Mountains, jungles and beaches in Borneo

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Just the name ‘Borneo’ conjures up exotic images of dense jungle, rare animals, and pristine beaches. And it doesn’t disappoint. We headed to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, for a quick five days to try and cram in as much as possible.

Kota Kinabalu is a cool little town, for some reason almost devoid of motorbikes and exclusively full of souped up Nissan Micra style cars. Not too dissimilar from the cars you normally see 17 year olds driving round Plymouth. The similarities to Plymouth don’t end there – add to that the large number of 12 year olds drinking and smoking outside McDonalds and I was beginning to wonder whether the British had left quite a negative legacy to Malaysia…

We kicked the holiday off with a trip to the Rasa Ria Orangutan Sanctuary. We got there for feeding time, and were treated to a half hour promotional video, and then led to watch the orang-utans come down to get their grub. It was really cool to see them, but it was far from being in the wild. I mean there were no cages or fences to be seen, but it wasn’t quite the same as seeing them in the wild for real. They didn’t really do anything interesting, just sat around, so about half an hour was enough before it got a bit boring. After getting back from Rasa Ria, we almost immediately headed to the Mari Mari cultural village that evening. The village has several houses where they show you traditional methods of living that different tribes from Borneo use. Things such as making rice wine, food, clothes, using blow-pipes and so on. They also showed us the headhunters house, where they hang the heads of their enemies inside their house as a good luck charm. Although I don’t think that this still happens (in most of Borneo anyway…?). The designs of the houses are all really cool, all designed for a specific function. For example, there is one house that has a large piece of wooden floor set at a lower level to the rest of the floor, resting on trunks of bamboo. It works as a trampoline, and was used as a kind of game, for the hunters to try and grab some kind of prize from the top of the ceiling if they had been successful in their hunt. I was randomly chosen to be the group leader, so I got to try all the things out first, not too successfully unfortunately. We had an interesting welcome into the village – as the group leader I had to go first and suddenly a bunch of tribesmen jumped out of nowhere screaming at us. The high priestess stood in front of me sweeping the floor, and the chief came right up to me and asked me questions which were translated into English. After answering all his questions to his satisfaction, we were allowed to pass through. The whole thing was staged for our amusement of course, but it was still quite dramatic, especially as it was at night time and it did actually feel quite authentic. We were then given a show of the traditional dancing and got to join in. A huge buffet topped off what was a great evening. Even though it wasn’t a ‘real’ village as such, it was still great to see how everything was done.

The following day we awoke at 4.30am to attempt to climb one of the highest mountains in South East Asia in one day. At 4095m, Mount Kinabalu is a bit of a monster. This is normally a two day trek, where you stop after the first 6km, and complete the following 3km the next day. However, doing it over 2 days is extremely costly (over $500), and we were short on time. Everyone kept telling us it couldn’t be done, and most people don’t make it, but that just made it more of a challenge for us. You have to reach certain checkpoints by certain times, or they don’t let you carry on. We started at 7am, and had to make the 6km mark by 10am. The summit had to be made by 1pm, and we had to be down at the bottom again by 6pm. We knew that the air would get thinner as we went up, and so knew that we really had to rush the first 6km. So we started at a very quick pace, almost jogging the first section. After a while, I started to feel a bit light-headed, but just put it down to being a bit dehydrated. By the 6km mark, I was getting weary to say the least. My legs were feeling heavier, I was struggling to breathe a bit, and was just knackered. I had to keep stopping every 5 minutes or so to get my breath back. Cursing myself for not doing any cardio for the last 6 months, I just blamed it on me being unfit. James, the guy I went with, was faring much better, so I thought it was just me being unfit. We made the checkpoint before 10, and had a lengthy 20 minute break before we knew we had to carry on. At this point, I didn’t think I could do it. Every step was getting harder, and I knew it was going to get worse and we still had a long way to go. The views were spectacular however, especially when there was a break in the clouds, looking down over the jungle far below. I’m not a quitter, and knew I had to push on or I’d never forgive myself. Motivated, we continued the climb. The next part of the climb was out of the jungle, and onto rock faces, where we needed to use ropes to help us. I was looking forward to this, as it meant I could give my legs a rest and use my arms instead. However, within a minute of using my arms, they were shattered too. At this point I realised that the altitude was really beginning to affect me. I never thought it would, but it hit me hard. My head was beginning to pound, I could hear my pulse inside my head, feeling like something was trying to break out. My heart was trying to escape my rib cage. I was dizzy to the point of losing my balance. And every limb weighed ten times the amount it should. Every step got harder, and the time in between stops got ever shorter. It was getting to the point where I was stopping every 20 paces or so for a couple of minutes to get my breath back. I would feel revived and ready to go, but 20 paces later I was drained again. Having the 1pm deadline looming over us was such a burden, but probably a blessing as I’m not sure I would have found the motivation within me to keep going. I was literally screaming at the mountain at times, I was that tired and annoyed. The nice thing was that we had the mountain to ourselves – they only give out 4 one-day permits a day, so it was very peaceful up there. Eventually, the summit came into sight, and I knew that I had to make it. I hadn’t come this far to fail. But it got still harder and harder. The worst point for me was about 20 metres away from the summit, and I physically couldn’t go any further. It took me 10 minutes of staring at the top to work up the energy to move my legs those last few steps. Although it was cloudy at the top and we couldn’t see that far, the scenery up there was pretty spectacular. And every so often we were treated to a break in the clouds, to witness the land far below. To be honest, I was too exhausted to fully enjoy it. Look at the pictures, they will show how I felt…And I was dreading the trip back down. You would think that going downhill would be easy…but it wasn’t. Everything still weighed so much more, my body was so starved of oxygen it was a struggle to make every step. The first 3km back down the mountain were tough. But all of a sudden, the air began to get thicker, and miraculously instead of getting more tired, I began to perk up and gain energy. So much so that we began to run down the mountain to make sure we got back in time. Which was great until my feet started killing because my shoes were too small, and I was back to a much slower pace! We did eventually make it back on time, completing it in 10 hours total. Believe it or not, but the record for doing it is 2 and a half hours. How that is possible I will never know. I have honestly never experienced anything like the feelings I went through that day. It was the hardest challenge I’ve ever been presented with, both physically and mentally. It almost broke me, but we did it! It was a great achievement. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely not. Will I ever do something like that again? No way. But I’m glad I did it once…

Not wanting to rest, the next morning we headed to Poring Hot Springs to climb through the tree tops on the canopy walk. The bridges are far above the jungle floor below, and you walk from tree to tree, witnessing all the animal activity below. Of which there was none. A few butterflies maybe, but that was about it! Maybe it was the Chinese teenagers having a shouting competition that scared everything off, we’ll never know. One thing I would say about Sabah, is that there does seem to be a lack of any larger animals. We were only there for a short time, so maybe we just weren’t looking in the right places. But I’ve heard stories that so much of Borneo’s jungle is being cut down to make way for palm trees (to meet the huge demand of palm oil), that a lot of the larger mammals have been forced east towards Sandakan. Which is great if you go to Sandakan as you’ll see loads of stuff, but a bit of a shame for the poor animals that are losing their homes. Try and cut palm oil out of your diet though, not easy! No more chocolate for you…

The hot springs at Poring were nice, especially the cold pool as it was ridiculously hot. Not to mention the fact that I probably had the worst sunburn I have ever had on my legs from the climb the day before, so putting them in boiling hot water wasn’t the most appealing idea. We conveniently met our guide in Poring for the next part of our trip – staying in the jungle. The guide was a Scottish guy, carrying a machete, a wicker backpack, and covered in blood. We talked over a beer before heading into the jungle to the camp where we would be staying, Lupa Masa. The place is little more than a wooden shack, with some thin matresses covered with mosquito nets. Looked like we were going back to basics. After a dinner of whatever they could find in the jungle (mostly tapioca leaves and banana flower), we were supposed to head on a night trek, but the rains began to fall so heavily that we decided against it. We were entertained for a few hours with stories from the jungle before heading to bed. After a night under the stars (which I have never in my life seen so many shine so brightly), we got up the next morning ready to explore a bit of jungle. I was feeling a bit apprehensive, as I knew that we would almost certainly be encountering leeches. Leeches don’t carry disease and their bites don’t really hurt, so they are not dangerous at all. But there is something about a little slimy worm with two heads sucking the blood out of you that doesn’t really appeal to me. One of the guys staying at the camp showed us a picture from the day before of his bloodied shorts in the crotch region, where one of the offending little buggers had managed to crawl up his shorts and latch onto his ballbag. This terrified me, so I pulled my socks up and rolled my shorts tightly against my thighs in a pathetic attempt to stop any of them attacking. Well it wasn’t long before I had leeches on me left right and centre. They try and get through your socks and even your shoes. I was sweating so much that every time a bead of sweat dripped its way across my skin I would panic and desperately try and find the leech. The method of dealing with them is to try and scrape them off with your fingernail, making sure that you don’t leave their head attached! Anyway, I did kind of get used to them after about the fifteenth one I had, and began to enjoy the surroundings a bit more. It is exactly what you’d expect from the rainforest (minus the animals). Huge trees being taken over by strangler vines that are almost as big. Luscious vegetation everywhere. Plenty of creepy crawlies. Hacking our way through was hot and sweaty work, but I enjoyed it! Although it’s not something that I think I’d be very good at long term…Anyway, after we hauled our sweaty bodies back to camp we headed to the shower to clean off, the shower obviously being the local waterfall. It was 100 times better than the best shower I’ve ever had, the water pounding and massaging your back and head like no masseuse ever could.

After an exhausting few days, the final day we decided to head to one of the islands just off the coast of Kota Kinabalu for a few hours to relax. There’s plenty to choose from, we chose the closest due to time constraints, as did every other tourist in Borneo apparently. Quite a busy beach, nice enough though, and there were so many other islands I’m sure it’s possible to find your own deserted island.

Borneo really does have something for everyone. Whether you’re after mountains, beaches, islands, jungle, wildlife, or just looking for some adventure – Borneo has it all. I’d highly recommend a trip out here!

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Photos

Leeches...
This little fella tried to get up my shorts...