Kota Kinabalu, Borneo
Trip Start
Feb 04, 2008
1
40
105
Trip End
Jan 19, 2009
Kota Kinabalu,
Sabah,
Malaysia
Thursday, May 8, 2008
In the morning, after taking advantage of the tea and toast that was included in the room price, we headed out for a wander round the town. It's a small city, but nice enough, and to be honest there's not much going on. We realise that we've actually got no firm idea of what we're going to do during our 10 day stay on the 3rd largest island in the world
Borneo from above
. We've been thinking that we'd probably try to climb the mountain. The mountain being Mount Kinabalu - at 4095m it is the highest on Borneo and in Malaysia, the 4th highest in Southeast Asia and half the height of Mount Everest. Nevertheless it is apparently "routinely climbed by people of all ages and experiences" so I'm keen to give it a go. On looking into it though it's not as simple as all that - as the mountain is within a national park there are "guidelines" (ie. "you must") saying that you'll need to hire a guide and probably porters. Also as it is high enough that altitude sickness is a real concern you need to spend at least one, if not two, nights on the mountain at altitude to acclimatize. Fair enough but as all the accommodation in the park is run by the government it's not quite what we'd been budgeting for. All this combined with the climbing permit (100RM each) and the fact that we'll need to buy or at least hire some warm clothes etc. means that we reluctantly decide against this little adventure. Subsequently we speak to several people who did go for it and are quietly confident we made the right decision. We hear stories of it being much harder than people are lead to believe and many people not making it. Even many of those willing are either not allowed to summit due to weather conditions or unable to see anything when they do complete the final few hours of climbing (this conducted in total darkness to allow a dawn summit)
Our plane
.Anyway, as we have no idea what to do with ourselves we pop down to one of the many travel agencies and walk into one, for no particular reason, and find a lovely girl called Nelly who is helpful and patient and after a lengthy conversation tell us she can put our desired package together. She needs to make some calls to check availability so we go of for a wander round the rest of the town. We end up down at the sea front where there is an amazing market-come-food-festival going on. The fish (including sharks, rays, crabs, lobsters, nautilus, crayfish, squid, jellyfish and brightly coloured tropical fish that you'd be just as happy to have in your aquarium as in your noodles) is all fresh, really fresh, I'm talking people are running around trying to catch it and but it back in it's tub fresh. In addition to this there is row after from of vegetable stalls and other items. The best bit is if a particularly tasty item catches your eye you can buy it (if they can catch it for you) and then walk 20 yards to where the many men and women are ready and waiting with their bar-b-ques to cook it for you so you don't even have to wait to get it home. I guess this is partly to reduce the likelihood that what ever it is may carjack you on the way home and make a break for the open ocean!
We get back to see Nelly and she confirms that everything is sorted and we are ready to go the next morning at 8.00am
Something fishy
.Our schedule is:
A day trip to the Mount Kinabalu national park (Including the Poring hot springs)
A night staying in Sepilok and then the morning feeding at the Orang-Utan sanctuary
Off for 3 day/2 nights at Uncle Tan's jungle safari.
On to Semporna, on the east coast, for a night at the towns only 3 star establishment.
Then onwards to the island of Mabul for 3 nights before getting the overnight bus all the way back to KK
