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….
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….
posted by Crazy Night Rider at 9:44 AM
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