We flew into Kota Kinabalu and checked into a very grotty guesthouse - only one night, we could hack it. We explored the amazing local market and with the shadow of Mount Kinabalu in the background made plans for the next week. Everything is so spread out but there are so many things we wanted to do before we flew to Sydney on 2 June and we stil...

We checked into the Summer Lodge. While this Hostel was in a great downtown location the room was awful. The sheets had not been cleaned, there was a terrible sewer smell in the bathroom and the walls and floor were filthy. However, the hostel was on the corner of a pedestrian street with several nice restaurants catering to Western tourists, im...

We left London, where we'd returned for a brief visit (was great to see you guys!), and it took 40hrs to get from Heathrow to Bangkok. That did include a stop over in Sri Lanka (which we really enjoyed and wished we had spent more time there). We arrived in Borneo after flying through three nights, with awful jet lag and having missed one flight...

Kota Kinabalu - remembered for the Sepilok Orang-utan sanctuary. We got to trek around the jungle looking at orang-utans while I did an Attenborough-style commentary with my parents camcorder. I'm sure they've still got it to bring out and embarrass me with.

Tara here: Well, our "Borneo experience" went a little something like this. We planned to visit Borneo because it is a "top ten" dive site. Then Nathan got a cold and an ear infection - so diving was out of the question. Then, we decided we would visit a place called turtle island to see baby turtles released into the wild and possibly view fema...

Kota Kinabalu - I flew to the capital of Sabah, one of the Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Spent a few days here gathering information on places to visit and getting necessary permits to visit them. Not much of interest in the town itself, people come to Borneo for the nature.

Seveda se je filipinom priblizeval TAJFUN! :) na dan, ko sem mogla letet v malezijo (kako tipicno!). Cele dneve smo poslusali opozorila, da naj ne letamo in plujemo, je pa res, da so Filipini FUL veliki tko da podrocja okoli manile ni dosegel (oz. ga je dosegel sele danes oz. jutri zjutri). Je pa kr bad, danes sem gledala porocila, da je 23 ljud...

Landed at 6:30pm after 1hr delay! Was feeling ****** so pretty much ate then went to bed! Then after organising trips around borneo, I kicked Doug's **** at scrabble and can everyone get back to me on whether 'tapis' is a word in the english dictionary and what it means? That would be super!!

DAY 1 Well, we'd done diving. Well Claire had, I'd made an attempt but my sinuses were still not playing so we decided to give Sipadan (fantastic diving place) a miss and head out on a nearby river for some white water kayaking. Not quite sure what possessed me to want to do this, particularly after my experience in NZ when I swore blind I would...

My lungs are burning as I gasp for breath in the thin mountain air. I have been climbing for two hours in the darkness and I ask myself repeatedly, why am I doing this? It is 5:00 a.m., one hour until sunrise and I have no idea how far I am from the summit of Mount Kinabalu in Borneo. My husband Dave has talked me into climbing this 4095 m mammo...