On tuesday Dawid and myself hopped on the 8am jeepney from Port Barton to Roxas. The jeepney ended up leaving about 15 minutes late and then circled the town picking up extra cargo before returning to the starting point and waiting another 5 minutes before finally departing. Thankfully it only took about an hour and a quarter to get to our stop in Roxas where we waited about an hour to hop on the bus for El Nido. About 5 hours later we eventually arrived at the bus station, caught a trike into town and were dropped off at Rosannas where we found the room and price to our liking. That afternoon we walked around town, played a little basketball with the locals, and had a nice pizza for dinner. I was happily surprised that it ... read more

I left the hostel for the airport in Kota Kinabalu last tuesday not even realising there was a typhoon in the vicinity of Luzon, Philippines, the place I was headed to. We boarded the plane about 15 minutes late and as we were in the air the pilot mentioned that there was a typhoon north of Clarke Airfield but all should be okay. A couple of hours later we were coming into land with landing gear down and all, and then the pilot pulled out blaming the strong winds and wet weather. We circled the airport for over an hour waiting for the conditions to improve before attempting another landing which was also aborted. So to everyones disappointment we flew the 2 hours back to Kota Kinabalu. Once back at the airport in KK it took ... read more

I had decided to attempt to climb to the summit of Mount Kinabalu (Southeast Asia's highest mountain at 4,095 metres) this time in Sabah seeing that I had given it a miss last year. I went to the Sutera office in Kota Kinabalu and booked a dorm room 2 days later on the mountain for RM522 including 5 meals and the climbing permit. The other costs involved were RM15 for entrance to the park, RM8 for return trip from park headquarters to Timpohon Gate at the start of the trek, and RM38 for the guide (sharing with 3 others). The day before the trek I caught a local minibus (RM20) 2 hours to a guesthouse just 500 metres from the entrance to the park. The place was in a nice position with good views and cost ... read more

On thursday I caught a little 12 seat Twin Otter plane from Miri to a small town in the Kelabit Highlands called Bario. I booked this flight for $30 each way the week before which in my opinion is a bargain. There were only 8 of us on the flight and the cockpit door was open the whole 50 minutes of the flight so you could see what the pilots were up to. We flew over Gunung Mulu National Park on the way and finally landed at a very small airport where there about 15 locals waiting to pickup friends or cargo. After having a coffee and chat with the pilots I got a lift to the centre of town and looked for somewhere to stay. I decided to stay at the Royal Villa homestay where ... read more

On tuesday I was pretty happy to find out I could book a dorm bed ($5) for thursday night at Bako National Park. So thursday morning I caught the 8am public bus to a town where you catch a 20 minute boat ride ($3) out to the national park. Once I had signed in and paid the park fees ($3.40) I decided to walk a couple of the trails with an english girl, Michelle who I had met whilst waiting for the bus in Kuching. We walked for about an hour and a half along a diverse trail to the Tajor Waterfall. It wasn't much of a waterfall and there wasn't a lot of flowing water but it was a great place to take a dip in the cool water and wash the sweat away. We ... read more