KK

We both really liked KK as it's a relatively small city and very easy to get around. We decided it was like Boise, but in Asia. We arrived at Mt. Kinabalu and were ready to do some hiking. We went to the Park HQ and got a map and chose to hike the longest trail in the park (besides the hike to the summit which we didn't have time to do). The guy at the park told us it would be a 3 hour hike which sounded great. We decided to ride a van to the top and hike down vs up thinking this would make it faster as it was already 1pm. We found the trail and quickly realized this was not a well used trail. It was extremely narrow and had lots of wet leaves and mud which made it extremely slippery. Generally this would be ok, but off the side of the trail was steep drop drop to the river....a long way down. It was like being on a slip n' slide. At one point I went down hard, and ended up ass over tea kettle looking face down at the river below, holding on to whatever vegetation I could find so I wouldn't plunge to my death. I was yelling at Bob "HELP ME!" He ran back and rescued me from my precarious position. I was covered in mud. I took a minute to recover and that's when the stinging started. Both of my arms were covered in mud up to my elbow's and I don't know what I touched or what was in the mud but it was stinging like crazy!! It stung like this for several hours, then went away. Hopefully no long term effects. ha ha! That night over beers, I was telling Bob how I almost died - was he scared? He says I would have broken my neck, but wouldn't have died. :-) Gotta love that man.

A few minutes down the trail Bob was attacked by a spikey fern that wrapped itself around his leg and drew blood. Add in the spider webs, crazy large bugs flying around your head, and steamy conditions and it was at this point we decided we were not jungle hikers.

We survived the hike and got back on the motorcycle where we toured around the area checking out the golf course (which was at the base of Mt. Kinabalu - stunning!) Bob almost lost me off the back of the motorcycle as I was busy taking pictures and not really holding on and we hit a huge bump. There were a few curse words. We got back to our hotel right before a huge rainstorm hit. Our hotel room was actually a chalet perched on the edge of a small mountain with a great view of Mt. Kinabalu. More to come...