Travelogue: Sabah – Day 2

23 September 2015

We woke up early to have a breakfast with my mom’s friend at Tigris Café near to the apartment, 5 minutes’ walk from the back gate. The foods at Tigris are delicious and I would love to recommend all of you to try it yourself there. Then, we going back to the apartment’s lobby and rent a car for us to travel. We rent Toyota Avanza for today at a daily rate of RM180. (Please note that there are almost no car rental by hours or half day. Most of them only offered full day car rental).

Our first place to visit is Kundasang, Ranau. So, with Waze application installed in our phones, we are ready to travel to Kundasang. On the way to Kundasang, we found The Upside Down House and 3D Wonder Museum. We stopped by for a while at the counter information and decided to come back the next day since it is already 10 am and we still have a really long way to go, and it’s going to take hours to fully explore the museum itself. So we continue our journey and all the way to Kundasang, I was mesmerized and speechless. The view are awesome, superb, amazing, wonderful and all other words that suit its beautifulness. I cannot stop myself from saying “Cantiknyaaaa, Bestnyaaaa, Subhanallah”. Seriously guys, you really have to come to Kundasang. You will never ever regretted it. Well, some might feeling a bit headache and nauseas since the road is bengkang bengkok and have selekoh yang tajam. Oh ya, it was more or less 2 hours journey to Kundasang from the center of Kota Kinabalu.

There are many interesting places here at Kundasang, among them are:

• Desa Dairy Farm Cattle
• Kundasang Memorial War Park
• Kinabalu Park
• Poring Hotspring
• Paragliding Park
• Sabah Tea Farm
• Strawberry Farm

Since we arrived at Kundasang almost at noon, and we are not staying overnight there, so we have like 4-5 hours to visit the interesting places here. We only managed to visit Desa Dairy Farm Cattle, Poring Hotspring and Sabah Tea Farm.  

Beautiful view once we arrived at Ranau

Found durian on our way and we stopped by to eat this 

Desa Dairy Farm Cattle

Entrance fee: Malaysian; RM4.00 (adult) / RM3.00 (children)

Opening hours: Open daily; 8.00 am - 5.00 pm

If you want to experience the beautiful scenery full with cows as if you are in New Zealand, here is the place you shouldn’t miss when you are at Kundasang. With Mt of Kinabalu as a background to this cattle, the view are superb and very breathtaking.

Unfortunately, during our visit there, there are only few cows were released at the farm. So we didn’t managed to take photos with cows playing and mooing behind us.

Well, you can visit them at their cattle, feeding milk to anak cow with an affordable fee of RM1.50/bottle. I didn’t dare to walk closer to them, but my siblings did. It’s a wonderful experience I must say.

And, never forget to go to their so-called café and try out the fresh milk and ice cream yourself. Since I didn’t really like pure milk, I go for chocolate ice cream. The ice cream taste yummy!

We spend more than an hour to explore this place.

Desa Dairy Farm Cattle's famous stone

Only few cows are outside at that moment

Where the rest of the cows are during our visit

Sabah Tea Farm

Entrance fee: RM14.00 for a guided tour of the tea factory / RM44.00 for a guided tour + set lunch / Entrance only (free).

Opening hours: 8.00 am – 4.30 pm (best time to visit; 8.00 am – 12.00 pm)

For a tea lover, this is one of the must go places in their bucket lists. Once you went inside the tea farm area, all you can see is scenery full of green colors. We didn’t go to the farm itself, we just go around outside the farm area around the café. Oh yea, there is a café inside where you can enjoy freshly brewed tea.

There are also a longhouse located in front of the café where you can go inside and look around the house. You can experienced how it feels like to live at the long house yourself.

We spend around 30 minutes at the tea farm before heading for the next location.

The longhouse

Poring Hot spring

Entrance fee: Malaysian; RM3.00 (Adult) / RM1.00 (Below 18 years)

Opening hours: Open daily; 7.00 am – 6.00 pm

This is the last place we go in Kundasang. During our visit, there are already so many people at the hot spring. But still, we managed to find a small hot spring for us to rendam our legs since we didn’t bring extra clothes to take a bath there. The water is not that hot at that moment, but enough for us to feel its warmness. We played around for an hour, before rushing back to Kota Kinabalu.

At the entrance

Other attraction at the hotspring

Sarawak’s is already like 30 to 40 minutes early than in Peninsular Malaysia, but it’s kind of new experience for us when Sabah’s time is even earlier than time in Sarawak. Try to imagine yourself, it’s only 6.00 pm and it’s already dark outside. And Maghrib prayer during our time in Sabah is at 6.15 pm.

Arrived safely at Kota Kinabalu, we went to one famous seafood restaurant (I cannot remember the name) with my mom’s friend for our dinner. We ordered quite a lot of foods; ikan kerapu masak 3 rasa, sayur kalian, udang butter, sotong goreng tepung, ketam masak merah and other side foods along with fresh coconut juice and other juice. It costs us more than RM400 for those foods (7 peoples eat it), and it’s my mom’s friend’s treat. Quite expensive I must say, but we are all eating so well and satisfied with the tastes.

Since we are already full and exhausted at the same time, we decided to go back to the apartment and take some good rest.