Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia

  Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia
Saturday, September 20, 2008

When we arrived at the Mount Kinabalu National Park headquarters on Wednesday afternoon it was still pouring rain from the day before. Our guide book said there were two youth hostels located at park headquarters and a dorm room cost 12RM (1.40 Euro) per night. When we asked at the reception where these hostels were, we were told they were taken over by the same company that runs the accommodation halfway up the mountain - Sutera Sanctuary Lodges - the biggest rip-off merchants in Asia. They now charged 85RM (17 Euro) to stay in the same dorm room in the same hostel that cost 12RM two years ago. For any travelers thinking of climbing Mt Kinabalu in future, let me give you a breakdown of what we had to pay these rip-off merchants to climb the mountain:

Dorm Room at Park Headquarters - 85RM each
Permit to Climb Mt Kinabalu - 100RM each
Insurance (even though we have our own) - 7RM each
Guide - 85RM short trek / 100RM Long Trek - shared
Taxi from Park HQ to Start Point - 85RM - shared
Room on Laban Rata (halfway point) - 208RM each (including really poor meals)
Total cost (if climbing individually on short trek) - 555RM (111 Euro) for the 2 nights.

4-Karl on Trek

4-Lydia on Trek

Now, for someone on a two week holiday that might not sound like much, but when you're trying to budget on 20 Euro a day on a two year trip it killed us to pay that much. Some advise for people going to Mt Kinabalu:
1) form a group - each guide can take 8 people, cost is 85RM for 1 person, 90RM for 2, 95RM for 3 etc.
2) to go on the longer more difficult trek (really worth it for the scenery) there is an additional cost of 15RM for the guide and the taxi to the start point costs more too but it was really worth it.
3) we found out later that, about 1km down the road from Park HQ (on the Ranau side) there is a good guesthouse called D'Villa offering double rooms with private bathroom for 100RM per room including breakfast(much better than the 85RM per person that you spend to share a 6 bed dorm with shared toilets in the Park HQ) 
4) bring a good jacket, gloves and other warm clothes, the wind chill near the top of the mountain could kill you!

7-Scenery from Mt Kinabalu

22-Scenery from Mt Kinabalu

So after handing over our life savings to Sutera Sanctuary lodges we settled in to the most expensive accommodation we've had in the 7 months we've been traveling. Slat windows, winds blowing through the room, no common area, or TV or anything. Oh, they had a fireplace, do you think they lit it? Nope. We just sat around for the afternoon, really depressed, rain belting off the windows, tucked under the covers with all our clothes and a hat on, reading our books. By the way Park HQ is at approx 2000m, so, even though we were quite close to the equator it was still quite cold. At about 5pm the rain stopped and we went out to have a look around. The botanical gardens were closed at 4pm adding insult to injury and Lydia kept saying "This better be the best mountain in the world ever!"

We went to our climbers briefing at 6pm and met a nice German couple (Lukas and Katerina) who asked if we would like to share a guide with them. Things were starting to look up - the 85RM for the guide was now split between 4 of us instead of 2. We also decided to go the long way up the mountain as it was supposed to have better scenery (another good decision in hindsight). We bought 2 pot noodles for dinner - couldn't afford anything else - oh the poverty! We were sharing our dorm with a Malaysian and a Russian-American called Dmitri. He also asked if he could tag along with our group. This meant there was 5 of us, so we could split the price of the guide and the taxi to the start point 5 ways - happy days!

30-Scenery from Mt Kinabalu

Signpost at Halfway Stage

The next morning we got up at 7am, for our buffet breakfast (stone cold eggs and pancakes, watered down orange juice, cereal with watery milk, stale, rock-hard bread, mmmmmm!) great start to the day, but things were soon to pick up. The trek up the mountain was amazing. As I already mentioned the start point was 2000m so we had to trek 1300m over 8km on the first day. The views over the surrounding landscape were unreal. It started off with lush green rain forest as far as the eye could see and as we got higher we could see as far as the South China Sea and the city of Kota Kimbalu 88km away. The trek was tough however, much more so than we expected. It was tougher than any single day on the Annapurna Trek in the Himalayas. It took us 6 hours to do the 8km. We met some really nice people along the way including a bunch of crazy Malaysians from Kuala Lumpur and a Scottish-English couple called Paul and Nuala. We made it to Laban Rata (our accommodation for the night) at around 3pm and had a quick cold shower. Lydia said the girls showers were piping hot - typical!

Us with Malaysia Friends

5-Us on Trek

We dumped our gear in our room, another 6 bed dorm with even more of a howling wind blowing through the slat windows from the night before. The "all you can eat buffet dinner" was as big a disappointment as the breakfast the only good thing was the free tea. We went back to the dorm at 7pm to try get some rest for the 2:30am start the next morning. I slept for about 20 minutes and Lydia for about an hour, we were freezing despite having all our clothes on us and 3 blankets each. The wind was howling in the windows and I think the fact that we knew we had to start climbing again at 2:30 didn't help.

Anyway, we got up and were ready to go by 2:30am. We were lucky that there was a full moon giving us a bit of light. Most people had head torches but we just had our lights on our mobile phones to guide us. We had to climb 800m in height over 2.5km to get to the top. The first half of the climb was mostly up loose rocks and steps, then the tough part came - we needed to haul ourselves up a 50-60 degree slope with a white rope. We weren't expecting that. The white rope continued all the way to the top, the last kilometre or so being smooth steep granite rock. It was really energy sapping and we eventually made it to the top at around 5:30am. It was so cold at the top we were both freezing. With the wind chill it was definitely below zero degrees. We huddled behind a rock for about 15 mins then got our photo taken at the highest point before making our descent. The sun started to show around 6am and the views really made the whole thing worthwhile.

Us at Top

Guide Climbing Up

We got back to Laban Rata at 7:30am, grabbed a quick 2 hour nap, then started the second half of our descent. The decent was quite tough too and everyone we met for days afterwards complained that their thigh's, knee's and calf's were aching. We got to the base at 1pm with a great sense of achievement having climbed South East Asia's highest peak (4,095m) in less than 24 hours.

5-Dawn on Mt Kinabalu

22-Dawn on Mt Kinabalu

We'd highly recommend anyone coming to Borneo to climb Mt Kinabalu but to take our advise from above to avoid being ripped off by Sutera Sanctuary Lodges. The climb is really tough but the views on the way up and on the way down make it really worthwhile.