A reasonably early start today, at 8.15, and immediately picked up on a scottish accent - the girl sitting behind me was from Inverness! We joked in Invernesian slang for a sentence or two before going back to normal, her boyfriend was from Italy, and they had also been travelling for some time.
As we drove out of KK towards the mountain, we were taught about the population of KK being around 400 thousand people, and the fact that the mountain is a mountain not a volcano, one of the youngest mountains in the world, at 4000m in height.
We passed through a place called Tamparuli - which is the Malay spelling of the word 'temporary', so named due to a temporary bridge that had been built there after the war, which ended up being a permanent bridge.
The history of the name was also advised - Ki # nabalu - Spirit # resting place
It was the first Malay unesco site, awarded in 2000.
At around 1015h, we reached a scenic photo spot with fruit shops and so we all piled out and acted like tourists for 30 minutes, taking photos of the views and looking at the stuff for sale - one example was some bamboo sticks that were on sale for silly money, being sold as alking sticks. People will try and make money anywhere!
We 1111h arrived at Taman Kinabalu to see the Botanik Garden. The tour was quite rushed as we didn't have a lot of time in the day for everything, but the guide waited for us to take photos of the Dancing Lady, Sexy Lady and Pinhead orchids, among others.
We left the gardens at midday, and ten minutes later were held up due to police checking the passing cars.
At 1300h we stopped so that those of us who wanted to pay 30RM could go and see the blooming rafflesia. I figured it was probably my last opportunity to see one so paid up and made my way there, taking the ubiquitous selfie and posting it to Facebook!
20 minutes later we were on the way to the lunch stop at Tropicana. We enjoyed Ayam bakar with nasih putih and some nice fruit, with everything served on to a rotating table that let everyone reach without stretching.
Next up we left for Poring hot springs, arriving at 1411h, and heading straight to the canopy walk. I paid for both cameras, though soon discovered that the rope bridges were so unstable that it was impossible to take a photo while on them!
After the canopy walk we headed to the hot springs. None of us had actually taken any swimwear though so we just sat in the foot bathing area, where we had a tap that provided scolding hot water and a tap that provided cold water, and had to work out how to manage to blend them the right way!
We left the area at 3.40, heading straight back to Kotakinabalu.