Kinabalu national park, Borneo

As I messed up the booking for the flight out of Borneo to Kuala Lumpur and booked the wrong day...... we ended up using our extra day in KK to visit Kinabalu national park. The drive out took us very close to Mt Kinabalu and we stopped off to take some photos.

We then drove to a place were the a Rafflesia flower was in bloom.

The Rafflesia is the worlds largest flower, and of course endangered (like most precious things) and takes between 9 & 18 months to flower. Then, after blooming, the flower only lasts for 7 days before dying off. We were lucky, that one was blooming at the time of our passing, and for 30 Malaysian Ringit (about 7 pounds) we could see this wonderful flower (which we did). It was worth seeing it I guess, we will probably never get another chance to see one again.

After this, we went to some botanical gardens. It was a nice setting, but I found it a little boring. I may like being in such surroundings, but I'm not really into knowing the Latin names of flowers!!!
We then went for lunch; we shared our table with a couple of Russians from Moscow and Chinese couple from Shanghai...We spoke with the Chinese and they were very impressed that we shunned the use of knives and forks and asked for chopsticks to eat our meal.....

After lunch we walked a short distance to the rain forest for the canopy walk. As if to make it more authentic, the heavens opened and provided us with the rain!

After donning rain covers, rain jackets and plastic sheets we moved up to the canopy walkway. The canopy walkway was suspended at a height of 40 meters above ground and was 175 meters long in total. Thankfully the rain stopped at this point and we were able to walk across the 5 suspended bridges and take some photos. We both enjoyed doing this walk, but we didn't see any animals whatsoever and we both agreed that it was more like a theme park ride than a practical way of viewing rain forest wildlife. It was still good though....

After our trip into the air we took a journey into the water in the shape of Poring hot springs. Sulphuric water had been diverted into a numbers of sunken baths and pools which were available for use. I took a quick dip in a secluded pool as my back was still shedding its skin and I didn't want to frighten anyone away....I'm sure if I had been spotted I would have been banned from using the tub lol.....Luckily it contained a tap and plug so that you could empty and refill the tub after use (I forgot to pull the plug btw, so bits of my skin would still have been floating around lol)

After the springs we headed back into the coach for our 3 hour journey back to our hotel. After a quick change and freshen up in our hotel we headed out to the local night food market at the harbour. There we discovered an area of stalls set out next to the sea and fishing boats. Each stall had a variety of fish and seafood set out for you to choose; it was then barbecued as you took your tiny plastic seat at your plastic table. Shortly after, our most delicious meal of tuna fish, prawns and rice was served up. This meal cost less than 4 pounds....You could not even buy one tuna steak for that price in the UK!

Next morning we checked out of our hotel and set off for KK airport to catch our 9:45am flight to Kuala Lumpur.