I had planned for this trip few months earlier. Nowadays, it is more difficult to plan for family trip as the girls have started to go to school. We have to plan for our vacations to coincide with school holidays. This would mean higher costs as flight tickets would generally be higher during these times. Accommodation costs during school holidays, which the hotels marked as peak period would also be higher if it is a domestic destination.
We did not hire any tour guide or driver for this trip. I don't think there is a need for tour guide or driver. However, in order for DIY trip to be successful, great planning is of utmost importance. I planned for the itinerary by looking at all the places of attraction in Sabah through the internet and tried to include those places which are of interest to us into our 5 days/4 nights trip. Planning this trip is made easier with the help of Google map.
We took Air Asia flight AK5136, which departed from KLIA 2 on 25 July 2014 at 10.20 am and arrived at 12.55 pm. Although the schedule for the trip ran a bit from what I have planned, generally everything went smoothly.
Actually the first day's itinerary was already quite packed. When I prepared the itinerary, I was banking on everybody to be punctual especially on the first day. During the planning stage, I have asked dear hubby who liaise with the car rental agent to send the car to us at 1 pm as I read from many reviews saying that car rental agents in Sabah are not punctual. However, he did not heed my advise and asked for the car to be sent at 1.30pm. We got the car after 2 pm. By the time we get the car, the fuel tank is empty as per our agreement earlier. So we have to go and pump petrol. When we reached the petrol station only we realised that we were unable to charge our GPS due to the faulty power outlet in the car. So, we have to call the agent again and get them to come over to check on the car. We were so scared that we have to change car as we have just pumped full tank of petrol. It took quite a while for them to reach the petrol station and luckily they were able to repair it. It was roughly 3 pm when they finish repairing it. End up, we were unable to go to the place that I have planned earlier to have our lunch. In fact we missed a lot of the places that we intended to go for meals while in Sabah. I planned most of the Chinese meals on first day of Hari Raya, hoping they are open for businesses. However, all the restaurant that I have planned for breakfast, lunch and dinner on the first day of Hari Raya were closed. What a disappointment!
Since it was already passed 3pm, we have no choice but to straight away start our long journey and just stop by any nearest restaurant on our way to Kundasang. Based on my original planning, we would stop by few places of attractions on our way there and I estimated our arrival time at our hotel in Kundasang to be roughly around 6pm to 7pm. However, we have to changed a bit of our plan due to the delay while waiting for the rented car.
So, we ended up eating at a place called Apiwon in Sembulan. This was our first meal in Sabah and boy, their serving portion is so big! I took quite a long time to finish my plate of noodles, served with a bowl of seafood soup. Dear hubby ordered a plate of kueyteow, also served with a bowl of seafood soup. We ordered a bowl of tuna congee for the girls but they were unable to finish it. The portion served at this restaurant was so big that it can feed at least 2 people. The price of food here may seems a bit pricey than the peninsular but if you take into account the portion served, it is about the same. Their portion is extremely large. No wonder the people here seems "rounder" (Not intended as an insult, just my observation).
After our late lunch, we continued with our journey. Our first stop was Tuaran, where we visited the Lung San/Ling San Pagoda. We only managed to take a few pictures of the exterior of the Pagoda as it was closed when we reached there. This place is about 45 minutes away from Kota Kinabalu.
We then continued to Tamparuli. We were supposed to stop at the infamous Tamparuli suspension bridge before proceeding to the Upside Down House but we missed it and went straight to the Upside Down House. The bridge was made famous by the Kadazandusun tribe through their folk song "Jambatan Tamparuli" which was written by Justin Lusah in 1977. I knew it was the bridge when we passed by but dear hubby said it couldn't be the bridge as it looks quite old and worn out. Later, I managed to coaxed hubby to turned back to at least take a picture with it. *wink wink*
We spent quite a while at the Upside Down House. We were unable to take any picture on the interior of the house as no camera is allowed in the house but you may take as many pictures as you want outside of the house. The entrance fee for the Upside Down House is RM10/pax for adult and RM5/pax for children.
Actually the first day's itinerary was already quite packed. When I prepared the itinerary, I was banking on everybody to be punctual especially on the first day. During the planning stage, I have asked dear hubby who liaise with the car rental agent to send the car to us at 1 pm as I read from many reviews saying that car rental agents in Sabah are not punctual. However, he did not heed my advise and asked for the car to be sent at 1.30pm. We got the car after 2 pm. By the time we get the car, the fuel tank is empty as per our agreement earlier. So we have to go and pump petrol. When we reached the petrol station only we realised that we were unable to charge our GPS due to the faulty power outlet in the car. So, we have to call the agent again and get them to come over to check on the car. We were so scared that we have to change car as we have just pumped full tank of petrol. It took quite a while for them to reach the petrol station and luckily they were able to repair it. It was roughly 3 pm when they finish repairing it. End up, we were unable to go to the place that I have planned earlier to have our lunch. In fact we missed a lot of the places that we intended to go for meals while in Sabah. I planned most of the Chinese meals on first day of Hari Raya, hoping they are open for businesses. However, all the restaurant that I have planned for breakfast, lunch and dinner on the first day of Hari Raya were closed. What a disappointment!
Since it was already passed 3pm, we have no choice but to straight away start our long journey and just stop by any nearest restaurant on our way to Kundasang. Based on my original planning, we would stop by few places of attractions on our way there and I estimated our arrival time at our hotel in Kundasang to be roughly around 6pm to 7pm. However, we have to changed a bit of our plan due to the delay while waiting for the rented car.
So, we ended up eating at a place called Apiwon in Sembulan. This was our first meal in Sabah and boy, their serving portion is so big! I took quite a long time to finish my plate of noodles, served with a bowl of seafood soup. Dear hubby ordered a plate of kueyteow, also served with a bowl of seafood soup. We ordered a bowl of tuna congee for the girls but they were unable to finish it. The portion served at this restaurant was so big that it can feed at least 2 people. The price of food here may seems a bit pricey than the peninsular but if you take into account the portion served, it is about the same. Their portion is extremely large. No wonder the people here seems "rounder" (Not intended as an insult, just my observation).
After our late lunch, we continued with our journey. Our first stop was Tuaran, where we visited the Lung San/Ling San Pagoda. We only managed to take a few pictures of the exterior of the Pagoda as it was closed when we reached there. This place is about 45 minutes away from Kota Kinabalu.
We then continued to Tamparuli. We were supposed to stop at the infamous Tamparuli suspension bridge before proceeding to the Upside Down House but we missed it and went straight to the Upside Down House. The bridge was made famous by the Kadazandusun tribe through their folk song "Jambatan Tamparuli" which was written by Justin Lusah in 1977. I knew it was the bridge when we passed by but dear hubby said it couldn't be the bridge as it looks quite old and worn out. Later, I managed to coaxed hubby to turned back to at least take a picture with it. *wink wink*
We spent quite a while at the Upside Down House. We were unable to take any picture on the interior of the house as no camera is allowed in the house but you may take as many pictures as you want outside of the house. The entrance fee for the Upside Down House is RM10/pax for adult and RM5/pax for children.
After we completed our tour of the Upside Down House, we turned back to Tamparuli suspension bridge. It is not far away, maybe about 3 minutes drive from where we were. At the other end of the bridge is Tamparuli town. The bridge doesn't look sturdy to us and there were bushes around. We were so scared there would be snake lingering around. Not to mention the smell. It smell like there were shit everywhere. My heart were pounding so fast. We just quickly took a photo and ran back into the car. I think somebody must start to seriously do something to preserve this bridge and its surrounding.
After the photo session, we continued to drive towards Kundasang. Our original plan was to stop at the Nabalu market for a stroll and to buy some souvenirs as well as photo session. But we figured it would be too late for all those when we reach there as it will take roughly 40 minutes drive. So, we decided to just make the stop there the next day on our way back to Kota Kinabalu. It gets dark quite early here in Sabah. By 7pm, it is already as dark as 8pm in the peninsular. On our way uphill, we saw few restaurants serving sinalau bakas. I have read before that sinalau bakas is actually smoked wild boar. There were also restaurants selling bak kut teh. There were not many choices available here for dinner from what I read online. It was getting really dark and there were practically no or limited street lights around. We can't really see clearly on the signboards. We really have to strain our eyes to see what they are selling. I don't think the sinalau bakas is suitable for Chloe and we cannot be coming so far just to eat Bak Kut Teh. So we drove till we reached a small town. We passed by an inn with an attached restaurant. There were few cars there. Since the place looks quite decent, we turned back to have our dinner there. I can't recall what is the name of the inn.
It was very windy and cold here at night. We saw many people having steamboat. It is very suitable to have steamboat with this kind of weather. But we decided to be different. I had nasi goreng kampung and hubby had noodles. Surprisingly, it was very nice but the portion was so huge that I can't finish the whole plate. We ordered spaghetti for Cheryl and fish congee to be shared by Celine and Chloe. I told hubby to remember to order lesser the next time we have our meal due to the large portion of food they serve here in Sabah.
I don't know whether it was due to the long winding road uphill or other reason, Cheryl had nausea and she felt very giddy along the way. Despite that, she managed to put up a smile on her face for this photo!
After dinner, we continued our journey to Celyn Resort, where we rested for a night. The road leading up to the resort was quite challenging. We have to travel approximately 3km of unpaved road full of stones from the main road. There were few moments when I thought that the car would not be able to take up the challenge as the hilly unpaved road is very steep. The car really worked extra hard to go up the hill. It was a relieve when we finally reached the resort. It was cold out there. So we waited in the car for hubby to do the check-in procedure before driving over to our room at the Kinabalu wing. We took quite a while to open the door to our room. We took turns to try to open the door several times without success. We were dreading to go back to the reception area as it is quite far away and it was a cold night. We even went to the extent of trying to open the next room's door with our key just to ensure that they gave us the correct key. Of course we made sure that the room was unoccupied before inserting the key. The key can't even fit into the key hole. It means that we had the correct key since we can insert the key into our room's key hole. So we tried several more times and finally we succeeded. It requires certain "skill" to open the door, it seems. The room was quite comfortable. It would have been better if not for the ants. There were ants crawling around the places where we put our food or drink. To our horror, there were also ants on the bed. But once we cleared all the ants from the bed, it was quite comfortable.
These are the photos of our room in Kinabalu Wing of Celyn Resort:
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