Kota kinabalu, altitude sickness, hypothermia and lots of travelling!

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48 hrs of plane flying, probably the most boring 2 days of my life! did meet some jolly characters though. Met this indian family travelling from mumbai who were really friendly and the dad who had great pride in telling me about hes working for prudential insurance company so hes the guy who answers my calls when i get transfered to india!

Probably one of the hardest things ive had to do so far was climb this mountain! and if i do it next time i will choose a hut at base camp which has heating and not go for the cheaper option!! I think being on planes for 2 days didnt help my cause either. The first climb was from kota kinabalu lodges at 1500 m to the base camp climb of about 3300m. This took us about 7 hours of gruelling uphill terrain, think i needed more training. half way up this first day trek, it also decided to torrential downpour on us (which u would expect i guess in a rainforest) which made the last bit of this 1st day climb even harder. We arrived at base camp with about 200 other tourists, mainly japanese and korean i figured and went straight to this big lodge to warm up. But then realised that our little cheap lodge was down the road with no heating woo hoo! We had 2 blankets to keep us warm but i was dying a slow death from hypothermia! what made it worse is that we were getting up at 2 in the morning to make the summit for sunrise. So we woke up and started our night trek continually up and up, and were told it was only 3-4km up to the summit, the terrain was getting steeper and steeper. We then got to the point where we had to start using ropes, and i was quite glad it was still dark as it was quite nice not being able to see the drops below! Continued up and up, and i didnt make the summit as i got quite bad altitude sickness about 1km from the summit. But apparently they didnt get to see sunrise anyway as it was clouded over! I still got some amazing views, the photos wont quite do it justice but ill upload them anyway.

We came down off the mountain and literally leave as accomodation here was fairly expensive (malaysian wise) as its a tourist hotspot. Met an english couple and an american, so we shared a taxi to come to a place called sandakan which is where i am now. Staying in a really friendly b & b, i was really ill when i first came, have had a crazy fever, headache and the swets for the last 2 days, but beginning to find my way back to reality. Just a mixture of no resting, altitude sickness and prob general tiredness. Hoping to do some jungle stuff in the next couple of days, with a river boat cruise up one of the rivers, followed by some trekking. X

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Photos

Proton Power!
I forgot malaysia is where these cars are made!

Kota kinabalu!
Doesnt look that daunting at first!

2 routes!
U could choose which u want to start, we were stupid and chose the longer route!

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Mental