Malaysians do not like jungle trekking, so I bet 99% of you didn’t try the jungle trail on Gaya Island. Gaya Island is the biggest island of Tunku Abdul Rahman Park and it got the biggest island forest too. The jungle trail of Gaya Island is 4 KM long and need at least 2 hours to finish. You may start at Gayana Island and complete the trail at Hornbill Beach, or vice versa. I started from Hornbill Beach and ended at Gayana Resort, so I didn’t need to wait for a boat to pick me up at the Hornbill Beach.
FYI, there is no leech in the trail, their staff says only the area more inside the island got. They also say if you are lucky, you can see wild boar, snakes, monkeys… Well, I saw some bugs only. It was so dark in the forest, making photo-shooting very difficult. I used a head lamp but still not bright enough to light up the subjects, sigh… I think there are thousands of cicada on the island and they are so loud that we can hear them from the resort. Just click this link to hear them sing. Turn your speaker to maximum volume and that was what I heard in the jungle. No kidding…
To go to Hornbill Beach, you need to take a boat from Gayana jetty and you can arrange it with their staff at the arrival hall. If you are the resort guest, it is free. I paid RM5 and the boat ride took less than 30 seconds. Please note that you need to pay Sabah Parks a conservation fee to enter (RM3 for Malaysian adult, RM10 for non-Malaysian). But there was nobody there that day, so I didn’t pay. Hahaha… The Hornbill Beach is also a nice place to swim, dive, camp and BBQ.
In the jungle trail of Gaya Island, you won’t feel that you are walking on an island. The jungle looks like a typical dense tropical rainforest. Plenty of hundred-feet tall trees, ratan, mushroom, fungus, bugs, lizards. I think I also heard the voice of hornbills. I know coz I have seen a lot of them in Sepilok forest before. The trail is not a flat path all the way. Half of the time I needed to climb up and down, very tired… I tried to find something interesting for photography, then I realised that I walked less than 1 KM after an hour (since 1 PM). So I walked quite fast later, probably missed out something cool too. I will come back again next time and start earlier (and carry a big lamp)… By the time I got out of the jungle, it was already 4 PM, but quite worth the time and effort.
FYI, Gayana Resort was used to have a Mangrove Forest trail. Due to poor maintenance, the broadway is out of order for a long time, though they still advertise this trail in their leaflet. Too bad…
Ok, you guess it right, now I blog about the last island on the list, Gaya Island. No sure why some people call it Gayana Island, it once made me confused, probably it got a Gayana Resort on it. FYI, boat to Gayana Resort is available daily at 8AM, 9.30AM, 11AM, 12.30PM, 3.15PM, 6PM, 7.30PM, 9.30PM and 11PM. Two-way fare costs RM15 (less than USD4) but subject to change.
So I went to Gaya Island on last Monday. The resort is built on the sea water, which is clear and shallow. When you walk on the broadway, you can see many fishes, corals, seaweeds and other sea life such as sea cucumber and sea urchins… under your feet. Most visitors are there to stay, hang around, relax, and eat. Not many are doing watersport such as snorkelling, swimming, diving.. I find this place is less attractive for such activities, if compared with other islands.
I am poor so I can’t afford to stay in the resort. But judging from its appearance and words of mouth, it should be good. Each house got a balcony, where you can sit, relax and watch the sea. I also like the wooden houses with atap roof, giving a touch of nature. Many couples like to stay here for a romantic vacation.
There is also an exhibition hall (Marine & Ecology Research Centre) at far end of the resort. Many corals, clams, fishes and other sea life are displayed. The entrance is free for the resort guests. For Malaysian adult, it is RM5, non-Malaysians, RM10. Below is the opening hours info. Opening Hours
Mon and Thu: 6PM – 8PM
Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun: 9AM – 12PM, 1PM – 4PM, 6PM – 8.30PM
(I was there in Monday morning, but they let me enter.)
Ya, ya, I know most of you, especially the locals, already knew what I mention above. I post the info just for fun and for foreigners to know more about Sabah islands. Do introduce my site to your friends overseas, please? I also create an interactive 360° panoramic view for you to explore the resort.
After trying out the White Water Rafting at Padas River, the next thing-to-do on our list is to try parasailing (parachute sailing) at Sapi Island. Can’t believe my New Zealand aunty is over 50 years old, the age where most Malaysians start complaining that they are old, got back pain, leg pain, here pain, there pain…. retire for everything and too lazy for anything new.
The fee to play parasailing is RM100 (USD25) for solo, RM170 (USD42) for tandem flight (2 persons). After negotiation, they agreed to offer it at RM120 for tandem flight. We can enjoy the view high above the sea for 15 minutes. Actually I never tried parasailing, so I didn’t know what to expect. Should it be a pleasure experience, or another scary stuff? I was wondering and getting uneasy.
Very soon we got on a speed boat, wore the life jacket. While the boat was speeding on the ocean, they helped us to put on the belt, brief us a bit, hooked us to the parachute, then released us to the air. Shortly we were 50 feet above the ocean. Look at the picture, the boat looks so small now. I got a waterproof camera with me so I managed to take a few pictures in the air. Their staffs also helped us to take some pictures from the boat. So you can really see how it feels in the sky, from top and bottom. 🙂
You would say, “Ceh! Only like a flying kite in the sky, nothing to fear about.” For my case, they lower the parachute twice and dip our feet into the sea water. Just imagine you are flying at super high speed, a few feet above the sea water and seeing you would slap into the sea anytime. When our feet dip in the water, we should bend our knee and point our toes to the back so we can “ski” beautifully on the water. Too bad we didn’t do it correctly, so end up all the sea water splashed to our faces.
The photo below is a good take. See the Mount Kinabalu in the background?
There were more… The boat purposely stop-run, stop-run continuously… creating a repeating on-off dragging force to swing us violently. They will also make some quick and sharp turns to swing your parachute to the side with high speed. Scary but exciting.
After the lunch, we continued our tour to The Tip of Borneo. It has been raining for the past few days. The weather was not good in the morning. Luckily, after the morning rain, we got a clear blue sky. The 30 minute ride on graval road was quite an enjoyable experience, as we were welcomed by thousands of coconut trees.
Before we arrived The Tip of Borneo, the white sand and crystal blue water at Tanjung Simpang Mengayau caught our attention. The beach is so beautiful, clean and pure that I call it the “Perfect” beach, something that would only appears in dream. I was told that we could camp there, and the sunset of The Tip of Borneo is one of the best. I will come back again next time, for longer period. There are also a few longhouses nearby that offer accommodation to tourists.
I don’t want to be wordy on describing the beauty of The Tip of Borneo. Just check out the photo gallery and see it yourself. Actually we are not allowed to go down and walk on the rock. But I just could not resist to get closer to the tip. If you check out my photo gallery later, you will know that it is quite dangerous to stand near the tip coz the strong wave would hit you to the sea.
The nature has done an excellent job to make the Tip a piece of art. I like to check out the rock ponds. You can see fishes, crabs, shrimps and shells trying to hide in the small pond. If I can cook the rock pond, each of them will become a bowl of delicious seafood soup, hahaha…
Finally I went to Tip Of Borneo the second time with my family. It will take 3 hours to drive from Kota Kinabalu to Kudat, if you use the route that passes through Kota Belud. It is a long way and you will passby many padi field, forest, hills, rivers, coconut trees, oil palm plantation, villages… For those foreigner tourists who never see a coconut or think padi grown on tree, the countryside view should be interesting. For local yokel like me, I will open my mouth wide and take a nap in the car.
The road condition is considered ok overall. When you reach Kota Belud, the famous cowboy town, be extra cautious. Coz you will find many cows roaming on the road. Sometimes they just come out from nowhere. Do not horn them. You will only get two results. The first one is – they ignore you totally. The second response is – they got panic and run like a headless fly, causing accident on another lane. Before you reach Kudat, you would find some wooden stalls by the roadside, where you can stop and buy some local farm products, such as peanuts, coconut, rice cracker, corn… Again, for local yokel like me, I will open my mouth wide and take a nap.
We arrived Kudat around 11 AM, with empty stomach. So we decided to try the famous Kudat Tofu (Soybean cake) Dumpling in Pakka Choon. If you are a muslim, sorry lah, it is not halal coz it contains pork. To get there, if you see the temple below in Kudat (see pictures below), just go straight and you will see a roundabout at the end. Turn to the road that has the sign “Jalan Tomanggong Kurantud”. Follow the main road for roughly 1.5 KM, you will arrive Pakka Choon area, and you would see an old wooden shoplot at your left side. You can see a few yellow signboards such as “Siew Lan Tailor”, “Thart Seng Electrical” there. Hope this info is good enough for you to locate the place.
They offer rich variety of yummy yummy tofu dumpling, e.g. eggplant, mushroom, liver, sausage, curry flavors… I personally like the one with liver. If you are first time trying, you may order a few bowls of different tofu dumpling so you can taste each of them. Each bowl costs around RM4 to 5 (USD1 to 1.25). When I was taking photos of the food, those waitresses hiding behind laughing. Probably they think I am nut. You also can order Ngiu Chap (or U-Chap) there and it tastes quite good.
I brought my aunty to Tuaran during Chinese New Year. My aunty was born in Tamporuli, so she went to Tuaran very often during her old school days. So we took a morning walk at Tamu (local native market) to bring back her childhood memory. Actually Tuaran is also an important place in my childhood. Whenever my family visited Tuaran, I liked to play around in Tuaran Tamu, which is open on every Sunday morning. They sell ANY kind of stuffs here. At that time, there was no Parkson, Servey, Bestmart… so the Tamu was like a big supermarket to me.
I still remember the suspension bridge that scared the sh*t out of me when I was a little boy. One day, my father brought me to cross the bridge. When I looked down, I was scared by the swift river under my feet. I cried and not dare to move further, so we were stuck in the middle. I remember my father asked me to close my eyes then he hugged me to cross. So malu…
The 9-Storey Pagoda Ling San has become a tourist attraction in Tuaran. When I first saw this tall building, it reminded me of the kung fu movie scenes. You know lah, the people fly up and down, fighting from first floor to top floor. The view from the top of the building is fascinating. That’s why you can see a lot of locals dating there. Somebody may feel unhappy about this and post something funny in the pagoda (see the left). FYI, you need to pay RM1 (USD0.50) to buy an entrance ticket.
Surrounding the pagoda are a garden and a temple. You also can find statues of many familiar legendary and fairy tale characters. Everything is so nicely designed and colorful. I took some pictures and share them here, but this only shows very small part of their craft works. It is better you go there to see it yourself.
If you are a Chinese, you should know a lot about dragon, right? Let me test you. Look at the pictures below, why some dragons got 4 claws and some got 5 claws? Try to guess. I will tell you the answer later.
If you go to Tuaran, you may take a short walk at the Yu Huang Temple. To get there, on the way from Kota Kinabalu to Tuaran, you will see a junction at the right, about 1.5 KM before Tuaran town. The temple is about 100 Meters away from the main road. The first thing you will see inside is the 12 Chinese Zordiac sign. I took a picture next to my zordiac sign too. But I like the dog statue the most. Haha… like me mah.
There were a bunch of children noticed that I was taking pictures, so they all climbed on the snake statue, yelled and asked for a photograph. I took one picture and quick quick walked away. If they broke the statue, the owner would think that I encouraged them.
The 10-feet tall Dragon Door is also a very creative design. As you can see in the photo below. The back of the dragon extended out from the door as the roof.
“The rating of the rapids now is grade III to IV*. River depth is medium. You may face waves that are 4 to 6 feet high,” the tour guide announced. Wow, wave of 6 feet high? I hardly believed that. There were 8 rapids in this course, and all of them have a name. You may look at the map at the left. The Cobra and Washing Machine sound really nasty, and YES, they are. According to the guide, these two rapids are the toughest and scariest. I also curious why they named one of the rapids as “Scooby Doo”. They only know that it was named by an Australian back in 1982. For what funny reason, don’t know…
By 11:10 AM, we arrived Pangi, the starting point of rafting. The sky was cloudy but no rain. The rafting camp is just a few meters away. We were invited to go inside a big “cage”, where we had some watermelon and water as light refreshment. Sound like everything here today have something to do with Water, only the rafting was not “sub-sub water” lah (easy).
After 15 minutes, we gathered for a safety briefing. There were 30 people went for rafting. We were split into three groups (boats). After we wore our life jackets and helmets, the tour guide gave us a 10-minute safety briefing. Mostly about how we rescue ourselves and others from the water, and how to raft safely. For example, to pull someone out of water, you must not pull their finger hand, this would hurt their wrist if the stream is strong. The right way is to pull their life jacket. And also the tip to avoid being eaten by crocodile. Just kidding, there is no crocodile here. Probably they don’t find water-sport interesting.
Then we started to raft at 12 PM something. BTW, since I couldn’t afford to soak my Sony digital camera in the river, I got a new friend with me. It was a RM38 Kodak one-time-use camera that could take up to 27 pictures (ISO 800). It is rugged, waterproof and shock resistant, so very suitable for outdoor and underwater use. I just tied it on my life jacket.
For the first 1 KM, it was a easy rafting on the flat and calm river, as a warm up. Everyone was asked to jump into the river to do “Body Rafting” (let the body floats and moves with the stream), then swam back to the inflated boat. I don’t know how to swim. The deep and yellowish water made my mind struggled but I did it anyway. Haha… not bad. I even took a photo of my feet. Next time you see these feet, you will know this is Smoke Head. But when I tried to “swim” back to the boat, others have gotten on the boat quickly, only me still kept swimming on the same spot. Quite embarrassing… 😛
We managed to conquer the “easiest” Warm-Up Rapid, where I almost broke my toenail. Sssss… very painful. The nail was not broken but became a bit curly. Then we moved into Head Hunter Rapid. Aahh… we were attacked by 3-feet waves and got wet all over. The cold river splashed right on my face a few times and I was not thirsty anymore. When we looked behind, there were already 3 persons from other 2 boats fell out. No worry. They were rescued shortly. For extra safety, we had 3 boats (from 2 different companies) to do the rafting together as a team. There were also two safety kayak followed at the back. The life jacket can float object up to 150 KG.
The Cobra Rapid was really frightening. It is a big and long rapid. We were hit by many 4-feet waves from ALL direction. Sometimes we even got “surprise” attack from behind. If you didn’t stay highly alert, the next second you would be in the water. We had to paddle hard enough to ran over the big wave, otherwise the wave would flip and capsize our boat. More team members fell like big potato this time. After the Lambada Rapid, we took a break at the shore. I was so glad I made it…
After 10 minutes rest, we continued to raft again. They said Washing Machine Rapid was the second most difficult rapid. They were very very wrong. We were slapped by more aggressive waves, which were more unpredictable. The rapid was so strong as if a fierce monster was hitting really hard non-stop at the bottom of the boat, trying to knock you out. We were so busy paddling to leave this horrible place. Suddenly the guide shouted, “EVERYONE LEAN FORWARD NOW!!!! LEAN FORWARD!!!!!!!” When I looked at the front, OH SHIT!!!! I WAS TERRIFIED. A 6-feet wave was on its way to hit our boat face to face at fullest momentum. It was lightning fast and BANG! our boat was like hitting a solid wall and we were swallowed by the wave.
When I opened my eyes, I was already in the water. I tried to stay calm and floated slowly to the surface after 3 or 4 seconds (like a century long to me). Once I got my face out of the water, I opened my mouth widely to take a big breath. When I did that, the spiral pulled me down into the water again and I sucked a lot of river water. It went on and on… I was spinned in circle (like in washing machine) in the river and totally lost control already, until the guide pulled me onto the boat. One guy was choked really bad (probably he breathed with nose in the water) and coughed for minutes. 7 out of 10 persons (except the 3 guides) were thrown into the river just now. I will never forget that moment in my life.
Hey, got something really funny here. After I developed the film, I found one blur photo below. I tried to recall but I don’t think I took any picture like this. It took me quite a long time to figure out that it was me in the water. I think when I fell into the river, the impact was so big that my camera was triggered. Too bad it is blur. You can imagine how fierce was the force.
Finally, we reached the ending point in one piece around 1:30 PM. We took our personal belonging and changed our cloth. After that, lunch time at a lodge nearby! Got fried rice, mee, sausages, chicken wings, lamb… At 2:20 PM, we took the train back to Beaufort. Everyone was really exhausted, as you can see in the photos below:
It is such an unforgettable and thrilling experience. I will do it again in the future. My New Zealand aunty still could not stop talking about it excitedly even until today. I personally highly recommend it if your company wants to organise a team building activity. The BEST part will be throwing your fucking boss into the river and let him drown (don’t forget to throw stones at him). OK lah, this shall conclude my blog on this trip. Hope you enjoy reading it. And thanks for bearing with my poor English. I have tried my best to describe…
*River Rapid Rating System
Internationally graded standards are applied to judge the River Rafting in Scale of I to VI:
Grade I: Easy float
Grade II: Medium with clear passages
Grade III: Difficult waves, narrow passages
Grade IV: Very difficult, long, boiling rapids
Grade V: Extremely difficult, big violent drops
Grade VI: Unrunnable!
