The year started to kickoff in Kinabalu, Malaysia. So this time around we're not in Kuala Lumpur but on the other half of Malaysia which is Sabah, near to Borneo and Brunei. We all wanted to conquer Mt Kinabalu (13,435 ft), the highest mountain in southeast Asia and so we did. From Clark, we arrived in Sabah then took a cab to the Mt Kinabalu park to confirm our reservation, and there we've met Dan from Montana, Ann and Tom ( dutch couple), Thomas from Germany, we were in one group led by Marcilius, our Malaysian mountain guide. It was "raining" during our orientation, this was the day before our climb. Thank God for a very nice weather! By the time we woke up, it was very foggy, we thought that its gonna rain but it didnt, we took the Timpohon trail ( the easy trail ),we started to climb in the morning then arrived in Laban Rata in the afternoon. Laban Rata is a hut where we all stayed. Food, beverages, hot showers,and heated rooms are all in this hut, this is 2-4 hour trek away from the summit. We woke up at around 1AM then started to pack for the summit, we all left the hut at around 2AM, then we reached the summit at around 4-5AM, it was still dark and everyone was freezing, I couldn't even press the camera's shot button because my hands felt so numb. Everyone was busy taking pictures when the light came up and was amazed with the granite rock around us. Then the day we left the mountain, it rained! You see how lucky we are!!! Then we took white water rafting somewhere in sabah as a side trip, it was so extreme that even an 8 year old kid can come and paddle, hahaha! Here comes our Brunei trip, we only have few time to think on how can we go there for just a daytrip. Mam Cele and Bob didnt come because they think that it would be impossible to come back to Sabah on the same day, but Lem and I took that risk. From Sabah, there are lots of ways on how to go to Brunei, the easiest way is to take a flight straight from Sabah to Brunei, which is impossible because its too expensive...so we took the hard way..we have to come up with a plan on how can we budget our time for 2 ferry rides and 1 bus ride to go Brunei. Thats one ferry ride from Sabah to Labuan, then Labuan Island to Muara of Brunei, then bus from Muara Brunei to Bandar Seri, Brunei. As a result, we only have 45 minutes to roam around on Bandar Seri Brunei and have to come back to the Muara port to catch the last trip going back to Sabah, but we missed the bus going back to Muara port,so we took other bus going somewhere near to the port then take a cab from where its going to drop us. And from the drop point, there were no taxi!, we're going to be late, if we cant catch the last ferry boat going back to Malaysia, we're going to miss our flight back to the Philippines. Good thing that there's a good samaritan who was willing to give us a ride to the port. Then we took the ferry going back to Labuan, and from there, we had another problem, we can't find a money changer!! All we have are Brunei dollars...all the shops was already closed. Plus, we can't find any taxi thats gonna bring us to Labuan airport, we have to catch our flight from Labuan to Sabah, after searching for money changers, we met another good samaritan who gave us a free ride going to the airport (whew! what a relief!).Finally, we're on the airport, and it was just like a 15 minute ride from Labuan to Sabah. Then the day after, we went back to Pinas.