Day 2 – A Fun 2-Hour Ride Out of Kota Kinabalu!

The next day!!!

We planned to head out of Kota Kinabalu to visit one of the tourist spots, Pyramid Hills. But before that, since it’s going to be quite a long trip—around 100 km and more than 2 hours on the road—we decided to grab some breakfast first at Guan's. The menu here has lots of options, and the prices are still pretty standard for Malaysia.

I wasn’t really in the mood for rice, so I went for this instead. It’s kinda like spaghetti noodles, but way thicker! 😅

Around 9 AM, we finally set off to our destination!

The road was super scenic and full of twists and turns—kinda like the drive from Bandung to Tasikmalaya through Garut, haha!

After about 2 hours and 30 minutes on the road, we finally arrived at our destination. When you get there, it looks just like a house—that’s actually where you register and buy the tickets. The prices are shown in the photo below.

After paying and signing the visitor list, we got ready to climb up Pyramid Hill. It all started with these tire steps like this one!

I thought we had reached the top, but turns out it was only the beginning, haha!

After the “Start” sign, the stairs changed. This time, it was just a dirt hill carved into steps.

When we reached the first stop, the view was already pretty nice!! And yes, we were super tired!! But looking up at the next stairs, it felt like the view up there would be even better. So we decided to keep climbing.

We kept saying the same thing at every stop because the uphill climb was exhausting!!

Until finally, we saw an end to the trail. “Could that be the last stop?”

We kept going on this journey!! The narrow trail was pretty dangerous, with steep cliffs on both sides.

At first, we thought we’d just stop at the first checkpoint and not go any further. But with a bit of determination, we finally made it all the way to the top.

In total, the climb took us about 45 minutes (with plenty of breaks along the way).

The view from up here was absolutely stunning. You could see all the mountains, hills, roads, and little houses spread out below.

Totally worth coming here! But in my opinion, it’s even better to come early in the morning to catch the sunrise and enjoy the beautiful weather.

Not long after, we had to rush down because it suddenly started pouring rain! It would’ve been dangerous to stay up there since the trail gets muddy and slippery when it rains.

Here, we were literally running down the trail!

The scary part wasn’t just running down the hill. On the way back to Kota Kinabalu, the road was hit with heavy rain and super thick fog. Originally, after Pyramid Hills we planned to visit another nature spot, but we had to cancel because of the bad weather.

It took us around 3 hours to get back to Kota Kinabalu and, thank God, we finally made it. Everyone was starving, so we went to a restaurant serving Indonesian food— Ayam Penyet Surabaya. The chicken was dry-style but super huge!!! And the sambal was so good and spicy, just perfect. The best part? The price was really affordable, only about $3.

After that meal, we decided to just head home since we were totally exhausted. Time to relax and take it easy.

The next day, I chose to move to a hotel near the airport, since in a few days I’d be continuing my trip to the next country. Meanwhile, my friend had to fly back to Indonesia that very night.

I wonder what kind of fun awaits me alone in Kota Kinabalu tomorrow… hmmm.

To be continued . . . .