Road trip to Kundasang/Ranau...

Dear Readers,
I've been MIA for quite sometime and I do apologize. I haven't had the time to update my blog the pas 2 weeks.. Anyway....

Last weekend a couple of friends and I went for a road trip to Kundasang and Ranau... We started off at 9.30am from Tamparuli. There were 9 of us and we used two cars. 3 of our other friends would come later as they had commitments to attend to at that time.

We arrived at the Strawberry Garden Hotel at around 11am. For this trip we rented a bungalow with the rate of RM380 per night. We checked in but couldn't enter it yet as it wasn't cleaned up yet.. Why? The reason was quite funny... Turns out the house-keeping staff was not around at that time because they went to the Tamu.. Boleh pula...

The entrance..

Where we checked in...

  That's our bungalow on top of the hill..

The guy at Receptions told us that it would be quite a while before our crib for the night would be ready but we can unload our stuff on the balcony. We decided to do just that so we took the steep, winding road up the hill to the bungalow.

Concerned that our food and things might be tempered with while we're gone, we took pictures of our things to make sure it was exactly as we left it. Jai even took a pic of the knot of the rope used to tie our cool box. After that we all drove to Pekan Kundasang to visit the War Memorial there..

Oopppss... Careful with the Tomato sauce Kitol...

  L-R: Bb, Nanak, Bubu, me and Esther..

We arrived at the Memorial Park at around noon. Took lots of great pictures there as there were no shortage of cameras, memory space and willing models to pose.. Poor Jai had to run to join us every time we took group photos (the camera was on timer mode). Thanks Jai for being the designated cameraman.. Hehehe... I think a picture (or in this case, loads of them) say a 1,000 words.. So let the story unfold...

Me and Esther at the entrance...

Us girls again...

The Guys.. L-R: Abel, Jai, Kitol and Mike..

 

The POW Aussie soldiers walked this distance. Sure makes me think twice before complaining to walk long distances..

So beautiful.. Yet so sad at the same time for so many lives lost..

Naughty feet...

Strike a pose...

Capturing the Greek-like columns..

Aaahhhh... Fresh air and gorgeous view..

Uiseh...

We had planned to go to the Desa Dairy Farm after the War Memorial but it rained and our other friends haven't arrived yet so we decided to give the visit to Desa a rain check (no pun intended).. We went back to our bungalow and it was ready for us.. Yay! 

The view from the balcony..

I don't have any idea what this is but I love it...

Our fireplace... I was half expecting Santa to come down from the chimney despite it being only September... Hehehe...

It rained harder and so we spent the rest of the day watching a horror movie *wink* on Kitol's laptop, cooking and eating lunch, hanging out on the balcony and taking pictures.. The next day we checked out of Strawberry Garden at noon and went to Desa Dairy Farm but unfortunately we arrived at 12.30pm and the staff were on lunch break until 1pm. 

We didn't want to waste our time waiting around cuz honestly, who comes in from lunch break on the dot right? So all of us camera crazy wherever there is a view. After we got tired of doing that we went to Pekan Ranau for a loo break and to buy durians...

Me being vain on the way to Desa...

Was looking forward to drinking milk.. Oh well.... 

They look so cute! 

White fences.. So Western one... Hehehe...

This truck attracted my attention somehow...

Me, Esther and Vv.. One for the album... 

Breath-taking...

Last destination was Poring Hot Springs. We arrived at Poring and 'chupped' our respective tubs. I was a bit dissapointed that not all tubs have their own stopper so we had to resort to 'kidnapping' plugs from other tubs. The water flow from the hot spring was not consistent as well. Some tub took ages to fill while others fill up in record time. 

On top of that it rained again. Let me tell you, soaking in the warm water while it is raining made me not want to leave the tub at all even though I was as wrinkled as a prune. It was so cold out of it! Unfortunately all good things must come to and end and when it started to get dark we dragged our unwilling selves out of our deliciously warm tubs to the changing rooms to rinse off and, well, get changed.

Our hot tubs..

Waiting for my tub to fill up... 

Waiting for the rest...

Goodbye for now... We will be baaaccckkkk... ;)

This was my 1st road trip ever in a group and I'd like to thank all my friends on this trip for not making me feel like an outsider. I had a wonderful time and I hope you guys did too.. Let's do this again in the future.. Cheers!