Kinabalu

I just arrived back at school after 9 days off - my first real holiday here in Malaysia. I headed east (to the far Far East) for the break...into the jungles of Borneo!

Borneo had big appeal to me before I came down here (I'd just read a book of short stories set in 19th century Borneo by Somerset Maugham), and I wanted to make it the first place I visited. The stars were aligned: there was an international climbing race down there that I wanted to give a shot, and a friend from school wanted to head down there as well.

We left directly after class on Friday, and by Friday night we'd checked in to a beautiful lodge at the bottom of Mount Kinabalu - the highest peak in South-East Asia. We were expecting something a bit more spartan, as you can tell by the look on Gord's face (right). Below is a photo of the mountain from the porch of our hotel room.






This was the mountain I was going to race up and down a week later, so on top of taking in the sights, I wanted to break in my legs and get acclimatized.

The hike was a beauty - if somewhat busy (it was a Malaysian national holiday). We had to camp out halfway up in a hut that was a bit more rustic and very cold (right), but we got an amazing sunset (below).


Both Gord and the guide wanted to start the hike to the summit at 3am, so we woke, layered up, and set off. When I made the summit (4095m), I realized that my camera's battery had gone!!!

Following the climb and some over-priced celebratory beers we hitch-hiked south to a small town from which we heard that you could climb Borneo's second highest peak. It ended up that despite being a forest reserve there were no maps available, and all guides insisted on a 4x4 ($200 CDN) ride to within a 5 hour hike of the summit. Some guides.

With money in our pockets, and our sore legs relieved of a second hike we put out our thumbs and got a long ride in the back of a pick-up to the capital - Kota Kinabalu. From there we rented a tent and headed out to a small island off the coast and camped out on a little secluded beach with monitor lizards and washed-up pop bottles for 3 days. We'd been tipped off that the snorkeling off of the island was excellent. We kept a fire going on the beach, lay in the sun, went hiking and swam in the coral: perfection.

After the island, Gord headed home to Kuala Lumpur and I turned back to the mountain. I shared a room with a guy who ran a half-marathon in 1:06 - Brunei's fastest distance runner. When he told me that I was in equal parts impressed by the man and terrified at what I'd gotten myself into. After a couple of stomach-turning days I found myself at dawn on the starting line. It was there that the organizer told us that we had to summit in 2.5 hours and be back at the finish line within 4.5 hours and that on average only 40% of the participants completed the race in time - the steepest one in the international mountain running series. I looked around me. My heart sunk. There were about 3 ounces of fat spread around the other runners in the men's category. Their calves were as big as my head.

In the end I got to the top in 2:18 and back down for a total of 4:02. And aside from my knees I'm feeling pretty good right now...I think my quads are still in disbelief.

As much as I enjoyed the break, I'm actually happy to be back here. I like my place, my students and my day-to-day back in KL. Most of all, I like my elevator.