Day 5

Day 3 was a chillaxed day as I returned to Mesilau (my 'house' is here) with sore legs after the hike up to ~3000 m a.s.l. of Mt. Kinabalu. Tse Yuen is proving to be a very useful housemate as he tends to all the groceries/food/cooking - good stuff, the house is well-stocked for another week at least. He cooks, I eat - no complains (I get away with this because I'm a bad cook and he's a guy whose food you CANNOT mess with).

Night time came and it was Monopoly card game time - I lost, and lost, and lost. Had a few shots of whiskey to warm ourselves up and we dozed off (not before brushing my teeth).

Day 4, I woke up about 12 pm because of how tired I was, how cold it was and how sore my legs were - just didn't want to move. My body's retaliating against this rampant abuse of legs. Wait till I get as fit as the locals. So then it was lunchtime..

What is it...? Yam?

There is never a more apt time to have LUNCHeon meat than LUNCH time. Why did the meat look so gross?

Because of a lousily opened can...

..opened using a rudimentary, rusty tool..

??

Stupid fancy-looking plastic can-openers, I'll never trust them ever. That's the second one that's failed to open a single can and broke on their virgin... can-opening ceremony. Lousy The result - pretty good despite the slightly under-cooked pasta. Fusili + luncheon meat + Maggi bolognaise seasoning + vege. Yum.

That aside, I bought a bunch of wrong-sized plastic bags, re-dried bunches of old leaf litter samples that needed it and sorted 5 bags of leaves into their different leaf species so I'd know what leaves are dominant in the litter in that particular site. Not an easy task. I slept at 2 am or so. Tse Yuen began his bbq fantasy today and tried looking for a grill for that.

Day 5 is ongoing. It's been pretty productive thus far with us going to the Kinabalu Park Herbarium (which is by the way, a plant-geek's wet dream) to identify some of those litter species I sorted last night. Bingo! Identified two of the main species that I'm interested in. More sorting after this for another site before I finalize things. Hooha. Tse Yuen's bbq fantasy continues. He also bought a bottle of 'Mountain Chivas' - some local branded alcohol to try. What an alcoholic.. Some interesting things we saw on the way out to Kinabalu Park:

Hmmm?

It's a house-on-wheels!Silver-butt spider with my notebook as background

I've decided to go down to KK for a day before he leaves with him to get supplies/have some fun. Whee.