Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:30 pm Me and 2 other photographer friends made a 4 day trip by car from Negara Brunei Darussalam to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah (whole journey is around 2100km back and forth). Kota Kinabalu Sabah is becoming quite popular now with Bruneian making a weekend trip to the many beach and harbour resort but we decided to take a less popular route.
Having reached KK town, we headed straight up to Kinabalu Park (World Heritage Site). Mount Kinabalu is the highest peak in Borneo Island. It's quite breathtaking actually albeit you can only see the summit for a brief period in the morning and late afternoon from the park (due to relatively hazy condition during our trip). Due to the unfit nature of our group (more like fat slobs), we can't endure the hike to base camp (Laban Rata) which is the highest point before the summit with accomodation and food. You can't drive up to Laban Rata otherwise it would be awesome. The weather is quite nice and fresh (a stark contrast to the condition in town which is the typical hot and humid tropical rainforest weather).
We took the summit photo from our cabin at Kinabalu Park. Unfortunately we are unable to extend our stay there for another night due to the pre-booking condition (I'm not even sure how we got that for one night but it was amazing. It comes with it's own fireplace inside even....)
After Kinabalu Park, we milled around Kundasang and stopped by at a few lookout point along the way to capture the scenic layers of mountains and their surroundings. We moved along to Mesilou Rainforest Resort (quite a fair bit away from Kinabalu Park) and stayed for a night. It was even colder than the night before and the accomodation was mediocre and the food was horrible and not to mention ultra expensive. But alas, we were treated to quite a multitude of small flowers, fungi, insects, spiders, even a small snake along the route to our cabin (although none of us could shoot it as there was simply not enough time and light for that matter).
2 nights super fresh air and extremely nice cold weather over. We headed back to town and looked for a place to stay. We thought we would go to one of the many beach and harbour resorts but alas everything around town was fully booked (it was Chinese New Year weekend afterall and what were we thinking going to KK town without prebooking our accomodation). There goes all my dream of a beautiful sunset from the beach, bla bla bla.
After a couple of hours milling around the town calling every freaking hotels, we managed to get 2 rooms in one of the city hotel. (It was cheap, relatively smack right in the centre of town and has a nice italian restaurant next to the front lobby (the food was great and we stayed for 2 nights here).
The first day, we went to Manukan Island (via a charted boat and since they have a minumum of 8 policy and there's 5 of us actually, we had to pay full fare + additional 'coffee money' for the driver to pick us up from the jetty after the strict 5.30pm limit policy. We want to get some sunset shots, so we had no choice but to pay that extra money. The accomodation here is quite nice and I would not mind coming back here again some time in the future and spend the night.
The next day, we headed back to Brunei but us being photographers we are, we can't but stop at a local photoraphic store to check out stuffs. We stumble across a small local joint in one of the mall and noticed a lovely Canon EF-S 10-22mm (which was snapped by one of us - not me although I was tempted there for a while. It turned out to be a great little wide angle (actually we bought it before we went to manukan island. You can see some shots taken with it on the gallery).
On another store (the one in town), I walked out of the shop with a Manfrotto 055NAT3 and a Manfrotto 488RC2 ballhead. Bought a hotshoe bubble as well. I spent more on those than on the entire trip.
The whole trip was quite stressfull at times due to the long travel time in the confined of the vehicle with shitloads of stuffs in there. But the whole trip was quite cheap (barring my photographic gear purchases aside) and it was indeed another interesting experience that we shared.
I hope you do enjoy my humble attempts at nature photography.
Thanks and wow, did you really read it this far ?
Ali Janah
http://photography.alijanah.com (my pathetic attempt for a BLOG space)