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Articles Tagged ‘kota kinabalu’

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Hiking Mt Kinabalu

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

Hiking Mt Kinabalu was the most hiking Paula and I have done in a 24 hour period… 17.4KM to an altitude of 4,100M and back. It starts with a fairly steep 6KM climb to the Laban Rata resthouse. This took us about 4 and a half hours. We relaxed, met a Swiss guy and chatted at the resthouse (altitude ~3600M). Tired and modestly fed by the mediocre quality food, we (and most of the night’s residents) turned out the lights for bed at 7:30pm.

At 2AM, we’re up again and ready to push to reach the summit by sunrise. It’s only 2.7KM to the summit from the resthouse, but with the altitude, cold, and wind, it still takes nearly 2 and a half hours. When we finally arrive, we stop and look around at the 360 degree… In a word… Stunning… Check the photos posted to snapfish by clicking the link on the right.

After you get all your pics and take in what you can at the summit, the ‘fun’ begins. Now you walk all 8.7KM down the steep, rocky, and wet/slippery terrain. We broke it up by slipping in an hour long nap at the resthouse!

Dan

Posted in Malaysia | No Comments »

Something less familiar…

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Our time in Austalia ended with a party night that lasted well into the morning. We then headed to the airport for a flight to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in Borneo. If you are not completely familar with Borneo, it is an island that houses three countries, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. The ‘fun’ began when upon entry to Kuala Lumpor (our connection) the ATM choked and wouldn’t give us any money leaving us with zero ringlets. Fortunately we were able to pay for a few things at the airport in US dollars and was given enough change in ringlets to pay for our hostel. It turns out that Bank of America shut our ATM cards down because we didn’t get our pin number right the first time in Melbourne. Since then they have been tracking our account and it was automatically shut down when they saw that we were trying to make a transaction in Malaysia.

This morning we met a group from Sweden at our hostel and we have decided to split the cost of a van and driver to Kinabalu Park. We spent the day walking around the small city and looking about. It is a fairly typical small asian city and more of a pass-through point than a destination I would recommend. Since I have a very bad track record with getting sick in second/third-world countries, we decided to play it safe and dine at Pizza Hut for lunch. We will dive in to Malaysian cuisine once we have climbed Mt Kinabalu – but for now, it’s better not to be sick while hiking – i have already been there and done that in Peru.

It’s very warm here… probably close to 100. The Malaysian people are mainly Muslim, Chinese Buddist/Taoist or Indian/Hindu and are very friendly. We stick out like sore thumbs here but they smile nicely at us when we walk past and sometimes say hello. A lot of the people here speak English, moreso then we experienced in Thailand.

dan and paula

Posted in Malaysia | 1 Comment »