Intro

My head is drowning in fatigue. Do you know that feeling? When you sit down somewhere passively, affectionless and the world around you appears to pass by behind a transparent but persistent curtain of fog which seemingly takes a lot of effort to reach through.*

My computer broke down sometime during spring break- or at least it was broken when I got back. Why? No clue. But upon pressing the “switch-on-button” nothing happens! S*** x 3! I am so annoyed especially since my last back up is from the pre-HK era- and I was thinking about making a back up before leaving for Borneo and I didn’t- stupid me, I should have known better! Now I will just buy a new one (an Apple, at least they appeal in looks) and try to figure out –again- how to retrieve all my files from the old one. More money to be spent….. but I really don’t give a s*** since I want …. no: I NEED my life (my computer) back!!!!!!

Despite a return which at first actually felt like coming home: driving through the empty city at 4 am on Wednesday morning, looking at familiar surroundings and looking forward to my own bed and clean clothes…. Then started turning slightly sour (dysfunctional laptop, two assignments to hand in, two days of rain only), it feels good to be here. Borneo was a great trip- although I got a bad conscience because I basically doubled the length of my spring break and really haven’t done much during the whole term- or that is what it feels like right now. I wonder if I will continue being lazy once getting back to Helsinki- to be honest: it scares me!: where is the efficiency and the fun in the work I am doing, the fun of learning? Have I lost it –on purpose? Or is it justified to just “take a break” like I am doing now? I know, I probably think too much (about unnecessary things) and all the motivation will be there –maybe even to a greater extend than before- in a rested mind, ready to be used…. Or that is what I hope.

But what triggers thoughts like these? I would assume traveling and everything that comes with it: the hours spend idle moving from point A to B, looking out the window and watching an unknown world go after its everyday business, which one as a traveler can observe from the outside but never be completely part of without committing, settling down in that place, world, society. Meeting people, who have either fallen for the belonging (rather than the longing) and have stayed on in a place they were never supposed to- or those who long fore more and more worlds without ever finding their own, restless, constantly on the move. Traveling is exhausting, but simultaneously rewarding. And scary because at least I start to question the purpose of what I am doing and the way I live my life – not fundamentally but in its small aspects of implementation- once faced with completely contrasting realities.

Borneo. Borneo is jungle, wilderness, wildlife, little towns, some tourists (but not too many) and at the same time luring in the shadows the dream of the (absurd) pursuit of something the western world calls (material) wealth.

* Can one call this a post-travel-back-home crisis with five more weeks left in HK and too little time to see and do everything… ???

Travel Diary: Part I: Macau to Miri

Our journey started with a bit of un-luck (yes, this is how I now define things according to Chinese manner: it’s all about being lucky (or not)…. Karma!): after spending a nice day in Macau we missed our flight from there to Kuala Lumpur and consequently our connecting flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching in the west of Borneo. Long story, but let’s not even start with the details by saying: we got there eventually by buying two new flights (the downside of low-cost airlines), it hurt but we are to blame (and I never learn to check my tickets properly)…. The marble floor in the Kuala Lumpur airport was cold, but clean enough to sleep on!

We got to Kuching early on day 2 and continued from there straight to Bako National park. The first part of the trip took one hour by public bus: an experience as such. The bus, yellow, like a school bus from the 1950s, full of locals with all their shopping from the market, children, people sitting on the floors and hanging out of the open doors (and windows), went through the suburbs and stopping (randomly) at invisible bus stops. From the end stop we took a little boat along the river to the peninsula, where the park headquarters are located. Again, an amazing boat ride past river villages (wooden shacks on long poles) and fisher boats.

When going to a national park in Malaysia, one has to always make sure that registration and permits are ok- otherwise one might pay MYR 10,000 or spent up to six years in jail. No Thanks! We left our backpacks in the dorm and went for a 3-hour 7 km jungle trek- I think I have never been sweating so much in my life! The humidity and heat was killing me and my whole body was completely messed up. It turned out that after a couple of days I had pretty much adapted- knowing how much to drink and when, not sweating as much anymore or feeling short of breath- I wouldn’t have thought that it would be so easy!

We met a Dutch painter at dinner, who had come to Bako to seek inspiration for his work- understandable since the landscapes are diverse and the rainforest and mangroves are absolutely amazing. We also spotted some monkeys and wild pigs and saw a great sunset and sunrise- the next morning we started out to a trail to the waterfalls at 6 am. Passing decayed buildings and signs I could not help to think of Homo Faber (a novel by Swiss architect Max Frisch) where an engineer ends up in the rainforests of Venezuela after a plane crash and disgusted by the chaos of life in starts a journey of search for his own identity, history and self (I do not need to mention, that this is a book worth reading). The Dutchman’s remark, whether I am not ashamed for studying finance, did not really help the situation. But he had a point in making me realize how limited my knowledge is, how useless finance (or any business studies and for that matter a lot of other subjects) are in the rainforest – a place which seems green, alive, innocent, but at the same time hostile: impenetrable, dying, slowly decomposing everything that was not originally its own.

We got back to Kuching that day in the afternoon and since our planned journey would lead us through the Sultanate of Brunei, I went to find the Consulate General of Brunei Darussalam in Kuching to get a visa (only for needed for Finnish citizens and some other select nationalities) to cross this weird little patch of land. The place was way out of town and despite given opening hours closed when I got there. When finally opening, they told me they needed 3 days to process my visa application. Impossible: my flight to Miri was on Wednesday morning (it was Monday) and the next day was a national holiday (in Malaysia officially “Mohammed’s birthday”). So I got them to give me a visa the same day. Minor problem: applicants need to present an official copy of their bank statements (no problem, copy my Visa card) and a passport photo. Problem- of course I had NO passport photo! What now? 1 hour left until the consulate would close again- they kept my passport and gave me some paper slip, called me a cab driver and together we went looking for a shop that would take photos and process them asap- not an easy task. But we found one and I was back 2 minutes before the consulate closed again: I don’t know what I would have done if we would have been late (no passport, no visa, alone on the outskirts of Kuching)! Well, I got my visa… what a pain (!) and I really hoped it would be worth all the effort (it was).

Day 4 was spent recovering from the loss of sleep of the last days. We pursued more “cultural” activities and visited the Sabah and Sarawak Museum. I also went to a cultural village (basically an open air museum) and Damai Beach – that is where all the “rich” tourists sit in their smug white resorts. Kuching also has some crazy markets, loads of colorful old buildings (Carpenter St.), a small waterfront with old women selling (cultured) pearls at a good price and a castle and the governor’s palace (Astana) on the other side of the river, and great seafood! We later heard that the waterfront was apparently not safe at night since some British tourists had gotten his faced sliced up with a knife the week before or so. Well, glad I didn’t know that at the time…

We flew to Miri the next morning and wanted to continue straight to the Niah caves- the biggest cave chamber in the world. This proved tricky, since there was only one bus that day (a miracle: there is also only on main road through Sarawak) which would drop us at some crossing from where we would have to find another ride, most likely a taxi for MYR 30 one way. Going out of the tourist info, an old man with greasy hair and few teeth approached us offering us a ride there and back for MYR 100 plus waiting for us for five hours while we would visit the caves. We thought about what to do and decided - although it was completely nuts - that we would take the chance. So we got into a little van and some other friend drove us to the caves. The guy did not speak any English which is quite uncommon in Malaysia since most people speak some English (much more than the average person in HK) and are eager to try it on you. Of course I was paranoid thinking of what all could happen, but since most Malay seem really helpful and friendly, it seems so easy to trust everyone which of course is again completely naïve and foolish. No worries: we got there and back alright and it proved to have been a wise decision, since the place was completely deserted.

Biggest cave chamber in the world- it was amazing!!! It took us 4 hours to get there walking through the jungle – amazing stone cliffs around (it was all coastline a long time ago) and another hour just to walk through the cave and see the cave paintings. Only downside or upside which made it adventurous: there were no people whatsoever! Imagine going through the jungle and into a cave with only millions of bats on the ceiling (and a lot of bat shit on the floor), with only one flashlight and no one around, darkness… only the remains of archeological excavations of the 1950s, everything in place as if the archeologists had just left the site; it feels as if time would stand still. We met two Americans on our way, but otherwise there was nobody. And the facilities at the park entrance as well as the accommodation was probably built for 100 people or so – a deserted tourist attraction once developed but never discovered… a sensation which proved to be the first but not the last of its kind: there are a lot of such places in Malaysia, i.e. there must have been a lot of money flowing into developing tourism at some point, but the tourists never came and the places were just left there, forgotten and slowly rotting in the vast forests. It was a completely crazy experience (and that is a phrase I repeated almost every day after that day)!

Trust your gut feeling. I guess that is the most important motto for traveling, or so it seems. We were recommended a hostel in the centre of Miri by the tourist information called Fairland Inn. We were dropped off there and went to check it out. It seemed clean but just didn’t feel right. I don’t know if it was the old Chinese guy sitting at the reception in front of the TV without a shirt, the atmosphere…. We went to another hostel I had found on hostelworld.com (often reliable in its recommendations, but of course not infallible in all cases) – lucky us (and twice in one day)! The owner, a guy who married a woman from the tribes and stayed in Miri, told us the place was basically a part-time brothel- the phenomenon being a common “problem” for a pass-through provincial town like Miri.

Anyways, this guy was the best thing that could have happened to us: he hooked us up with a Dutch guy also staying at the hostel and we went for a really good dinner with traditional regional food (yam, seafood, deer). Later we all met up in a bar with his crazy lawyer-friend, who filled us in on small town life in Malaysia, courtroom behavior of defendants and the Sarawak justice system: it all seems to be pretty relaxed and attorneys can get drunk and drive home (like that night) cause they know all the cops. Of course there is a darker side to things as well: Malaysian politics and the palm oil plantations, oil drilling and how cameras for foreign environmental activist organizations documenting the destruction of the rainforests are smuggled into the country and how then some activists suddenly go missing…

We got an offer for a ride to Brunei the next day which we gladly accepted: although the distance to Brunei is -again like the trip to the Niah caves- nothing in European dimensions, roads are often in a bad condition (as a matter of fact there is only one highway in Sarawak) and public transport impossible (one bus with 5 changeovers per day, miss one and you are stranded at the border or some junction in the middle of nowhere). After a morning in the markets of Miri (trying different nuts, dragon fruit, pomelos, pink apples, plums…), we visited the Petroleum Museum on Canada Hill (first drilling tower in Sarawak) which had been opened the week before. Shell bought the rights to drilling for oil (and selling petrol) in the whole province for “an apple and an egg” (as one would say in German) - for literally nothing- around the turn of the century and has since made A LOT of money – this is all documented in company friendly propaganda in the brand new Shell-sponsored museum – again a place without people (this time I understand though).

We crossed the border into Brunei in the afternoon and visited the “Billionth barrel of oil” monument erected in 1991. Brunei is like a little Switzerland of some sort: no income tax, free healthcare, sports facilities (gyms, aerobics…) and education: the government subsidizes the purchase of cars and houses. The liter petrol costs 53 Brunei cents (0.26 Euro cents). The only downside: it’s all oil money and the oil is predicted to run out in 2030. Oops.*

The mosque was amazing, although we could only visit the grounds around it (it was Friday), as is the contract to the shabby water villages which are easily reachable by water taxi. Bus stops are on piers in blue color - the stairs leading down to the water are pretty slippery - in the evening filled with women in headscarves and long pastel colored robes waving in the wind. Tourists are rare although there is a whole suburb with foreign oil workers (“Shell village”), for whom alcohol is smuggled into the country (there seems to be a lively black market). We were content with good Chinese food, decent coffee and ice-cream….

* Otherwise the country is a Sultanate since 1400-something which used to include Borneo and part of the Philippines, crumbling to its tiny size gradually by ceding parts to the to-be self-declared white rajah or Sarawak, James Brooke, Britain and others. The country is currently ruled by Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, but the royal family is more known of the money laundering/ other business activities of the crown prince who e.g. in 1998 lost about $ 18 billion.

Part II: Kota Kinabalu

Waking up after one night in a pretty decent hotel (first one so far), we took a taxi to Mouro in the morning – we were supposed to go by bus (since we are supposed to be students traveling on a low budget and yes, Malaysia is cheap, but the provinces Sarawak and Sabah as well as Brunei are expensive compared to Thailand or other countries in SEA… and once you take the easy way, you start spending money on such things more and more….) but one of the Brits overslept…. I hate that! Instead we got to talk to a crazy taxi driver who organizes Salsa parties and ball room dancing classes for the Chinese population in Brunei (and in addition smuggles booze for the parties) on the way…. Life seems – however strict the official regulations – pretty much the same as anywhere else!

BSB to Labuan to KK

We made the ferry to Labuan – the terminal cannot be described! We basically walked through some container- buildings and through fenced of “corridors” onto open ferry piers (you could have chosen any boat – a military coast guard boat or something else…). The customs was a little booth giving us a stamp on our tickets. Well, we got to Labuan after one hour or so. Labuan is a little island once belonging to Brunei, then handed over to the British in the 1970s (?) and today a duty free haven – a bit like the Aland isles but much cheaper and of course the business is much more extensive than in Finland, i.e. most of the black market alcohol in Malaysia and Brunei comes from Labuan. The whole island consists of literally one tax free shop next to the other. I bought a Ritter sport chocolate bar (my favorite chocolate), but unfortunately it had worms inside…. What a pity!

After a couple of hours (and some good roti with egg) later, we got into the next ferry and after watching the new King Kong movie (pirated version) arrived in Kota Kinabalu (KK) late in the afternoon. We wanted to check out our accommodation for Mt. Kinabalu right away, but of course all tour agencies were closed (I just then realized that it was Easter Friday…. No sense of time! Nice that they celebrate Christian holidays though!). We found a nice hostel (North Borneo Cabin, Jl. Gaya) and a great Italian restaurant (Little Italy) – the best pizza I have had for a very, very long time!!! And great waiters, who got really confused about us playing cards to bridge the time before dessert (this upon the initiative of the British, of course I do not even know how to play…) since I told them that the looser would have to pay the bill (of course me) and we were doing this every evening…. They found that incredibly funny (not me though).

It took us half a day to get our accommodation for climbing the mountain settled and paid – I got really upset about that one…. Yeah yeah, I know, it is about the communication difficulties, but sometimes it is just sooo much easier to just get mad and think that the other people are just plain stupid because they do not get you at all! Fortunately I had Sarah to calm me down a bit; otherwise I would have just started screaming at anyone! Well, in the end we finally got a place for Tuesday – you have to have accommodation to climb- so it was clear we had a couple of spare days in KK. I had some homework to do; we went to Manukan Island (part of Abdul Rahman National Park) but after burning so badly on Hainan, I skipped the snorkeling (which was apparently amazing). There was a Sunday market, and although markets are markets, it is always fun to walk through and look around- one will always find something new. The specialties of this market were live turtles, sarongs and all kinds of gardening tools and construction equipment. An interesting mixture! Monday we went rafting on the Padas River which is three hours inland from KK. Except for the hot guides, swimming in the river and the train ride (from Beaufort to Tenom) were absolutely gorgeous! The train – in the Lonely Planet described as “having been known to derail, leading to fatalities”- is the only train on Borneo: the carts and locomotive were second hand from Britain, brought to Malaysia in the 1950s. This makes me think they are 2nd world war era (that is how they looked like). The track is also from the 50s and has not been renewed since, because the year engravings are still present on the bolts etc. on the track. So you can just imagine the ride- hold on and try not to fall off (some carts don’t have any walls (or roof) - they are just an iron platform on wheels (and OF COURSE we had to take that one to make the experiment worth while!)… and you drive through the jungle, see little wooden houses, gardens, chicken on the side, schools, children waving out of windows… the whole life in the countryside (simple, poor, scary in its simplicity… but people are genuinely happy)…. from time to time water dropping on you as the locomotive pushes tree branches wet from the last rain out of the way (the track is partly grown shut).

The mountain

… Mt. Kinabalu (4095m), highest peak in South East Asia, the definite highlight of the trip!!! We were picked up at 7 am from the centre of KK and driven to the national park headquarters. After registration, getting the park permits and identification tags (which you have to wear around your neck at all times) as well as being lectured on all the dangers etc. etc. we started the climb to Laban Rata, the base camp, at noon. It is only 6 km there but goes up 2 km to a bit above 3000m; the path is thus relatively steep and has a lot of huge steps which strain the muscles in the legs a lot. Seeing one guy being carried down in a stretcher (he broke his leg) was not very encouraging. It’s hot and humid in the valley (although we were lucky and had no rain on neither day of the climb our clothes were soaking wet), but as temperatures drop and the appearance of the forest changes, the walking gets more comfortable – at the same time oxygen gets scarce and I really started to notice that at 3000m (which concerned me quite a bit since I knew I had another kilometer to go up). It was four of us in the group with our guide following in the behind us- we tried to swap the lead and keep a constant not too fast pace, which worked out pretty well so that we got to the base camp at 4:30 pm. I was pretty exhausted (“mind over body”) after that which might be the fact that my stamina and general physical condition are pretty crappy. Also, we both had a lot of food (cookies!) and water (milo, juice) to carry (you can hire someone to carry your stuff, but come on that’s not the REAL thing!) – in retrospective I am very glad I brought all of that! It gets cold and you need to change clothes and hydrate your body massively after the first part of the climb. We gave half of the food to the two Swedish girls we were climbing with: they were not prepared at all!
After a couple of hours of rest, we started climbing again at 3 am – I had two shirts and a fleece jacket, scarf around my head and gloves on and was freezing! Right above Laban Rata, there is only rock surface. You hold on to ropes with one hand and pull yourself up, have the flashlight in the other (although the brightness of the moon was pretty sufficient). I was ok at first, but after some time the combination of no sleep, low temperatures, a cold wind and lack of oxygen took their toll – I really had to focus to make myself walk, not sit down, not sleep. The head gets very light the higher you get, the fingers prickle, the heart beats like crazy although you are not moving at all. I walked with our guide a bit aside from the path since it is at times easier and talked to him to keep awake – the guy is 41 and does the trip 2-3 times a week! I don’t get it! Also they have a competition every year and the fastest people run up and down in just below 3 hours! That is absolutely crazy!
Well, I got to the top just before sunrise as planned- Sarah was a bit faster and was waiting there for me. It was the clearest sky to see the stars and the best sunrise (a even better than the sunset the night before) I have ever seen. Standing on top of (that part of) the world, silence and massive rock formations around you.

Seeing “the light”, you start looking back and thinking s**** how did I get up here and how do I get down??? It was easier than I had thought, although everyone had warned me on how though it would be on the knees – we “hopped” from stone to stone thinking of how much fun it is…. But caution: one girl in front of me broke her ankle- there are a million ways of how you can step wrong (and I guess I was just lucky). We made it back to the base camp in 1.5 hours (3 hours up) and down to the park headquarters in another 3 hours, running the last 1 km (‘cause the legs hurt sooo much). It was great… although already going down you forget about how exhausted you are and how though it was to get up! I want to go again!!!! (next time the Kilimanjaro *smile*)

Reward: cold diet coke….

Part III: Peninsula Malaysia

To shortly conclude my travel diary (since I know, if I do not do it now, I will never to it).

Getting down from the mountain I took a bus to Sepilok the same afternoon. Taking a bus means standing at an unmarked crossroad, no bus stop in sight and waving at every approaching bus in the hope it will stop and take you in the right direction.

After an hour of waiting and some interesting bus stop conversations, I (finally) got a bus: old and covered with on the inside with huge fan posters of western boy bands from the 90s (the driver played 90s hip hop so I did not have to listen to too much kitschy music). Weird to be on my own! The journey took 4 hours, all through vast palm oil plantations (how can an originally beautiful rainforest-landscape be mutilated like that? And all because of the MONEY?), I was dropped off at another crossroad tired and with very stiff legs. 3km from the road to the Orang Utan centre and the sun was setting, so I just started walking but fortunately got a ride halfway on the road.

At the centre I bumped into Emily who had surprisingly stayed on for another day. The hostel was a bit run down- all dark wooden huts and rooms, wet and smelling of humidity. I got a dorm room for myself and just went to sleep. In the morning I got up early (6 am) and went to the Orang Utan centre, a government sponsored institute that tries to rehabilitate orphaned Orang Utans found on plantations or in the homes of locals, who keep them as pets, and make them fit for life in the jungle. Seeing these animals appearing from the forest along ropes to feeding platforms surrounded by tourists armed with cameras was very sad. Were we, the curious intruders, the audience or the attraction as such?

I decided not to stay at Sepilok but to take another bus to Sandakan, the next town further south, in the afternoon. It was a weird place: very provincial, religious, a bit dodgy. I met a French girl I had seen on the mountain and we had dinner together. The next morning I flew onwards through Kota Kinabalu (and caught a glimpse of the mountain from the plane) to Kuala Lumpur. Of course I was again far too early at the airport, and since people usually show up 10 minutes before departure (although 1 hour is the regular time), I was able to take an earlier plane than planned.

I arrived in KL in the early afternoon and took a (in retrospective far too expensive) hotel in Chinatown. The city is seen in half a day: I walked around for 5 hours, through Chinatown, Little India, saw the Petronas (Twin) Towers, the Golden Triangle (financial centre) and managed to buy a bus ticket and go shopping. The next morning I left early for the Cameron Highlands – the bus ride was again crazy (the drivers are crazy, overtaking all the time and driving through the curves as if they were not there, although half the bus seems to be hanging over the cliff). I took a tour through the tea plantations and saw some tea factories- the only reason for me coming there and the only worthwhile one! Other attractions of this area are low temperatures (how nice to be cold), butterfly, bee and strawberry farms/plantations, which impressed the Chinese tourists, but not really me (strawberries, so what? A rarity in some parts of Asia though…). Interestingly, there are a lot of ethnic Indians living in the area (maybe they came there as workers on the tea plantations originally) so the food is great! Otherwise, Tanah Rata, the main town in the area, was pretty dead (maybe cause it was low season) and so I spent the evening with one (Indian) guy from Singapore and one Dutch adventurer playing pool in the only pub (bar) in town.

The next morning I continued on to Taman Negara, a huge national park with diverse and old rainforests, north-east of KL. I took a minibus and met a girl from Vienna and a again another Dutch guy who were traveling together to the same place with me as well as a German guy who had grown up in the same village as I (???) but was headed north. We were dropped at Gua Masang, from where we took a train (better than the one on Borneo: the train carts had roofs and chairs) to Jerantut. I sat on the floor and tried to read and not fall asleep, which did not quite work. It was hot, I was tired of traveling, everything. I guess a month is the maximum I can do the traveling- around- thing: one never gets to use one’s brain except for trying to not get robbed, find some place to eat and to sleep. Think about where to go next. It is very simple but tiring. Always the same thing and as you see more, the expectations rise and nothing is easily great anymore- a shame and in a way un-just wit regards to the places visited (is it their fault that you decided not to go there first but somewhere else instead?). What is enough experiencing and (when) do you get immune to it? When is the right time to go home?

Anyways, from Jerantut, we continued to Kuala Tahan, the biggest village in the national park. Getting there, I was completely broke, and no ATM would accept my debit card (Visa card was maxed out ages ago). Hmmm… found one finally and was sooo happy to have MONEY! I had forgotten what a feeling of security money gives you…

We found a nice, very colorful guesthouse on the outskirts of the village – only downside: it was next to the town mosque and not only are people quite religious in the countryside and there are much more Moslems living on the peninsula than on Borneo (over 15% Christians and 30% tribal (nature) religions) but also a former president had just died so we woke up every couple of hours during the night for the prayer call. The national park was a mud hole- it had been raining for days- with plenty of mosquitoes and leaches, long black small creatures looking like small branches without a head or any other shape of arm or leg, waiting on the ground, in the water, everywhere (!) to jump onto you, bite into your skin and suck your blood! I got 4 in my shoes and a couple more on my pants but fortunately someone had toothpaste which I rubbed on it, so it let go and I could get it off without incurring an open wound. Other methods include burning it with a cigarette or lighter… The only highlight was decent food on floating restaurants on the river, but the locals (tribal people) seemed more like alcohol-dependant slaves of the heavily sponsored tourist industry. Huge expectations and unfulfilled hopes, but no real results. What a disappointment this must have been. We managed to walk through the forest for a couple of hours (but Bako was better!) and go through a canopy walk, high up in the tree tops, but after that the feeling of unpleasantness took over! No more rainforest!!!! We spent the rest of the day reading and talking: I met 3 (!!!) Finns and we had dinner together- sometimes I am amazed of how blindly people can walk through other countries, how naïve, how ignorant they are. Or maybe it has to do with experience… anyways, we had some interesting conversations.

The next day, I left for KL by riverboat; once there walked around Merdeka square and the central market and then took a bus to the airport. I got to Macau that night at 2:30 am and managed to get the 3 am ferry to HK – even though I shared a cab with 3 Chinese grandmothers who were a bit slow…. Driving through the deserted city I felt like… coming home…

Des impressions

Pictures are to follow as soon as I get them uploaded somewhere... or even better: as soon as I have a new laptop..... Sunset on Mount Kinabalu- this photo was taken from the basecamp, Laban Rata, on the evening bevor we climbed the peak.


View down towards the north on the climb down.
(Just after the) Sunrise.

News blackout

Due to me being in Malaysia from April 8th to April 25th, I will (as you might have noticed) not be writing. No time, no internet (sometimes yes), too many thoughts (in my head). Update follows as soon as I am back in HK!!!