress ourselves -- that's not the point of going to this trip. so skipping the tip of borneo roadtrip (about 3 hours drive from the city) and saying pass to the survivor island, which is very very tempting to take (since im the biggest survivor fan hahaha!) ... we opted to do nature tripping in mesilau resort (since we already had advanced bookings and reserved a cabin there) and do water rafting, while we check-in at sutera harbour resort (our dream resort!). hahaha! unlike last year's, we decided to allot a greater amount of budget on accommodation and not so much on food. we also rented a car, so we can finally fulfill our 'ala-amazing race dream'. we did get lost a few times, making wrong turns and ending up in a dead-end with a landslide greeting our eyes, but what the heck! we just had to make a u-turn. but i must say that the view of the landslide was kinda creepy. i wonder why we didnt bother to take photos while we were there. dang!


there's so much that happened that i don't know how to write about them. i'll do random bullets. i'm sure it'll be nice to look back at this one day and it'll definitely remind us of this great adventure.

• i ran out of mobile battery, but we managed to SMS each other the night before and our plan was to meet each other at the airport at 2pm. i got to the airport, but he wasnt there. apparently, he went to the other terminal to pick up our roadtrip buddy (hertz rent-a-car). i kinda had an idea where he was, but to make sure, i called him up using payphone, but it's broken so the conversation was only one-way. i can hear him, but he couldnt hear me. since we're so smart ... he managed to realize that it was i who was on the other line and said... "i cannot hear you, but i can hear the beeps (coz i was pressing the number pads -- hahaha!) i'm here at terminal 1". we met at terminal 1 after 15 minutes.
• we got a 50% deal on hertz (i wonder why, i wonder how)
• i brought with me a bag full of assorted food ... oreos, chips, biscuits, vienna sausage and instant noodles. it was a food trip on the road. we even stopped to buy some fresh fruits from the side stalls - mangoestin, bananas and chesa (i forgot the english term for this fruit).
• the first question he asked me was not 'how are you?', but 'do you put anything on your hair?'
• the answer is no. it's naturally curly.
• HL was just curious.
• we had a full tank of petrol, and only went to fill-up the tank once. we spent 36MYR and found out we overfilled it. we wasted some of it by revving it soooo hard before we returned it to the rent-a-car. hahaha!
• it was my idea to get wine for dinner in mesilau. one, because beer makes belly fat. two, it was cold .. nice to have something to heat up the body. it helped us get a goodnite sleep.
• we had choices of gameboards to play: chess, snakes and ladders or scrabble. we chose snakes and ladders because we dont want to use our brain anymore.
• i lost all 3 rounds of the game.
• we planned to wake up early on the first day so we can witness sunrise and get a good view. HL set the alarm at 630am. the sun rose at 530am. he was used to PG time where sun rises at 630am. PG actually deviates from real GMT to follow KL time.
• we had bfast in the cabin to save some cost. we had vienna sausage, instant noodles, sabah tea and crackers. enough to fill the stomach.
• we bought the fresh millk straight from the caretaker of the farm. it was well chilled. one was white fresh milk, the other one was chocolate flavor. seriously, it tasted really good and FRESH! i wish we bought more.
• i think we spent about 1.5 hours in the dairy farm, just taking photos.

oh man ... there's still a lot to write.

• the uranggutan stuffed toy, antje, paige, pizza, sunset, bridget (oh yea .. how can we forget), the housekeeper who thought we were singers, the water rafting, the nightmare in the locker room, the stinky poo, the guy in trunks and ofcourse the serious talks (yes, we also had serious talks).

this trip was more than fun. it was living life. the good life.

everything happens for a reason! :)