Poring Hot springs

We flew to Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sabah, by Jetstar. The plane was full of holiday-makers, most heading for the mountain or for diving at Sandakan. The 2-hr flight was pleasantly short, and I was surprised to find that KK now has a spanking new airport. We bought a coupon for the taxi ride to town, which was only 15 mins away. Even the taxi was brand new!
Two hungry tourists headed out to the town after checking in at Hotel Shangri-la (NOT the real McCoy). At the Melaka restaurant we were introduced to "Sayor Manis", a vegetable commonly found here. Food was good: we cleaned the plates!
In our area of town we found malls galore, so we just walked disinterestedly till we reached the bus terminal near the "Wawasan" building. Susan had spied streams of people headed there at that late afternoon hour.
The next morning, Mr Lo from Sanctuary Borneo tour company was waiting in the lobby to drive us up to Poring Hot Springs, which is downhill past the Kinabalu Park HQ. After an hour's drive, views of the mountain started to emerge. Even though the weather was good that day, the mountain top, as always, was hidden by some dramatic cloud formations.

We stopped by a fruit stand in Kundasang, the vegetable garden of Sabah. Whole valleys in this region are filled with small holdings of fruit, vegetable and (mountain) rice farmers. We inspected fruit that we don't often see in singapore, like "buah salat" known as "snake skin fruit" in Chinese. We bought a bag of "duku" which was juicy and sweet.
Just before 11am, we reached Poring Hot Springs, and after lunch at a nearby coffee shop, we proceeded past the visitors enjoying a warm soak in the hot pools. The butterfly park did not seem to be enclosed, and butterflies darted in and out freely around us .
As it was lunch time, we had the canopy walk practically to ourselves. How wonderful to be up near the crowns of the tall trees and feel the cool breeze. We had our workout for the day walking up to and coming down from the canopy.
Continuing our walk, we came to the Kipungit waterfalls, and then attempted the steep paths to the "bat cave". That was an even better workout!

Late in the afternoon we drove back to national Park HQ and checked into our lodge. The views of the mountain were magnificent!

At the lodge, a personal viewing bench was provided in front of each lodge.at 5am the next morning, the cloudless view of the mountain was there for all who made the effort to get up early to view it. At that hour, we could imagine that many of those who climbed to the summit had already taken photos of their achievement and were already well on their downward trek, which we understand from most people, is more taxing than the uphill trek.

We ended our vacation back in KK, with some time spent at the crowded sunday market on Jalan Gaya, where, besides many trinket stalls, we also saw indigenous produce like vegetables, flowering plants, seaweed, honey and various local cakes. At the port, we saw speedboats of various designs ferrying the agile residents of the nearby water village to the port-side markets in town.