Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo (July 7-10, 2010)
Our flight path took us over Brunei and into Malaysia’s easternmost state of Sabah and to its capital, Kota Kinabalu (or just KK). From the plane we also caught glimpses of Mount Kinabalu, eerily wrapped in wisps of cloud.
July 7: Leaving Mulu for Kota Kinabalu
On approach to Kota Kinabalu (or just 'KK'), the largest city in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo). You can see Mt. Kinabalu in the background.
Kota Kinabalu lacks the charm of Kuching, but it’s a pleasant enough place to transit with a lovely waterfront, nice markets and malls, and plentiful budget accommodation. We settled into Akinabalu Youth Hostel, which was clean and had a relaxed, communal vibe.
As Sharon had attended university in KK, our second night there we met up with some of her friends for one of those seafood fests that Malaysians seem to pull off best – plates and plates of grilled fish, giant prawns, cockles and other strange shells. I was concerned my Malaysian diet might cause the extinction of several species. The next day, we went to the seafood market on the waterfront and did it all over again: grilled fish, giant prawns, mystery shellfish. You get the picture.
July 8: Sharon went to university in Kota Kinabalu, so we met up with some of her college friends for a typical Sabah seafood feast. If there's one thing people know how to do in Southeast Asia, it's have feast. I mean look at the size of those prawns!
Then we visited the market (where we would eat the following day). More seafood!
That day, after nearly two weeks as my travel companion, Sharon received the call that she had been staffed on a project and was needed “back at the office.” We spent our last day together walking around KK taking silly photos and at the modern megamall at the edge of town, which had everything you could want in a mall, including shops dedicated to jigsaw puzzles and sushi-shaped doughnuts, a fake rainforest, and indoor archery and bowling (neither one of us broke 100) and families of all sorts playing together, locals and foreigners, Muslims and Christians, Hindus and non-believers. If I haven’t said it already, Malaysia is wonderfully multicultural and comfortable beyond all expectations.
And with that, my favorite tattoo-collecting lesbian geologist travel companion was gone, and I was once again on my own. . . .
July 9: After two weeks traveling together, Sharon got the call that she had been staffed on a project and needed to get back to work. We spent our last day together doing silly fun stuff in KK.
KK waterfront
The malls in Asia are amazing. This one in KK had everything, from archery....
Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo (July 11-13, 2010)
I arrived by Minivan at D’Villa Rina Ria Lodge (MYR 30, or about $9, for a dorm bed) just outside the Kinabalu National Park entrance. Like Mulu, staying outside the park was a steal compared to staying in it. At the lodge, I met fellow traveler, Rebecca, who was also here to climb Mount Kinabalu.
Peaking at 4,095 meters (13,435 feet), Mt. Kinabalu is no cakewalk (or finger in the nose, as the French say), but neither is the ascent Herculean. Thousands of people successfully summit the mountain each year. A guide and permit are required to attempt the summit, and of course I just rocked up with no reservations.
Luckily, as I was inquiring about the climb and discovering it was booked out, I ran into a couple, Peter and Bernadett, who had prebooked their climb for three people. Luckily for me (and unluckily for Bernadett’s sister), Bernadett’s sister had become ill and did not make it to Borneo. The helpful park staff substituted me for Bernadett’s ill sister, and Bernadett and Peter were happy to receive my payment.
Suddenly I had to shop for climbing clothing, as I had literally arrived as unprepared as can be – no fleece, no shell, no warm clothing to speak of, and as I mentioned no reservation – and the temperature at the summit could drop to freezing. The lodge where I was staying “rented” used sweaters and jackets, or rather they sold them to you and then gave you a partial refund when you returned them (after prior renters left without returning the clothing). I was able to suit up with fleece, a nice shell, and a new hat and gloves for about $25. Things were going swimmingly.
July 11: View out the back window of the minivan as I left KK for Mt. Kinabalu. Something about the dirt and the lines on the window make the van seem like a prison, with paradise just outside.
Mt. Kinabalu, the highest mountain between the Himalayas and New Guinea, making it also one of highest mountains in Southeast Asia.
The daily 6 p.m. briefing by the park service before the climb.
Only a handful of people showed up for the 6 p.m. climb briefing. The next day at about 7:30 a.m., Bernadett, Peter, Rebecca and I checked in at park headquarters and were assigned John as our guide. I also inquired about hiring a porter. It worked out to about $1 per pound to hire a porter to carry stuff up the mountain, so I thought, hmmm, $175 and I could be carried up the mountain.
At 8:38 a.m., we began ascending from Timpohon Gate (1,866 meters) what seemed to be an interminable series of steps through tall trees with occasional opening upon magnificent vistas of distant valleys and peaks. Two hours into the climb, we found ourselves in the clouds and things cooled down a bit. We remained in the clouds for the rest of the hike, reaching our base camp lodge at Laban Rata (3,272 meters) at 1:56 p.m. after just over five hours of climbing.
July 12: 8:22 a.m. - Day 1 of the ascent - Mt. Kinabalu
8:38 a.m. - The Fellowship of the Ring - with Rebecca, Peter and Bernadett
9:34 a.m. - It only cost about $1 per pound to hire a porter to carry stuff up the mountain, so I thought: Hmmm, $175 and I could be carried up the mountain. OK, uh, $185.
Now the way it works is this: When you get your permit to climb, you also pay for your guide, your overnight accommodation at Laban Rata, insurance, and 4-5 meals – lunch on the trail, dinner at the lodge, an early breakfast, a later breakfast (Hobbits would love this), and another lunch back at the bottom of the mountain – and the whole thing comes to about $200 (a definite splurge, but worth it). So Laban Rata is quite a kick in the pants, because you arrive in the early afternoon, check in (it has a great mountain chalet feel to it), and have nothing to do all afternoon but socialize and eat – two of my favorite activities. The downside is that you begin the second half of the ascent at 2 a.m. So I set a goal of going to bed at 6 p.m., which of course I missed by a couple of hours.
9:42 a.m.
10:50 a.m. - Ascending through clouds
The lodge had a nice restaurant. Why do restaurants need to display these goofy chefs? From what I could see, the people in the kitchen were teenagers likely earning a dollar a day, and they had a hell of a commute (since the only way to the lodge is via a 5-hour hike). They were not goofy gnome-like French chefs.
Dinner was a fantastic all-you-can-eat affair, and of course I showed no restraint, ignoring all the conventional wisdom about eating light at altitude, eating light before you go to sleep, and especially eating light before you go to sleep at altitude because it’s hard to fall asleep at altitude. By 8 p.m., Rebecca, Bernadett, Peter and I had squeezed ourselves into the walk-in closet that passed for our 4-bunkbed room. Needless to say, I barely slept.
1:30 a.m. came much too quickly. I showed my spirit and commitment to the climb by being the last one up and missing first breakfast. Just after 2 a.m., I downed a cup of tea, turned on my headlamp, and stepped into the darkness to summit Mt. Kinabalu.
July 13: Day 2 of the ascent - starting the second leg of our ascent to the summit just after 2:30 a.m. with only head-lamps to light our way.
3:53 a.m. - an hour and 23 minutes into our ascent. Much of the ascent was along sheets of granite.
That little circle of light in front of my face was my constant friend for the next four hours. After an ascent of slippery wooden stairs, the trail of lights fanned out like a pearl necklace over the bare granite face of the mountain. Although the granite didn’t seem steep and the darkness obscured any sense of altitude, we grasped ropes for part of the climb and occasionally used them to pull ourselves along.
The last kilometer to the summit was the steepest – crowded with boulders and uncrowded with precious oxygen molecules. Lonely Planet only somewhat exaggerated the scene as people reduced to crawling breathlessly on their hands and knees. Surprisingly I was having little problem breathing, as I had divined that the only way I was going to make it to the top was to take deep breaths and shallow steps. I was the slowest in our group of four, so our fantastic guide John stuck with me the whole way, showing me the easiest path to the top.
5:39 a.m. - This 15-second exposure photo was shot in darkness just before sunrise. You can make out the head-lamps of climbers reaching the summit and one already at the summit.
5:46 a.m. - dawn's early light
At about 5:46 a.m., I caught the first glimpse of dawn’s first light. The sun gently rose as I reached the boulders around the summit. Just before 6:20 a.m., breathless and reduced to crawling over the last few boulders, I reached the summit of Mt. Kinabalu. If the climb didn’t kill me, the excitement was about to. My heart was racing as fast as the view was breathtaking. I had reached what was undoubtedly the highpoint of my Southeast Asia travels in more ways than one. The feeling recalled my completion of the Inca Trail some 16 years earlier.
5:51 a.m. - reaching for the summit of Mt. Kinabalu
6:20 a.m. - I reached the summit after more than 3.5 hours of climbing in mostly darkness. The elevation change during the second leg of the climb was from 3272m to 4095m.
The fun was not over yet. I still had to get down the mountain, find my way back to Kota Kinabalu (I had no ticket or reservation), get to the airport, and catch a flight to Jakarta, all in about 12 hours. And my legs were mush.
By 6:30 a.m., I was headed down the mountain – nearly 9 kilometers and 2,229 meters of descent (7,313 feet) to go. On good reason for climbing in the dark is that you get to see the sunrise. The other, which I discovered on my way down, is that if you’d seen what you were climbing, you might have turned back, or at least stopped for a will-writing break. While there were not a ton of precarious spots along the climb, the few there were looked a lot scarier in daylight than when all my attention was focused on that small circle of light from my headlamp.
6:25 a.m. - With my guide John. He was fantastic! I tipped him well.
6:39 a.m. - jumping for joy. I was happy to be descending!
6:45 a.m. - The descent to base camp took just over 2 hours.
6:50 a.m. - Descending. Only 8 km to the start of the trailhead.
I reached base camp at 8:44 a.m., where I hobbited my way to second breakfast (all-you-can-eat of course) and took a nice long shower. Then I continued down to the park entrance, which took about another few hours; I arrived around 2 p.m. At the bottom, you could tell the people who had just climbed, as they were possessed of a most pronounced wobbly gait.
6:57 a.m.
6:56 a.m.
7:08 a.m. - shortcut
7:18 a.m.
Another meal awaited me at the bottom: an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet, and remember Malaysian food ain’t so bad. By 3 p.m., I was looking for a bus to take me back to KK, and by 3:30, I was getting nervous about not finding one. Basically my choices were to take a taxi back or stand by the roadside and pray. Finally a bus came along and scooped me up, got me back to KK in under two hours, just before 7 p.m., which was my cut-off point for making it comfortably to the airport. I retrieved my left luggage at the hostel, grabbed a taxi, and made it to the airport early.
There I said goodbye to one of my favorite places in Southeast Asia: No, not Famous Amos’, but the island of Borneo. What an amazing place – as I’ve said before, perhaps my all-around favorite destination in Southeast Asia, and definitely the most fun.
That night I flew to Jakarta, Indonesia. In Jakarta, I would endure hours more fun before I finally arrived at my guesthouse around 2 a.m., which meant I was on the go without sleep for 24 hours. But that’s a story for my next report. . . .
ADDITIONAL PHOTOS BELOW:
Mosque in KK near the market and waterfront
Sushi-shaped doughnuts at a KK mall
...to bowling. (Neither one of us broke 100.)
7:32 a.m. - on the ropes
7:38 a.m. - base camp in sight
8:44 a.m. - back at base camp for breakfast and a shower, before continuing down to the trailhead and park headquarters, another 3:36 hike down a steep trail (1390m descent). No one leaving the trail could walk straight. That afternoon I made a mad dash to the airport in KK for my flight to Jakarta, Indonesia.
No comments:
Post a Comment