Archive for September, 2002
Been back in Bangkok for 2 days now, busy with all the usual errands. Spent one night in Brunei in an overpriced hotel on the way back from Malaysia, but it was well worth it to have cable tv and to not have to sleep in the airport again.
Yesterday was my first full day back in Thailand and I spent the day around Khao San Road – putting in an application for a visa to Laos, and spending a few hours going through photos from Australia. I’ve got 575 new photos from the last 8 weeks of travelling that I need to go through and choose the ones to upload to the site. A lot of work! I managed to get through 200 yesterday, so hopefully after anothing 2 long sessions I’ll be done.
Went to bed early last night, enjoying the aircon and quiet comfort of the hotel room.
Today I’ve been running more errands and trying to sort out my upcoming trip to New Zealand at the end of November. I’m currently at the dentist office waiting to have one more tooth fixed and a cleaning. It’s actually not bad being back in Asia so far…I think my 6-week break in Australia did me good. I’m not getting annoyed at the little Asia-isms that were bugging the hell out of me before I left. For instance, at the travel agent this morning, I had the following converstaion:
(me) Are you open tomorrow?
(them) Yes, we open every day.
(me) So you’re open on Sunday?
(them) No, no open Sunday.
I can laugh at it again, for now anyway…
September 27th, 2002
Slept like a rock last night. No better way to cure insomnia than to get up at 2am and climb a mountain all day. I woke up at 7:30am today and felt like a new person.
Spent the early part of the morning organizing my bags getting ready to leave tomorrow. I left one bag in storage in KK while I went around Sabah and did all my sight-seeing, diving, and climbing. Well somehow in the midst of all of that I seemed to have lost my windstopper fleece gloves AND my address and budget book. What a bummer! The gloves were a major bummer because they really are good quality, nearly impossible to replace overseas, and no one could even possibly use them unless they were on their way to climb Mt. Kinabalu.
Then today when I realized I had lost my address book I was absolutely gutted. All the addresses and emails of everyone I’ve met on this trip so far, gone. Good news is that a lot of people I’ve already kept in contact with through email so I’ve got some addresses in my email account. But the rest, gone. It’s bound to happen when you move around as much as I have, especially in the last few weeks – planes, taxis, buses, boats, hostels, etc. etc. All I can hope for is that some extremely nice person found the address book and sent it home to America because my name and address were on the front cover.
Anyway. Today was spent on Mamutik Island, one of the many islands of off KK. Just a 15-minute boat ride out to the island. Nice island, small, uninhabitied, white sand, clear water, but it didn’t anywhere near compare to where I stayed at Kapalai. There was a lot of trash laying around – both figuratively and literally – trash as in plastic, cans, and bottles and trash as in perverted Malaysian men trying to cop a free look at the Western women in bathing suits.
People I meet always seem to ask me if I have had any problems as a woman alone, and I must say I’ve been lucky so far, but I can’t even count how many pervs I’ve had to deal with. One guy actually came up to me today and did a’hellooohh’ in the standard perv tone, and then said it again and pointed at his camera, trying to ask I guess if he could take a picture of me. GROSS! I wanted to say F-OFF, but in Asia you must do the saving face thing, so I did a very polite’Please leave me alone Thank You.’
Just another day in the journey.
Tomorrow I’m off to Brunei.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: Happy ending to the tale of the lost items….I later emailed all the places I stayed in Sabah and found my gloves were at Kapalai, so I am having them sent to me. More importantly, I found my address book later in the frame of my backpack!! No happy ending to the perv encounters yet though…
Sunrise on Mount Kinabalu
The day awakens
Good views for the walk down
September 23rd, 2002
7pm in Kota Kinabalu, getting ready to go to sleep VERY soon. It’s been a long day. I’ve been up since 2am!
So, I climbed Mount Kinabalu today – 4101 m, the highest point in Borneo. We had a 2:00am wake-up in the rest house (well actually I think everyone in our room had already been awake for 1 hour because one guy decided to start packing at 1am – the sound of plastic bags over and over and over again. Thanks man.)
Anyway, up at 2:00am, breakfast at 2:15am, start climbing at 2:30am.
From the rest house it’s 2.72 km and 900 m (2970 ft) in elevation gain to the summit at Low’s Peak. The purpose of starting at the very unnatural hour of 2:30am is to get to see the sunrise at the top.
There was a steady line of climbers leading up from the rest house when we left. It was a full moon, but cloudy, even so we were able to see enough without using flashlights. It took just over one hour to get to the checkpoint at Sayat-Sayat Hut, which, at 3668 m (12,105 ft), is only used for park staff and emergencies. Apparently last year a British woman got lost on her way to the summit and somehow died on the mountain. Since then the park initiated this check point station to make sure everyone heading up to the summit comes down.
The trail itself above the rest house is all rock with one big rope leading the path all the way to the top. At times it’s steep enough that you have to pull yourself up using the rope, but for the most part you just follow the path. Once the clouds rolled in and the visibility deteriorated, I was glad to have the rope to follow.
Masaki, Tumas (our guide), and I trudged along, making our way up with a slow but steady pace. At the check point it was 3:45am and we realized that at our pace we would get to the summit too early (before sunrise) so we decided to try to slow it down. No reason to freeze our asses off at 4000 m waiting for the sun to come up. You can only stay warm as long as you’re moving. So on we went, slowly across the rock.
I didn’t find the climb difficult at all, but still by 5am I was ready to be at the top. We made it there at 5:30am, took some summit shots, and once we realized there would be no sunrise with all the clouds packed in, we headed down.
Took 1.5 hours to get back to the rest house, much faster than going up.
Back at Laban Rata at 7:15am. We agreed to head down the rest of the way at 8:30am. Enough time to eat breakfast, pack up, and rest for a few minutes. The 6km from Laban Rata to the park gate took us 2.5 hours, arrived at the bottom at 11am. Hard to believe that we had all of that done before lunchtime!
Things done at the park headquarters (in order):
Got summit certificate, used toilet, ate ice cream, and packed bags.
I was trying to decide whether to go back to Kota Kinabalu or go to the Hot Springs to rest and soak, but it seemed to be a hassle to go to the Hot Springs with 2 buses and 1.5 hours so I said forget it, I’m off to KK. Turned out a couple who did the climb (but didn’t make it to the summit) had arranged transport back to KK to the Shangri-La Hotel and the driver was cool enough to let me in on their ride for $3. The couple was like, oh are you staying at the Shangri-La too? Hahahaha. That’s pretty funny. I said, no I am staying at the backpackers’ in town. They didn’t even know what a backpackers’ was. (It’s a hostel in case you didn’t know.)
Got back to KK at 2:30pm, checked in to Lucy’s'Shangri-La’ Backpacker’s Lodge, showered (ahhh), put my laundry in, took a nap, then ate. Now I am ready for a full night’s sleep. It was a GREAT day. I’ve done a lot with my time in Sabah.
Here we go…
Many hours later, on the summit! (digital camera not working well in the cold)
Heading down (check next day for 3 more photos)
September 22nd, 2002
5pm at Laban Rata Resthouse (3272 m, 10,789 ft). It’s another 900 m (2970 ft) and 2.5 km to the summit from here, but we won’t be dealing with that bit until 2:30am tomorrow morning when we set out for Low’s Peak.
This morning I was at the park headquarters early to arrange for a guide, and wound up sharing the 60 RM ($25) guide fee with Masaki, another solo traveler from Japan. He’s from the town next to Mt. Fuji actually but has never climbed it (yet). Instead he’s here, in Sabah, for a one-week holiday to climb Kinabalu.
Anyway Masaki and I set out at 7:45am with our guide Tumas, a 25-year old Malay guy who’s climbed the mountain over 100 times in the last 5 years.
It was 6km from the park gate to this rest house, with an elevation gain of 1400 m (4620 ft). Pretty much a steady uphill the whole way, but with a very well maintained and graded trail it really wasn?t too bad. Took us 3 hours and 45 minutes.
We were here before noon which seemed very early to me to end a day of hiking. We considered pushing on and doing the summit today, but then I started to think it would be better to rest and acclimatize here for several hours first plus our chances of having any views will be better first thing in the morning at sunrise.
So it?s been a quiet afternoon at the rest house, enjoying the views and reading my book. There are about 100 other climbers here, I?d say about 60% Malay and 40% foreigners. Some of the Malay people have done the mountain several times already.
There are also a lot of Malay and foreign runners who are training for the annual Kinabalu Marathon which takes place this year on October 6th. Very humbling to be trudging up a mountain and have someone literally run right by you! I even saw 2 Malay women training? way to go ladies. Last year the men?s winner had a time of 2hr 18 min and the women?s had 3hr 08min. Incredible!
It?ll be a very early night tonight, resting up and saving energy for the summit bid tomorrow.
The Laban Rata Rest House, 3272 m
I earned that view!
Dont think I looked quite so happy when I woke up just a few hours later…must have been the altitude
September 21st, 2002
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