At the end of my clinic placement came a well needed four days off. However they weren’t exactly what I would call relaxing. Our first day off we took a journey to a local home stay. We were supposed to be spending the night here, staying in a local families home however we had planned to climb mount kinabalu the next day and therefore thought we needed a good night’s rest. Therefore we only spent the day here. The place was called Batu Puteh on the Kinabatangan river. I had imagined it to be much more local than it was, and in fact it was set up for tourists – quite a disappointment. It was a local village and we did have the opportunity to be shown round our guide (Tamin’s) house – he lives in his grandma’s house with 30 of his family members and 4 generations. It was quite amazing to meet some of his family and see where they live – lots of kids running around and I have some lovely photos. It was sad as the kids didn’t have any toys and were playing with a plastic bag which they happened to find very amusing. We did bring them all lots of gifts though. We had lunch on this jetty overlooking the river, sitting on rugs – we were only allowed to use our right hand to eat as this is how they eat in their culture. It proved quite difficult eating rice with one hand and slightly messy. After lunch the locals put on some dance performances for us dressed in traditional Malaysian clothes – this was really enjoyable and we also had a go at it ourselves. They presented us all with flowers and chocolates as a gift which was lovely. We had a fishing demonstration where we were told and shown the different instruments they hand craft to catch fish, this was really interesting. To finish the day we had a stunning sunset river cruise where we saw crocodiles, more proboscis and macaque monkeys and some beautiful hornbills’ flying. As much as I was not so keen on the’ tourist’ home stay, it was still nice to be shown around their village and their homes and get a feel for local Malaysian life.
We left the next day for Mount Kinabalu at 10.30am. It took us 5 hours to get there with lots of breaks along the way. We were staying at the Fairy Garden resort (not so ‘fairy’ like or ‘resort’ like) for the night to acclimatise before getting up early to start climbing. We got a bit of a shock as it was actually cold once we got there – not England cold but still colder than we had been used to. I didn’t have the best nights sleep before the climb which didn’t start me off well but nevertheless was in full spirits, we got up at 6.30 and had breakfast before registering for the walk of death. We all got given tags to wear around our necks with our names on and a number – my number was 007. We also bought poles at the bottom to help us up – which proved to be far more useful than I ever would have thought. Thank god for the poles. As we got through the entrance to start the climb it started off down hill!! All good and well at the beginning of the climb but I knew I wouldn’t appreciate it on the way down – which I didn’t! The first 4 kms went really well, I was at the front of the group (12 of us in the group) with the guide and I felt pretty good about myself. I was taking shots of smartie packs for energy, however the last 2 km to the resthouse were quite difficult. I had lots of energy from all the chocolate but my legs were just so tired and we had to take regular breaks. I took photos as an opportunity to rest. However we made it to Laban Rata at 3pm, it took us 5 hours to climb here which they say is very average but we were very happy.
Laban Rata is beautiful enough in itself and if I wasn’t climbing the mountain for charity I would have been quite happy staying put with this view. We were in the clouds at 3300 metres and it was stunning and surprisingly quite a lot warmer than the rest of the climb. The resthouse was much nicer than expected (I have learnt not to expect much being in the jungle for 2 months). It was also the first time I could eat a whole packet of biscuits without feeling guilty. We ate a good hearty dinner before settling down to sleep at 5.30pm. Ha ha, not before watching a beautiful sunset though. I don’t know how i thought i could get to sleep at 5.30 and i didn’t – instead I laid there staring at my watch until 1.30am when we had to get up. I woke up and piled on the layers – 4 top layers, 3 bottom layers, 2 socks, hat and gloves, not forgetting head torch and the all important smarties. We had what they call ‘supper’ at 2am before starting our ascent upto the summit. I was exhausted and it was pitch black and freezing outside. Everyone felt lightheated and sick due to the lack of sleep so we took it really slow at first and literally took 2 steps and had a break. This seemed good at the time but we completely lost our momentum and were eventually struggling to reach the summit for sunset. There were so many points that we thought we were nearly there and weren’t. Once we got onto the ropes we had to climb sheer rock for 2km in the dark which just a rope – it was physically exhausting. We stopped every 1-2 minutes to breathe but it was freezing and the wind was so harsh that we had to carry on as soon we caught out breathe back. However everytime we looked out in the moments we rested, the view was just incredible. I made sure I took the time to enjoy it amongst the hard work. There was a point that our guide Lawrence saw us all falling asleep and clapped his hands at us – I got a burst of energy and actually started to run up this sheer rock, that didn’t last long though. There were times I thought I was going to make it but knowing that I was doing it for charity really helped keep me motivated. At the last point we were standing at the bottom of the summit, there was only 200m to the top but it was so steep and all rock that we had to fully rock climb and I just couldn’t do face it. Lawrence our guide had to drag me up most of the way – I had made it so far. The sun had pretty much set by the time we got up there but it was worth it, so worth it. We were still a few metres away from the others and even then I was struggling but we got there, up to 4095.2 metres. The summit was a really small space, about a metre of jagged rock across so there wasn’t a whole lot of room to stand and people were falling all over the place. We had a big group photo at the top with Hayley (from Orangutan Appeal UK) dressed as an orang-utan in her costume to celebrate orang-utan awareness week. It was a great moment and we stayed up there for about an hour just taking it all in and putting off walking back down. We were so lucky with the weather and it didn’t rain the whole time we were there, in fact it was sunny so the views were just breathtaking. The descent was a whole different chapter however. It wasn’t for lack of energy, just for our poor legs. My knees were starting to really hurt and our guide had to hold my hand for quite a lot of the way so I didn’t go tumbling down the mountain – he called me princess (ha ha). I may go off to travelling around the world, living in the jungle, climbing mountains and all sorts but I guess i’ll always have a bit of princess in me 
I was in a little group we called ‘turtle group’ on the way down as we took turtle steps – it took 2 and a half hours to get to Laban Rata where we had breakfast, packed our bags and within 45mins at 10.15am were back climbing down to the bottom. The walk down felt like forever, it took 5 hours but the knees were just killing and the stick came really handy. We got back through the gates at 3.30pm with lots of laughs and lots of aches but feeling extremely satisfied. We had lunch before getting in the car to head back to Sepilok for work the next day. However, the journey wasn’t as expected and 4 out of the 12 of us were sick at various points along the way and we didn’t get back to very late at night. That night wasn’t fun, I was up being sick for most of it and so was everyone else – only 4 out of 12 of us went to work the next day. Unfortunately this didn’t go away for four days and today is my first day I have felt normal enough to go back to work and the first day I have felt like revisiting the memory of this mountain.
Hope you enjoyed my very in depth tale – it was a fantastic experience and now that I am back on hard ground and walking again I am happy to say I loved it but would never do it again, not mount kinabalu at least.