Mesilau, Malaysia // 2014

10 - 16 November

A friend of mine and her husband (J&J), decided to retire far far away from the busy KL city, to this beautiful place called Mesilau. 

This is not J&J's house. This picture was taken near their friend's house.

MonkeyFacts: Mesilau is an area situated at approximately 2000m above sea level on the East Ridge of Mount Kinabalu. Mesilau derived its name from the small stream of yellow waterfall which the locals there claimed to have been originally yellow in colour (‘Silou’ is Dusun for yellow. They spell it ‘Mesilou’ in some area around the kampung). Mesilau is practically the highest point accessible to automobiles; it is surrounded by hills.
(Source: Wikipedia, Sabah Tourism Board)

J&J moved in to their newly built house this year, so I took the opportunity to visit their new place. Malaysian for 34 years, first time going to East Malaysia, the Borneo island. *excitedssssss!!!*

MonkeyTips: West Malaysians visiting East Malaysia is almost like going to another country. We are given a 90 days social visit pass. Even though a passport is not compulsory, but with just a Malaysian identity card, you will be required to fill up a form at the immigration, and you must present the form when you leave the state. You’ll need to lodge a police report in the event you lose the form. Or, you can use your Malaysian passport. You’ll get your social visit pass stamped on. I happily used my passport because (1) I hate filling up forms (2) not like I can use up all my passport pages before it expires, more stamps makes my passport looks cooler :p

View from the house. How awesome.

This is a very different holiday for me. It’s like I’m there to experience retirement life. Most of the time I just spent enjoying the view around the area. Besides the awesome view, basically there are only J&J’s house, their farmer neighbour and a Buddhist meditation hall - construction in progress, and the the construction workers' Kongsi. Nothing else within walking distance. 

Oh, and my U Mobile line was super pathetic. The best internet I could get was just Whatsapp text messages, not even a 15kb image sent over Whatsapp. Just text, sometimes delayed.

J&J named these 2 dogs Hachiko and Lady. And that's the farmer neighbour's house.

There are 2 chubby cute puppies living underneath the Kongsi. Their mother is super super protective over the pups. Whenever people go near the pups, the mother will usher them to go into hiding. Apparently this is so because all her previous pups we just as cute and people kept taking them away.

There's a lot of pegaga (pennywort) growing wild all over the place. This picture was taken within the Mount Kinabalu Golf Course area. Reminds me of my aunt's nasi ulam! *slurps*.

We cook every meal. Simple but satisfying. And because the weather is cold, we get hungry very fast. So there's always tea time.

A local vegetable and tofu. I actually like the veg a lot. It's some sort of spring onion.

Baked banana with cinnamon powder and sesame seed, served with hot ginger tea. Just perfect for the cold weather.

Colourful parrotfish you'll usually see while snorkeling or diving. Fishes are very cheap and fresh from the local tamu at Kundasang. So fresh all we did was baking it with some salt, and it tastes so good.

A local delicacy bought from the tamu. They call it besou or pekasam ikan sungai, which means preseved river fish. It has bamboo shoots and chilli and it tastes sourish. 

I certainly felt very at home throughout my stay. J&J are both originally from Kulim and Penang, and so we speak the same hokkien dialect. And when we visit their friend, the couple is from Penang too! And apparently the hardware store's boss's uncle is from Sungai Petani. *LOL*

There are still no government electricity at J&J's area. Electricity is from the generator for the construction site, so we only get it a few hours in a day. There's also no treated water source. Water we use at home are from the mountain, and rain water. 

Morning dew

Morning dew x spider web

The children of Kampung Mesilau. Children who doesn't need to play with iPad to have fun and be happy. They saw me taking pictures and were so happy posing for it. The next time I go there, I'll print this picture and give it to them.  

A sea of clouds in the morning. This was around 5:30am. The sun rises very early here.

Mount Kinabalu. A very famous hiking place. It's so popular that apparently you'll need to book the adventure like 6 months in advance. I'm pretty sure I'll never get up there. The last time I hiked Bukit Jambul, took me about 40 minutes to get to the summit (some people can do it in 20 mins), and I had to sit still and rest for an hour before I could do anything else - like just stand up to view the scenery. Hiking is NOT my thing.

I left this place knowing for sure I will return again.