Of Mountains, Environmental Education and Zero Waste

Disclaimer: This guide is written based on my own experience and may not be comprehensive enough, I would suggest that you still do your own research. Since Mt. Kinabalu was privatized few years ago, the tourism business up to the mountains has been monopolized by Sutera Sanctuary Lodges (SSL), the biggest hotel operator in Sabah. A climbing package that is booked directly from SSL would cost at least RM600 (for Malaysians) and RM800 for non-Malaysians. This guide serves to help you save at least RM300 and that is only if you can allow yourself at least 5 days' stay at Kinabalu Parks and/or be prepared to not climb Mt. Kinabalu AT ALL. Be prepared to bump into lots of obstacles because there're so many tour operators waiting to con your money. //Trails// There're two trails you can follow: via Timpohon Gate (8.75km to summit) and via Mesilau Gate (10.9km to summit). Most people choose to enter via Timpohon Gate as it is the easier trail and I personally do no...

The decision to go to Vietnam was when I read about Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam (more about that later) sometime ago. I thought crawling through narrow, suffocating tunnels sounded fun and it came close to War Museum in Penang which I loved! The initial plan was only to visit Vietnam, but later I learnt about the Khmer Rouge regime and decided I wanted to learn about the genocide (whether or not it was a genocide is debatable) that killed more than two million Cambodians in the 1970s. Due to time constraints, we changed our itinerary a bit but we covered Phnom Penh (Cambodia) - Siem Reap - Chau Doc (Mekong Delta, Vietnam) - Can Tho - Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). Our lifesaver! We departed from Kuala Lumpur on 10th July and landed in Phnom Penh. Out of the few cities that we travelled to, Phnom Penh was the city that we liked least, no thanks to the deceiving tuk-tuk drivers we met. A few of them were okay, but most of them were not. Well, we only took 4-5 rides on tuk-tuks?   On ...