Stories of me and myself

We of course have to pose at such a beautiful sight / site!

And the sun rises, with part of it partially hidden, like an eclipse.

And this is the west. Where you see one of the peaks of Kota Kinabalu, possibly "Donkey's Ears". Did you know that there are 9 peaks at Kota Kinabalu? =) And on this side, there hung the moon! So you turn and you see the sun. You turn again and you see the moon! Haha!



Experimenting with the clinometer. This can tell you the angle of the slope just by looking through it and aiming it at your desired slope. But of course, this is inaccurate, as we needed poles. I just improvised and asked them to use each other. Haha!

Our rooms of 3 beds each are on the left. Each bed just consists of 1 mattress and a mosquito net. And the mattresses are placed side by side. But the room is pretty cosy. There was even a mirror and a small basin! In which I sliced the mangoes for the girls...

On the right was where we sat for debrief.

Sabah Tea Factory tour. Where we learnt about the different machines and processing methods. Yep, there are only 'ang mo' tea, 'ABNN' tea and 'Cheena' tea. Sabah tea is a pa4 zeng4 tea (mixture of different types). It's organic as well, as the fertilizer used is from the tea plant itself. And tea plants can grow into trees 10m tall!

Well, we said byebye to Kundasang Area, and headed for East Sabah. It was a 5-hour bus journey, in which we all knocked out. Heh.

At the shelter of Kinabatangan River. Waiting for the boat to transport us over to the Adventure Lodge for the night. Exciting right??


Say "hi" to Chin Chin, the resident "Evil". It would just trot over to you and lie on your lap and let you stroke it to sleep.

We headed for a cruise along the Kinabatangan River to watch out for mammals and the like. And we saw chimpanzees, snakes, normal MacRitchie monkeys (which raised its eyebrows at a student and another which almost peed on another girl!), Probiscus monkeys, etc. The boats were cool, and the breeze was relaxing. Just sitting on a boat was a good and relaxing after a long bus ride on rocky road!

Us on the cruise in the long boat along the Kinabatangan River.

A slither. Think it's a python. It's said that you will die of its poison in 10 mins if not treated.

Enjoying the motorboat and its speed!

That's the Probsicus Monkey. His big, long nose is characteristic of his species, along with his beer belly! Another ah-peh at the kopitiam! Do you know that he's the most loyal male out of the monkey kingdom? I think it's cos he's so fat and ugly he can't attract anyone else. So he has to be loyal. Heh.

He has to guard his family well. If not, some bachelor group will come along and fight him. If he loses, he will have to abandon his family. And his little kiddos will be abandoned by the new group and left to fend for themselves.

A camouflaged tree snake.

The Kinabatangan river at dusk.

After dinner (in which we feasted on GIGANTIC prawns which resembled crayfish), we got ready for the nightwalk in the jungle.

All of us dressed for the nightwalk. Covered all the way. Dressed like this to prevent leeches and other funny insects.

A kingfisher was the first we spotted. Looks like a fake wooden bird which the guides just placed in the forest to interest us huh? Heh.

A daddy-long-eight-legs, with a white body.

And this is a tree frog. Flat blob it is!

And a beautiful spider... We saw so many that in the end, we lost interest in it. No more novelty effect. Haha! But there was once when we spotted 2 spiders spinning a web together. I called it the "Web of love". Heh.

Pill bug, I think. It's hard, by the way. So not so eerie to touch. Heh.

Cicadas. The very noisy insect which sheds its outer skin. What you see here are 3 cicadas's outer skin. What is interesting is that, they all look so real! Especially the eyes! I thought this was a another prized possession! (This photo, I mean...)

Another posing tree frog. This one looks like the back view of an ah-peh sitting at the kopitiam huh?

And this is his side-view. I kinda like this photo. Heh.

The common spider web.

A spikey centipede. It's red where the spikes are. Quite scary... didn't dare to go near it lest it kissed me!

A bloated tree frog. So pui2 (fatty bombom) it seems like it will explode if I poke it! Not that I wanna poke it! Eww!

Another rare photo! A bat which was hanging in the middle of nowhere! A close-up of it shows that its face resembles either a pig or a bear!


Have you ever seen a real scorpion before? This cheeky fella was stuck to one of my kid's shoe! Lucky the guide instructed us to check our clothings and shoes and bodies for insects before entering the rooms!

Cool scorpion right? We were all so intrigued!

That night, we talked about meanders as we were all excited over the broad meanders which winded through the land as we descended from the mountains. Went into the technicalities of braided streams and meanders as well.

And because I believe that fieldtrips should not only widen / deepen our Geographical knowledge, but also allow us to grow in character, I had students reflect and share with everyone how they have grown in the past days. And it was not bad... several of the girls had now grown braver in the sense that they exposure to nature and inevitable insects had made them less afraid of flying insects and the sort. The rest expressed that the close-up with nature during the cruise and the nightwalk was a good experience.

I concur.