We are sitting here listening to a bird chattering on the forest edge. It almost sounds digital. We are at Magic Mountain Inn.

We arrived safely after just a slight delay in take off from SeaTac. Both flights went fine. Incheon airport in Seoul is amazing. We arrived in Kota Kinabalu at about 11pm quickly got through customs and on our way in a taxi to our hotel. It felt somewhat similar to other tropical cities. Bright Sodium lighting along the broad road from the highway.

Our room was not too bad for $40US. On the 12 floor with a broad view over the water. It was a little musty and our airconditioner leaked resulting a wet carpet. We didn’t sleep much but did a lot walking in the humidity to get on the time zone. Did our chores (Atm, information, etc). KK town is small. We saw most of it in about 2 hours. We crashed a bit in the afternoon before going back out to the wonderful filipino BBQ. We sat a long tables at night and had giant prawns with spicy dipping sauce.

Today we had our buffet Malay breakfast at the hotel with noodles and curry before checking out. Our car was delivered and we were off.

First stop Orchid D’ville. It was an adventure to find it. We went to a suburb of KK and then headed into the small villages before turning off to go about 6 Km down an extremely bumpy gravel road. It is a working nursery growing cut orchids for the KK area along with lots of species orchids from Borneo. The guide took us on windy paths through the hill to see the ones in bloom, many very tiny in size.

Back to the main road we got stuck in traffic for about 1/2 hour due to a broken traffic light. I was very stressed. Then we start up the main road to KK. They drive on the left. Fortunately, we have an automatic Yeah! The road is steep and the car has no power. We got the cheapest one. I still had to pass many slow commercial trucks. We saw Mt. Kinabalu once but mostly it has been cloaked in clouds. It is much cool up here at 6,000ft.

We arrived and was able to find the Inn which is in the forest off a golf course. Very strange to have a golf course carved out of jungle. I’ve hard that many of the greens are waterlogged.

Our host is very nice. We are sitting and having a beer on the deck before she starts dinner of a steamed fish. She just showed us a large beautiful mushroom that she will steam the fish with. Yum…