So There I Was…

The week in Borneo was awesome! We really had a great time and packed a lot of stuff into the few days we were there. Our base was Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. (Sabah is one of the two states in Borneo Malaysia.) Our first order of business on Monday morning was to sort out accommodations for Mt. Kinabalu National Park and our climb up the mountain. Aside from going to Mt. K, we also wanted to go to Poring Hot Springs, and we decided to go to Poring first so we could do the canopy walk there before climbing the mountain the next day. So we booked Monday night at Poring and booked a night on the mountain for Tuesday night. In order to get to Poring, we had to get a bus from Kota Kinabalu up to the National Park and then hire a driver to take us to Poring. By the time we got everything sorted we had just enough time to pick up some groceries, check out of the hotel, and catch a cab to the bus station. Upon arriving at the bus station, we were immediately approached by the touts wanting to take us to the mountain. One guy offered to take us in his taxi for $200 MYR, or about $55 USD. However, we were finally able to find a bus service that would take us there for $10 MYR each. The bus ride took about an hour and a half and was pretty comfortable considering the bumpy roads. Thankfully the bus had A/C, and Kristen and I had the exit row so we had a lot of room to stretch out our legs. The TV on the bus was playing some Chinese war movie, which was pretty entertaining even though I couldn’t understand a single word being said.

We arrived at the National Park around 2:00 PM, and after checking out what we needed to know for the climb the next day, we found a driver to take us up to Poring. Poring Hot Springs has several sulfur hot springs that turned out to be nothing really special. Most of the springs were actually nothing more than large tile tubs with taps so you could fill them with water from the springs. However, aside from the springs there were a lot of other things to do there, with a butterfly reserve, the canopy walk, a bat cave, and a couple of waterfalls. Poring is definitely in the jungle. While we were there, we saw a praying mantis, lizards, cockroaches, and beetles. And that was just in our hotel room. 🙂

Our main reason for going to Poring was for the canopy walk, and it didn’t disappoint. After hiking up into the hills for about 15 minutes, we came to a platform where the canopy walk was suspended in the tops of the trees. Each walkway was about 40 or 50 meters long, and consisted of a long, thin plank held up by a net and some ropes. The walkways would swing slightly from side to side and were bouncy as well. At the highest point we were 42 meters, or about 130 feet above ground. The first few minutes were a little nerve-wracking, but after we got used to it we were bouncing around like kindergarteners on a sugar high.

After doing the canopy walk and checking out a nearby waterfall, we went for a quick dip in the swimming pool, which was a welcome relief from the heat and humidity. For dinner, we went to the restaurant, which was appropriately called The Rainforest. It was a small and cozy place tucked into the forest, and the food was quite good. It was an amazing and beautiful setting, and it felt good to relax knowing we had a full two days of hiking ahead of us.

Fishheads in KK; KK Sunset; Poring Canopy Walk; Jungle Creatures

Tuesday morning we got up bright and early for our ride back to park headquarters. We arrived at the park around 8:00 AM and got ready for our climb. We checked our excess luggage into storage for the next two days, paid for our climbing permit and guide, and then had a quick breakfast before setting off. We met our guide at 9:30 AM and set off for the trailhead at Timpohon Gate. We only had 6 Km (3.75 miles) to hike to get to the huts, and I was pretty confident that we would make it in well under the six hours that was planned for. I had heard that the trail was pretty well maintained and that there were a lot of steps and stairs to climb. Climbing steps is actually a lot harder than hiking an inclined trail, so I was prepared for some hard climbing. But these were no ordinary steps and it soon became evident that I was about to have my ass kicked. Most of these steps were a good 12-14 inches high, with some coming up as high as my knees. After the first couple of kilometers, there were points when I could barely lift my foot high enough to reach the next step. Think of the stairclimber at the gym, cover it in dirt and rocks, and add a 20lb pack to your back. Then multiply that by ten and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what this trail was like. But we weren’t about to back down from the challenge, and we reached the huts in just over four hours. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon, and we had plenty of time to eat and rest before heading off for the summit the next morning. We agreed to meet our guide again at 3:00 AM for hike to the summit.

When I first started planning this climb, it had taken me some time to get used to the idea of sleeping in a furnished hut on the mountain. And this “hut” turned out to be more of a full-blown lodge. There we were, on the side of a mountain at almost 11,000 ft, and there were streetlights, payphones, hot water, a restaurant, and a television. The guides all seemed to especially like watching the Pussycat Dolls on MTV. It was all a little too weird for me. So much for roughing it. I was nice to get a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed though. However, 2:00 AM came pretty quick, and I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed and start hiking again. But we wanted to make it to the summit in time for the sunrise, so I eventually crawled out from under the covers and made my way down to the lodge for breakfast. Unfortunately, there were two main huts on the mountain, and I was in the higher one, about 400 meters uphill from the main lodge. So to go back and forth between my room and the restaurant for dinner and breakfast meant hiking up and down the hill each time. As if I wasn’t doing enough climbing already.

We met our guide at 3:00 AM and started up the hill to the summit. It was another 2.5 Km to the summit, and of course the first thing we were met with were more stairs. It got to the point where the only way I could do it was to break the steps up into chunks. I would climb and count 15 steps at a time, which made the climbing seem more manageable, and also helped take my mind off the pain. 🙂 Eventually we ran out of steps and had to climb and traverse over the smooth rock surface, with ropes to guide our way. About 5:00 AM we could see the sun just barely start to show over the top of the hill, and we still had about 500 meters to climb. The last push up the hill was a tough scramble over the rocks, and we managed to make it to the top just in time to see the sun break over the horizon. It was an amazing view, and amazing feeling to have finally made it to the top. We stayed at the top for almost an hour, waiting for daylight to fully break before starting our descent. While there we all congratulated each other, took lots of photographs, and made friends with some of the other climbers. I met one girl in particular, Emily, who just happened to be living in Melbourne and had a brother living in Portland, Oregon. She had also mentioned to Kristen that she was thinking about doing Kilimanjaro, and since I’ll be doing that climb in a couple of months we struck up a conversation and hiked together most of the way down. It was only about an hour and a half descent back to the lodge where we picked up the rest of our gear and rested a bit before heading the rest of the way down.

The hike down from the lodge took about 2 1/2 hours, and this time I was actually thankful for the steps. Often times hiking downhill is harder that hiking uphill, but the steps were actually easier to hike down because of the level surfaces and were easier on the knees. (I imagine the Advil and Tiger Balm helped too.) We arrived back at the park headquarters about 11:15 AM, and had some time to stretch out and rest a bit before catching a ride back into Kota Kinabalu.

Mt. Kinabalu; Kristen and I with our Guide; Steps, steps, and more steps

Gunting Lagadan Hut; The Summit, Mt. K Sunrise

We weren’t exactly sure what we were going to do once we got back to KK, but we knew we wanted to chill out on the beach for a day or two after being in the jungle and on the mountain. There are a lot of options in Sabah and we had been considering catching a quick flight over to the eastern side of Sabah to see the Orangutan park and check out some of the dive spots we’d heard about. We stopped in at one of the hostels in KK, the Trekkers Lodge, since most hostels have good information on the activities and trips available in the area. The Trekkers Lodge turned out to be a good choice because their travel guy was a westerner who spoke English and we were able to get a lot of great information from him. However, it also ended up making our decision even more difficult because we now had even more options to choose from, including a day trip to see the proboscis monkeys, going whitewater rafting, or just catching a ferry to the nearby islands.

Eventually we decided that all we really wanted to do was lie around on the beach for a couple of days. So we booked a couple of nights at the Manukan Island Resort, which turned out to be a great idea. We got 2 nights in a beachside “chalet” with transport to and from the island for only $116 MYR each, or about $32 USD each. We stayed in KK at the Trekkers Lodge that night, and caught the ferry over to the island the next morning. After arriving and checking in, we wandered over to the beach and were approached by another tout pitching a variety of watersports. Snorkeling, jet skis, wakeboarding and water-skiing, kayaking… they had it all. We decided that we wanted to give parasailing a try, and at only about $22 USD we couldn’t pass it up. We made arrangements to go that afternoon at 3:00, and then headed off for some lunch and a quick snooze on the beach.

We were lucky that there was a nice spot of beach just outside our chalet and away from the main beach on the other side of the jetty. We were able to catch some sun there and do a little bit of swimming. The water was bathwater warm and made for good swimming. Unfortunately though, the otherwise beautiful beach was covered with trash and other debris that had washed up with the tide. It was really disappointing to see how much garbage there was at the water’s edge. The resort staff clean and rake the beaches every morning, but more trash washes up everyday, probably coming from the mainland. At about 2:45 we made our way over to the jetty to meet our parasailing guide. From the jetty we boarded a boat that took us out into the harbor where we boarded another larger boat that had the parasailing rig. There were only four of us on that load, and Kristen and I were first to go, pairing up for a tandem ride. Although the views were great, parasailing actually turned out to be kind of boring, especially for a couple of old skydivers like Kristen and myself. But we had fun swinging around in the harness and just acting silly. We thought quite seriously about trying to flip ourselves upside down, but thought better of it since the harnesses weren’t very snug and the water was a long way down.

After parasailing we spent the rest of the day just lounging around and later that evening we walked out to the tip of the island to see the sunset. It was quite cloudy that evening, and the clouds made some spectacular silhouettes against the colors of the setting sun. We managed to get a few good pictures and then find our way back to the chalet in the dark. It wasn’t too dark out, thanks to the nearly full moon, but dark enough that the fireflies were visible on the walk back. Kristen was fascinated by the fireflies, and kept trying to take pictures of them, which turned out to be harder than it looked.

After the sunset we went to have dinner at the restaurant. While we were ordering our drinks at the bar we noticed that the staff appeared to be getting ready for a large party of some sort. The bartender told us that the Queen of Malaysia was coming to the island the next day. We thought that was pretty cool, and joked about crashing her party.

The next morning after breakfast Kristen and I went to see about hopping over to one of the nearby islands. There were four other islands all a short boat ride away, but it turned out that the one we were most interested in was no longer part of Sabah Parks and the ferry operators couldn’t take us over there. However, as luck would have it, while we were out on the jetty the queen’s boat arrived and we got to watch as the resort staff welcomed her onto the island. She was quite casual, and you wouldn’t have known she was the queen if it wasn’t for the big bouquet of flowers she was presented with, and the guy following her around with an umbrella to protect her from the sun.

We finally decided against island hopping and instead spent almost the entire next day lying on the beach. We rented snorkels, masks, and fins, and I spent most of the day chasing the fish around the coral reefs just off the beach. I couldn’t believe how many fish there were out in the reefs, in all shapes, sizes, and colors. It was so amazing, and I’m now seriously thinking about getting dive certified so I can do more than just swim around on the surface. I had an awesome time snorkeling, and the only regret was that I forgot to put sunscreen on my back. As you can imagine, after three hours of swimming face down in the ocean I had quite a nice burn. Thankfully the island shop stocked aloe vera gel.

The next morning it was time to leave the island, and we went out to catch our ferry back to the island. We were scheduled to leave at 10:30, but it turned out that the ferry operator had mixed up his schedule and there was no boat waiting for us. So he radioed back to the mainland and had a speedboat come and pick us up. It was by no means a fancy boat, maybe only a 19 footer or so, and I was a little leery of riding this thing across the open ocean. The wind had picked up considerably over the last couple of days so the ride wasn’t exactly smooth. But the boat turned out to be quite seaworthy, and the driver even offered to let Kristen and I take a turn at driving. I declined, since I was more worried about making sure my backpack didn’t bounce overboard, but Kristen jumped right into the drivers seat and went full throttle. It was a blast, and we were back to the mainland in no time.

Parasailing; Beach by the Chalet; The Queen’s Arrival; Manukan’s Main Beach; Ready to Snorkel

It was now Saturday, and our plan for the rest of the weekend was to hire a car and drive up to the Tip of Borneo to see a sunset concert put on by the Kota Kinabalu Symphony Orchestra. The symphony was conducted by Yap Ling, a colleague of my friend Kevin that I had just visited in New Zealand. This annual event was quite a production, and this year’s concert was supposed to be extra special given the full moon that night. It took us a little over three hours to get to Kudat and check into our hotel, then drive the rest of the way up to the tip for the concert. We arrived to an overflow crowd, and the concert was standing room only. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t being cooperative that evening and it was incredibly windy and cloudy. So we couldn’t really hear the concert very well given that the wind was howling into the microphones, and the clouds obscured both the sunset and the full moon. But how often do you get to hear a symphony concert on a cliff overlooking the ocean at night? It was still a very good concert, and I made a point to and introduce myself to Ling and say hi after the concert was over.

After the show we drove back to Kudat, hit a market for dinner and then went down to the waterfront to walk around. There was a big lightning storm happening a couple miles off the coast, so grabbed a couple of beers from one of the market vendors and watched the storm for a while. Further down the waterfront a bunch of guys had set up a karaoke machine and were singing songs, mostly in Chinese. Given that karaoke is one of my guilty pleasures, I eventually walked over to ask them if they had any songs in English. They smiled and gave me a book, pointing out the English songs. Their choices were somewhat limited, so all I had to choose from were the Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, and a handful of slow rock hits. I narrowed it down to either Eric Clapton or Metallica, and eventually got up to sing “Knockin on Heavens Door.” It seemed like a safe choice, and actually went pretty well, especially considering the music ended up being more like the Guns and Roses version and not the Eric Clapton version. But the group that was there ate it up, and really got a kick out of hearing the American guy sing. It’s true that music is a universal language, and We all hung out listening to everyone sing until it finally started to rain and they had to pack it in.

The next morning we got up early for the drive back to KK. Our flights weren’t scheduled until 6:00 that evening, but we wanted to take our time getting back so that we could see some of the sights. The road from KK to Kudat passed through lots of small villages, markets, and a coconut grove, with a few tourist attractions to boot. We stopped at one of the attractions, a rungus longhouse, which was basically just a large bunkhouse built on stilts. They had some handmade crafts for sale and we bought a couple of items before heading off again. We had been told that Kota Belud had a very large market on Sundays, so we made a point of stopping there. We were all pretty tired of being in the car together at that point, so we each headed off to explore the town on our own, agreeing to meet back at the car at 2:00. I wandered around for a while looking for a toilet and a bite to eat, and eventually wandered over to a large gymnasium we had passed on the way in. I had been drawn to the place by the large number of people outside, several of which were wearing elaborate costumes. It turned out that the Tadau Kaamatan, or Harvest Festival, was happening in Kota Belud that day, and the ceremonies were about to start. The Harvest Festival is a month long celebration that happens throughout Sabah every May. Each district in Sabah holds their own celebration, culminating in a statwide celebration at the end of the month. I wandered up to the door and was immediately approached by a gentleman asking where I was from. I told him I was from America, and he smiled and took me by the arm and led me inside. He introduced me to another man inside, and they proceeded to tell me about the festival and invited me to stay and sit with them. I told them I had to go find my friends but that I would be back. I went and left a note on the car for the others and returned back to the festival to find Kristen outside. So we went back in together and were ushered to some seats up front. When the festivities finally started, the first thing to happen was a processional during which a couple of very important looking men led the rest of the group up to the front row of seats. One of these men was stopping to shake hands with everyone, and he actually stopped and said a few words to us. He asked us our names and where we were from, and welcomed us to the festival. Once the processional was over, these two men both got up to make speeches, which were spoken in Chinese so we couldn’t understand what was being said. However, toward the end of his speech, the man who had stopped and talked with us started speaking in English, and pointed us out to the crowd and asked us to stand up and be welcomed. It was quite an honor. After the speeches some traditional dances and songs were performed. The remainder of the event was dedicated to the selection of Kota Belud’s representative for the Unduk Ngadau, or Harvest Queen. Unfortunately we had to leave at that point, as we had already stayed an hour and a half longer than we intended, and we needed to get to the airport for our flight.

Kota Kinabalu Symphony Orchestra; Kota Belud Harvest Festival

We hauled ass out of Kota Belud and finally got to the airport about an hour before our flight was to leave. Kristen and I both had some problems with our tickets, and although she eventually made it onto the flight, I instead opted to stay in KK one more night and sort it out in the morning. As it turned out, I needed to have an either an onward or return ticket out of Taiwan before they would let me into the country since I didn’t have a visa for Taiwan. I had thought I would be allowed to stay for 30 days as long as I had a valid U.S. passport, but this wasn’t the case. The only problem was I didn’t know where I wanted to go next and didn’t know what flights were available. I didn’t want to buy a ticket at the airport and have to pay top dollar, so instead I changed my flight to the next day and went back to the Trekkers Lodge for another night. It was actually nice to have one more day to relax in KK and I got my tickets sorted out without any problems. I caught my flight to Taipei on Monday night, and arrived around 9:30 PM. I caught a bus to Taichung where I was met by Kristen, and I’m now shacking up at her place for a week or so before heading west to Thailand, India, and Bahrain.

(BTW, I’ve got tons more pictures from Borneo and Mt. Kinabalu that I’ll post to my website soon. I’ll post a notice when they’re up.)

Tags: Borneo, Mt. Kinabalu, Photos, Sabah, Travel, Tag Index

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Photos, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.