Borneo Day Four: More Kinabalu and a South China Sea Sunset

On our way to breakfast in the morning, we opened our front door and were blown away by the mighty Mt. Kinabalu in front of us. The mountain had been obscured by clouds since we got there, so this was our first good view of the peak.It took us forever to get to the cafeteria for breakfast because we found pretty birds and colorful flowers along the way.After breakfast, we picked another trail and headed out again. It wasn't long before we spotted some of the insect life that we'd heard is so abundant in Kinabalu Park. First, we found the shell of something big and scary. Shortly after that, we saw a fluffy red caterpillar that was bobbing his head- either trying to threaten us or mate us, I'm not sure.Then some more flora. I really liked these dainty pink flowers.And then more insects! Bryan's photography handiwork- a vicious spider, a bee flying out of a flower (a morning glory- thanks, Mom!), and a stick bug with a ton of ants! The following photo is a leaf grasshopper. It mimics a yellow leaf, and it looks pretty awesome.We hung out at this overlook for awhile, appreciating the view and the sunshine.Bryan saw this beetle just as it was taking flight.And we found my favorite- PITCHER PLANTS!!
A couple more interesting bugs, and then I'll stop bombarding everyone with photos of creepy crawlies. The first is a trilobite beetle, and I think the second is a type of tick that I've never seen before. It's on my pants in the picture- eek!Once we were through hiking, we tried to head back to KK but it turned out to be harder than we thought. The front desk told us to go sit on the side of the road (yes, I'm serious) and flag down any buses that passed by. The buses were all full, and kept waving us away. About an hour and three full buses later, we decided to split a cab with some other guy who'd been sitting on the side of the road with us, and we headed out of the mountains and back to the town.

Bryan had been having bad luck with food for the past few days (he didn't get sick, his food was just never any good) so after we checked into our hotel (1 City Hotel) we decided to play it safe and head back to Little Italy for dinner. It was delicious again, so that was nice. After dinner, we went out to the waterfront and watched the crabs scuttling around on the shore with the fishing boats cruising in the background while the sun sank over the South China Sea!We roamed town a while longer before heading back to our hotel for the night, and we found the ferry station, where we planned to leave from in the morning. It had a pretty fancy entrance. The ferry station was surrounded by some food stalls and drink places, so we stopped for some fresh juice. We didn't think about the juice having ice in it (Malaysia's water isn't safe to drink), so we ended up chugging it so the ice wouldn't melt. Silly.Before we knew it, another day in Borneo was behind us!