The closest town I have been over the Sabah West coast was at Beaufort town, where I attended an opening ceremony of a palm oil mill also years ago.
I wanted to travel by bus form Sandakan, Cos’ I was hoping to take some photographs along the journey but my old man wanted to tag along.....so in order to cut short my travelling time and not to missed my connecting bus to Tenom, we flew from Sandakan to Kota Kinabalu. Arrived at Kota Kinabalu bus station in the nick of time and secured the last two available bus tickets. I found that my cousins (the married couple with their parents) also arrived from Singapore on the sameday and were boarding the same bus to Tenom too.......It was a pleasant bus ride and took relatively a shorter time (3 hours) to arrive than anticipated as the road is now in much better condition.
There is a train service to Tenom but part of the Kota Kinabalu railways were under reconstruction to replace its wooden slippers with concrete type, as such the train service was temporary suspended. Cruising along the steep and winding Crocker Range road was a beautiful sight and experience – foggy cool atmosphere, massive concrete hill side retaining walls, overlooking cloudy hills & valleys and dangerously oncoming speedy passing traffics.
Over taking was one common attributes of the bus driver.....
I was told by my old man that he came for the first daughter’s wedding and remembered that my aunt’s house was built with bamboo and thatch roof with the least of modern amenity like a pit latrine located some distance from the house .... Iwas hoping to see all this and so recorded in with my camera but to my disappointment, the scenario has changed completely. A single floor concrete house, tiled floor connected with piped water, flush toilet and electricity....Astro too!!!!!....with some remnants of wooden store/shed within the compound. However, I managed to take some photographs of the surrounding plants and raised animals.
We found the time to visit Tenom's famous Sabah Agricultural Park located about 15 km form Tenom township on the following day. The beautiful recreational and nature park with an area about 1,500 acres was opened on 25 March 2001, is one of the best manmade park available there (didn’t know it existed until I was brought there by my cousin). Spent 2 ½ hours there with 1 hour tiring walk and also taken the motor driven mock "train ride" to Orchid, Evolution and Model gardens which were located furthest from the park’s reception building. We did not cover all the places as we were not particularly prepared to stay there that long.
Most unfortunately, I also didn’t bring along my camera and decided to snap the below low quality pictures with my camera phone........turns our fine after some photo enhancement and editing....
The park has a web site at : http://www.sabah.net.my/agripark/home.htm
The wedding dinner reception was a simple buffet dinner and they invited all their relatives and folks staying around the area. Mostly, the old folks came (the younger generations were either not home or working out of town). Me and my old man were the only relative from my aunt’s side being present. Her two other remaining brothers (uncles) only managed to send their “angpows” through my old man.
We left Tenom town early on the next day as I need arrived in time to catch the next bus to Sandakan. I also found out recently that the bus station has shifted to Inanam township. I managed to get my company’s driver to fetch us at the Kota Kinabalu bus station to send us to the Inanam station.
I didn’t book a flight back as it will gives me the flexibility to change my schedule....I first panned to return later as I would like to spend another day at Lokawi zoo in Kota Kinabalu to photographs the animals there. I was informed by my colleague that the zoo is worth visiting.....On my last trip to Kota Kinabalu, I managed to arrived at the zoo’s gate but I have only 15 minutes left to check in my flight back to Sandakan.
Unfortunately, I cannot just drop my old man alone in a bus home.
We arrived at the Inanam station at 1130 hours as the bus was about to leave and managed to catch the ride back in time happily.
The bus stopped at a nice spot where we have a magnificent view of Mt. Kinabalu between Tamparuli to Ranau. Initially, I thought it was stopped to allow us to relief ourselves and perhaps have a good view of the mountain. To our horror when the bus driver told us that the bus rear drive shaft’s universal joint suffered a mechanical failure and cannot continue until it was fixed. Otherwise, if the joint breaks we may end up in the gully ......
Fortunately, the bus driver and his crew were good mechanics and they managed to replace the universal joint within half hour upon receipt of the parts delivered by a passing bus sent from Kota Kinabalu. The trip home was delayed by 3 hours and we only arrived at Sandakan at 2100 hours. Dead thirsty and hungry although, we did stopped by Ranau to have a snack. The canteen there was so dirty and I think the food would be similar.....This condition should improve as we have many tourist participating there too.
Between waiting and repair time, I took the opportunity to look around and took some photos of the flora and fauna around the area.
There were lots of changes especially at the road side along the way to Kinabalu National park and Ranau. Lots of motels sprung up at the road sides and private chalets. It actually spoilt the natural beauty in the name of tourism industry.......effects to enviroments and landslides were part and package of the developments.
This trip is not what I expected, I did not have peace of mind as the office has been calling repeatedly but at least we returned home safely and to find out from the internet news that Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, India, was being attacked by terrorist..... ...
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