Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Early April we found out we had the opportunity to take a somewhat impromptu trip for about ten days. There is a lot to do and see in South East Asia, but the prospect of climbing Mt. Kinabalu sold us on a trip to the region of Sabah. So we planned on using our free “company” flight from Tokyo to Singapore, and then using purchased tickets to from there on to Brunei for an overnight layover and then to our final destination, Kota Kinabalu. We also booked two nights at a nice resort in KK at the Magellan Sutera.

When we showed up to the counter the morning of our flight we were informed the flight was canceled indefinitely. This was the second trip that our “free” flights suddenly were not free anymore. This meant we had to by tickets from Tokyo to KK for the following morning. Luckily for a grand a person, we both had round trip tickets on Malaysia Air for the following day. Royal Brunei of course would not refund us our tickets, but they were nice enough to refund the airport taxes.

The next day was an entire day of riding trains and then flying. Besides our stop over in Kuala Lumpur, the flight was easily the best flight I have experienced as it is the only flight were you had your own TV monitor and choice of entertainment. We finally arrived at KK around 12am. Of course no visit to a foreign country is complete without the obligatory F1 racing taxi driver. Despite the resort only being a few miles away, this ride did not disappoint!

The Magellan Sutera Resort entrance itself was jaw dropping. My picture does not capture the sheer size of the lobby. We were both surprised at not only the amazing view of the South China Sea from our balcony, but the room itself was easily the nicest room we have ever stayed in!

When we woke up in the morning we were also treated to on the the best breakfast buffets I have ever had. And the picture below was taken from the table we ate at!

The Magellan property is also connected to another resort called the Pacific Sutera. We decided to enjoy the pools for the day over on that side as we practically had it to ourselves. Below is a night picture of the harbor between the resorts.

Despite the warnings I read online about the power of the sun in this latitude and being pasty white during that time of the year, I spent way too much time in the sun that day and burnt myself to a crisp. Luckily my fair skin is so use to it that I recover quickly. But it was enough to warrant spending an additional night at the Magellan for a total of 3 nights. This provided plenty of time to take more photographs of the resort.

My only gripe about the place was that the food in their restaurants was super expensive. We ordered take out one night and despite the high cost, I was not happy with the meal. Luckily the resort offers frequent shuttled into the center of town so you can easily manage eating in KK which has tons of excellent options for SUPER cheap.

Since the Magellan was a bit beyond our budget we eventually reserved a room at the Best Western Kinabalu Daya Hotel in KK. It was a fairly good price, included an edible breakfast, and was close to bus station.

We ended up paying for a little tour near Mt. Kinabalu to see some botanical gardens, some crowded hot springs, and a tree top canopy walk. The world largest blooming flower, the Rafflesia Arnoldi also starting to bloom which Amber was able to get a picture of.

We also stopped by a local market that had a huge variety of fruits and vegetables I never knew existed. We purchased a couple of fruits, but none of them had much taste unfortunately.

It was a decent excursion, but we were really excited to climb Mt. Kinabalu. To climb this mountain you need to reserve one of the three huts high up on the mountain. Since this climb is very popular, we were very lucky to get a room in the non heated hut called the Gunting Lagadan. The Laban Rata Hut is the most popular one because it is heated, which is nice because it was damn cold up there!

We really did not do much planning beyond reserving the hut which came with one of the park admission fees. Early in the morning we checked out of the Daya Hotel and headed over to the bus stop. We were hounded by the taxi driver scam artists (not all were scam artists, but you could easily tell who was going to Shanghai you). We were set on riding the short bus up so we purchased a ticket. Unfortunately the bus was having problems, so they put us in a taxi anyways.

Once we reached the park, they turned us upside down and shook all the money out of our pockets to pay for the climbing fees (luckily the exchange rate was in our favor.) We were told we needed a guide as well, but luckily there was still one available, as it was about the last hour of the day when hikers start heading up the mountain. We later found out you do not need a guide and even though ours was nice, it is impossible to get lost on this trail. We also rented out a storage shelf for all of our items we didn’t need. This lightened the load considerably.

I have climbed some steep trails in my time, but this one is pretty much straight up. Even the steps built into the mountain seem to be designed for people with 6ft long legs. But the worst part is the mental destruction that is inflicted when a local guide/porter goes walking past you with two backpacks and bare feet or massive propane canisters on their back with burlap straps!

Of course just like my climb up Mt. Fuji, I got altitude sickness while Amber was running up the trail. At the end of the day when we got to the hut at 9,000ft my head was ready to explode! I could barely eat anything at all that night and I thought Amber was going to have to complete the climb without me. Luckily when I woke up I was feeling a bit better.

At 3am it was on with the climb!

It wasn’t too long before we were above the tree line and the scenery became absolutely stunning.

13,435 ft is the height of the mountain. As we got higher and higher my head again started to pulse and pound with every step. I was taking baby steps and Amber was having no problems at all, hurting my pride in the process! I am pretty sure she poisoned me though..

Finally the sun rising from the top-

I was losing brain cells at a phenomenal rate so we decided to turn around after about 20 minutes of taking pictures and enjoying the view. The rest of the day going back downhill was about as fun as having my knees hit with an aluminum baseball bat one hundred times. Both of us knew we would be walking funny from our sore muscles for at least two to three days.

We split a cab fare with another couple and headed back to the Daya Hotel in KK. We spent the rest of the day limping to nearby restaurants and watching TV at the hotel, and boy was it wonderful! The remaining two days we decided to visit Islands at the Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park. The ferry boats departed a short distance from our hotel. The first day we went to Sapi Island.

It was somewhat crowded due to its’ small size, but the water was crystal clear and the island was full of Monitor lizards.

The last day we headed to Manukan Island which was not much further away than Sapi, although this island was much larger so their was more room to spread out.

Overall we both loved the trip and we are still a little bummed as we will probably never get a chance to go back despite feeling like we missed a lot of other opportunities that are so close by. Diving at Sipidan Island and seeing the Orangutans would really have been nice. Our next trip to SE Asia we will set aside an entire month so we hopefully don’t feel like we missed as much.

Sakura

In the spring time Japan is famous for the cherry blossoms or sakura as they are known in Japan. However, the sakura only bloom for a little over a week! So you really have to plan in advance and pick a few spots that you want to go see that are in bloom. This year we were not very sure and ended up getting pictures close to home.

We had rainstorms during the bloom which prematurely ended the season. Overall my favorite picture I took you can not even tell their is sakura in the background. We have two more tries before we will be leaving Japan. I will have a better plan for next year!

50mm 1.8D :)

A couple of months ago I purchased a classic lens for my Nikon DSLR’s called the Nikkor 50mm 1.8D or “Nifty Fifty” as the legend is known. My D40 lacks built in auto focus so you have to manually focus this lens, but for barely over 1 bill, how could I pass it up?

Tachikawa Bicycle Park, my favorite photo so far-

With such a large aperture it can sometimes be very difficult to get your subject in focus, I think get my focus correct in about 1 out of 5 photos when I am below f2. I need more practice!

Train ride leaving Kawasaki-

I apply tone mapping to a lot of my photos in an awesome program called Photomatix. Photomatix can really bring out the color in a photo and does a great job of creating HDR images as well. A lot of people do not like tone mapping and HDR, but I personally love the look.

At the Kawasaki Penis Festival-

Camping!

Now that the extreme humidity has arrived, it is time to head even higher than Okutama to escape to cooler temperatures. After scouring the Internet, we decided to try out Lake Sai-ko for camping which is located near the base of Mt. Fuji. We ran into unexpected traffic, so about 2.5 hours later and ¥1900 lighter we arrived at the Kawaguchiko exit and elected to drive behind Lake Kawaguchi for the famous view of Mt. Fuji.

Lake Kawaguchi with view of Mt. Fuji-

Next we drove a couple of minutes to my favorite lake, Lake Sai-ko. The camping areas were all pretty crowded and lacked any shade from the trees. We decided to head over to Lake Motosu as we had been there once before and remembered spying a camping area in the trees near the shore.

We couldn’t find any sort of sign stating we had to pay, so we found a nice spot amongst the hundreds of campers and their vans, it even had firewood from the previous residents!
*Edit- Free was too good to be true. Our third trip up and we found out that Camp Motosuko cost’s ¥2,500 a night! Nothing is cheap in Japan!

Lake Motosu Sunset HDR-

Lake Motosu-ko is the deepest of the 5 Fuji lakes with a depth of 563 feet, which also makes it the only lake in the region that does not freeze over in winter. Lake Motosu is a very popular lake for windsurfing and this weekend was full of windsurfers catching the many frequent breezes.

Lake Motosu Windsurfers-

The camping was free, the water was almost warm enough to swim in comfortably, and it was unexpectedly peaceful despite hundreds of people camping all around us. I guess you adapt to being around crowds all the time living near Tokyo.

Lake Motosu Glass Bottom Tour Boat-

Great Buddha

Last June we set off for Kamakura to see the Great Buddha and other temples in the near by area. The Great Buddha was constructed in 1252 and is the second largest statue in Japan.

The statue used to be covered in a temple hall until a tsunami actually made it all the way to the Kotokuin Temple grounds where it is located, and washed the building away at the end of the 15th century.

The most impressive site of Kamakura was the Hasedera Temple which overlooks the coastal area of Kamakura. The temple contains everything from hundreds of statues, loads of blooming flowers, a temple, rice balls , and even a cave.

One visit surely is not enough to this amazing temple. I will definitely make my way back to the Hase Temple seeing how it is a photographic playground, especially when all of the enormous flowers are in bloom.

Incense, Not Just for Hippies

Most of the bigger temples that we visit in Japan usually contain large incense burners in the court yard outside each temple. The locals will light the incense and then extinguish the flame by waving the stick in the air. Once it is extinguished and the ember starts releasing smoke, they will stand it up in the sand contained in the burner and fan the smoke toward body parts that are in need of healing. It is believed the smoke has a healing power to it.

Hase Kannon Temple in Kamakura Japan-

I do not photograph people very often as I don’t want to encroach on anyone’s privacy, but these incense burners are such great spots to capture the spiritual side of Japan, they have become almost cliché on websites such as Flickr. I have no problems with this cliché, I will definitely be putting my telephoto lens to good use at every temple I visit in Japan.

Sensō-ji Temple in Asakusa, Japan-

The “Swastika” symbol you see in the picture above actually means “Temple” in Japanese. As a Westerner it was odd to see these symbols all over the temple grounds at first. But we quickly figured out their meaning in Japan.

Camping?

This 4th of July weekend we had a break from school and decided to head into the nearby mountains in the Okutama area and test out all of the camping equipment we have bought from REI lately. We first headed up to the Okutama Reservoir and we were pleasantly surprised at the beauty and lack of crowds in the area. There were so many picturesque bridges along the way that I decided not to stop at each one for pictures as to not bore Amber. I will be heading back again on a mission for pictures soon.

We came across some wild monkeys on the side of the road, it was tempting to not put them in the back seat and let them live with us! I don’t know what it is about monkeys, but they are just so cool to see in the wild. We also came across what I believe to be called the Ogochi Shrine which was a short hike on a peninsula rising out of Lake Okutama. It was beautiful and there was not a soul in sight!

Ogochi Shrine-

We searched up, down, below, and beyond the lake for a place to camp. There was not any shoreline remotely open or flat enough for a tent and all of the developed campgrounds were closed. We ended up having to go back to our apartment at the end of the day. We consulted the googles and headed back up the next day once we found information on a campsite in the town of Kawai. Parking for our car and two persons overnight for ¥3400 total.

Campsite under the Okutama Bridge-

The campsite was located underneath a huge cable stayed bridge on the Tama River, right on the rocky shore. We set up camp and took a dip in the frigid waters, which was pretty damn cold despite the heat and humidity during this time of the year. When night rolled around the only other people sleeping in a tent instead of the bungalows in the trees were us, and an American family that had a tent the size of a mansion.

After a muggy night we headed downstream to Mt. Mitake for a day of exploration. We paid ¥1090 a piece for round trip tickets on the cable car that would bypass the long steep road. In about 6 minutes it drops you off a lot higher than were you started at a small village. From there it was a short hike to the Mitake Shrine.

Mt. Mitake Shrine-

We also hiked to the top of Mt. Otake, visited some waterfalls, and had the obligatory rice balls on a stick which I absolutely love. It was a lot less crowded than nearby Mt. Takao, but it was so humid, the trees and bushes even looked like they were sweating! Oddly enough, this year seems to be a lot less hot and humid compared to our first year here. At the end of the day we were glad to find such a pretty area so close to were we live. But where the hell can we camp!?!?