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Published: December 17th 2011
Malaysia – Kota Kinabalu – Another epic trek with two fellow travellers from……..NORWICH!
When I stated in my last blog that normal service had resumed that wasn’t quite the case because things went a bit pear shaped after departing from my parents, I originally headed to the East Coast to a city called Kota Bharu because I was hoping to catch a ferry or maybe a flight to Borneo. Well as it turned out Kota Bharu was very un-interesting and the only sensible priced option to get to Borneo was to fly from Kuala Lumpur, bring on another ten hour bus journey back to KL, mistake number one. Mistake number two was trying to stay in budget accommodation whilst in Kota Bharu, after laying on my bed mid-afternoon for about twenty minutes I was covered in bites and coming out in a rash. I complained and they moved me to another room which seemed to make no difference, I think the place was infested. I couldn’t be bothered to argue with them about getting my £4 back so I left and found a hotel for the night, sometimes you have to make the decision to cut your losses and look
out for yourself, after all trying to travel ten hours on a bus covered head to toe in bites is not a good option.
So after a good night’s sleep in a comfortable hotel and a final day exploring the tiny city of Kota Bharu I hopped on the night bus back to KL and straight onto my flight to Kota Kinabalu in Borneo. I had two objectives whilst being over in this direction, the first was to trek to the summit of Mt Kinabalu and the second to visit Brunei. Bring it on, a fair bit to do in a week and as yet I had no idea how this was all going to pan out.
Getting over to Bormeo is quite expensive but compared to completing the summit trek it seemed good value. It turned out there is only one place to stay on the mountain and it’s a bargain at £75 for a six bed dorm per person! It would be fair to say they have a monopoly here and aren’t afraid of exploiting it, the same organisation also operate and run the national park and kindly charge you another £3 to enter the park,
£4 for insurance, £4 for the bus to the start of the trek and £20 for the guide. So all in all to trek up a mountain I was suddenly the best part of £110 lighter, well at least that was less weight to carry up the mountain I guess, you have to look on the bright side in these situations.
Whilst trying to organise the trek I was introduced to three fellow climbers in my hostel who wanted to trek on the say day as me. After a brief introduction we all agreed to set off the following morning to the national park and start the trek. I couldn’t help but notice that something sounded very familiar about two of the guys and after we got round to the question of where are you from the reason for this became clearly apparent, they were from Norwich and to top it off went they went to the same school as me! Honestly you travel all this way and end up trekking with two guys who live five miles away from you, quite incredible, it really is a very small world.
Although the trek was expensive it was also
very well organised and the route was clean and well maintained, we met our guide and set off towards the base camp at 3400m, the physical distance we had to trek was not that great just 6.5km but it was tough going with huge steps every bit of the way. The weather was a cross between beating sun and chilling winds that were a great combination to send your body into a spin when coupled with the altitude. It’s fair to say we were all feeling it!
The guesthouse for a mountain trek was fantastic, very comfortable with copious amounts of lovely food that was really needed after a tough days trekking. We all settled in for the night, drank loads of coffee, eat lots of food and because the electricity went out at about 8pm we went to bed very early. But to be fair everyone needed the early night because we had to set off at 2:30am the following morning for a crazy trek in the dark to reach the summit before sunrise.
At 2am we got the knock on the door that none of us really wanted. We dragged ourselves out of bed, had a
quick bite to eat and set off. The path was tough and at points very scary, it was pitch black with what appeared to be vertical drops to one side of you and to make matters worse we had to pull ourselves up parts of the slippery bare rock face with ropes, I was sh*tting myself at times but just had to get on with it. Time to man up Plunkett.
After two and a half hours we reached the summit and were all very relieved to still actually be on the mountain and not over the edge!! We had no real idea of what we had just trekked up because it was too dark to gauge. But at times it felt very uncomfortable and nerve wracking.
When sunrise finally broke the view became clear for all to see, it was incredible and made the whole trek worthwhile, the only down side for me was that it illuminated the path back down which looked a little hair raising in places, I suddenly preferred the blind trekking we completed to get here. After taking in the sun rise for a short while we headed back to base camp for
a much needed breakfast before commencing the trek back down.
It was an incredible trek that has left me with amazing memories and I have to confess aching legs, I really am becoming so unfit it’s embarrassing. But for the time being I can still complete the treks so it can’t be that bad I guess.
There was no rest for me after we got back to the hostel, I had just enough time to grab a quick shower, pack my bags, fall asleep and wake up at 6am to get the ferry to Brunei. Let’s hope there is no trekking there I’m not sure my body would take it at the moment. Bring on an oil rich nation with a few luxuries…….
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