We flew into Kota Kinabalu which is the capital of Sabah, part of Malasyian Borneo. Borneo is quite confusing as an island as it consists of 3 countries; Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. Sabah is the northern territory of Borneo homing to SE Asias highest mountain, Mt Kinabalu at an ever-growing 4095m and the orangutan which is only found here and one other place in the world. So, our 1st day in KK gave us quite a fright! We stand out like a sore thumb being in a dense muslim culture, it's quite hard to get used to people staring at you initially. However by that evening we started to settle in. Most of KK so far has been spent sorting out the rest of our Borneo trip, as there is not a great deal to see in KK, it's a very rundown city and when you consider this as the capital of somewhere which is quite 3rd world it's best to make use of communication whilst we still have it! So booking our Mt Kinabalu climb was stressful to say the least. Sabah is renowned for corruption within the tourism industry so you can't help but feel that you are getting ripped off, but at least it is booked now. So we cannot wait for the 15th April when our trek begins. Our 2nd evening led us to be quite entusiastic in absorbing ourselves in malay/muslim culture. We visited the Filipino night market where they sell local food. Rob asked what the food was and how much it cost in malay which he was proud of until they replied back in malay! However when you consider you can eat for 7p it's worth it! It was a great experience trying different food at the hawker stalls, except for our first try which we immediately spat out! Then we went for a cheap meal of malaysian food on the waterfront followed by a foot massge and some sisha (the muslim equivalent to going to the pub). We have also booked our bus ticket to Sepilok for tommorrow to see the orangutans. Our hostel in KK is lovely (thank god!), named Lavander Lodge. It's beautifully clean and comfortable and more like a B&B with free breakfast. Hope to get some pictures up soon, but their computers are a little too dated to have memory card slots!

We arrived at the bus station and were immediately bombarded by locals working for the buses trying to get you onto their bus...we hadn't even got out of the taxi when they crowded us, it was crazy! Furthermore at the worst possible time my (Rob's) flip flop broke and I was left floundering around with one flip flop whilst a local stacked all my bags onto me! Luckily malay locals can do wonders with just a plastic straw and kindly fixed it for me to a background of laughter and sarcastic comments of "rock & roll!" It was all ingest though and we had a good laugh! We finally made it to the coach which was surprisingly very modern and cleaner than most western coaches. This is where our magical journey of malay musical taste began on our 6hr trip (for just 10 pound return)! To start it was a collection of 80s love ballads and karoke DVDs, the locals seem to love music, the volumn was up so loud as well! It helped pass the time anyway on the long bumpy and windy journey through the mountains. We arrived in Sandakan in the afternoon which infamous for the Japanese death marches during WWII, where 1800 Australians and 600 British died in their POW camps. We didn't spend anytime here, instead carried on to Sepilok in a taxi which is home to the orangutan sanctuary. Our B&B was set back into the jungle so once again we had to contend with local insect life! We went for a walk that afternoon through the rainforest, however we soon realised flip flops were a bad idea after passing a snake and hearing stories of leeches becoming very friendly in this park! We managed to get some good views though over the canopy walkway bridge. We spent the whole next day at the orangutan sanctuary. The sanctuary is a protected area of rainforest to provide a sheltered habitat for the indigenous orangutan. Unfortuantely most of Sabah has undergone a large amount of deforestation to allow room for their local palm oil plantations which is the countries major export. Consequently many baby orangutans are being orphaned and would otherwise not survive without the sanctuary and rehabilitation unit where they are taught skills to fend for themselves in the wild. So orangutan numbers have dwindled to only 20,000. Despite orangutans being a wild animal their name is derivied from the malay for "man of the forest" and they share 96.4% of our DNA. Therefore being handled from a baby they crave human interaction and depend upon the volunters as if they were their Mum. So they start off being hand fed milk and bananas and gradually they are introduced to live in the forest and ween off the feedings until they can fend for themselves. Some orangutans come back for the feeding times, others never come back. So we encountered several of the inhabitants during feeding time, most of the time they were about 20ft away but one did come running through the undergrowth and jumped up onto the viewing platform and was about 3ft away from us, with nothing but a chinese tourist with their camera in between us! Apparently it was the cameras and personal belongings he wanted! It was very special experience seeing this endangered animal in its natural environment with no bars, cages or fences to keep them there. So on our return to KK we stayed in Chinatown which is just off the backpackers street of Beach Street. We were once again treated to a live band singing.....80s love ballads! After our night in the hostel in Chinatown we checked out as soon as we could as we had booked a night in a hotel just outside KK. We were very keen to get there despite knowing that we couldn't check in until 2pm! Luckily there was a huge shopping complex next door where we killed off some time until check in! Once all checked in we headed up to the rooftop pool where we managed to get some sunbathing in which we haven't managed to do since Oz, we also ordered some drinks which were BOGOF. We then headed back to our room so we could watch some films on the TV and order room service. We were so excitied to be indulging in luxuries and bargain prices! In the morning we ordered breakfast off a set menu. For some reason malay people find western food a confusing thing! We tried to order some museli with eggs on toast and some green tea, but for some reason they wanted to put the eggs on top of the cereal and gave us milk in a tea pot, but no tea! We then had next to our orange juice a random pint of soya milk each! Bizarre! We were finally made to leave our refuge of the Novohotel and return back to KK after breakfast! We took a trip 90km to a place called Beaufort. We had local Hi-tea, the accompaniments were very strange such as deep fried green bean cakes. We found that asians love vegetable flavour sweets, such as sweetcorn, avocado or yam flavour ice-cream and green pea flavour crisps! We also tried the local delicacy of previously described durian fruit. It supposedly smells like hell but tastes like heaven, however it tasted like hell; a cross between sweetcorn, cream, old melon from the back of the fridge and very ripe goats cheese! Our faces looked as if we had just eaten a lemon! Next we went for a boat cruise down the river where we saw the indigenous and endangered Probiscus monkey (only 3,000 left worldwide) and the more abundant Mikak monkey. Rob hired out some binoculars so he too could see the monkeys. We then had a dinner of local malay food such as chilli crab, egg curry etc and ate to a golden setting sun on the river. When it became dark we went out on the boat again to watch the magic that are fireflies, it was like a natural Christmas tree the way they lit up in the trees. The experience was made all the more atmospheric by a silent, distant, electrical storm lighting up the sky at intervals. The river had crocodiles and box jellyfish in which we thought we had got away from! But we didn't come across any. The next day we took a trip to Kinabalu National Park to learn a little about the mountain we are soon to climb. We went on a canopy walkway again through the rainforest, this one was less sturdily constructed than the other one as it was just a plank with ropes and only 6 people allowed on at one time, it was higher as well. We also ventured to a waterfall but didn't venture in as could see leeches swimming away! Then we visited the sulphurous hot springs which were a little disappointing as just seemed to be a load of bath tubs surrounded by a wonderful eggy aroma and hot and cold taps! Not quite what one condures up when told they are going to bathe in steaming hot springs! After that we were treated to a yummy local chinese lunch. Next stop is Mt Kinabalu on the 15th April......

It was a perfect day for the climb with an overcast sky to keep us cool, however Rob started to develop a cold typically at the worst possible time! We met with our guide Noel at Kinabalu Park Headquaters who gave us a little packed lunch each of numerous sandwiches, 2 hard boiled eggs, fried chicken and an apple! This all added to the increasing weight of Robs bag who had enough water to fill a swimming pool which was lucky as all the rest stops up the mountain only had untreated water! He also had 2 first aid kits ranging from broken limbs to blood transfusions and half of cadburys chocolate factory, so well prepared! So we began the ascent up Mt Kinabalu, the 1st stretch is a 6km hike up 2ft high steps and rocky boulders for 5hrs including rest stops. It really got the heart pumping, but was OK, tiring but bearable on the legs. The higher we got the further into the clouds we climbed. On reaching Laban Rata - our bed for the night, it really did seem like we were Greek gods sitting on the clouds looking at the plebs below! We were treated that evening to the most amazing sunset at 3,000 metres up. Golden sun shining on the clouds below and a massive rainbow arching over us! Truly amazing. When we checked in we were ready to drop and the receptionist gave us our key to our room and said it was in a seperate bulding 5 minutes up the mountain! Jaws hanging we dragged ourselves up to our room, making trips back to Laban Rata in the dark for our meals! Not impressed. We went to bed at 7pm wrapped in a mosquito net, but were unable to sleep as it was absolutely freezing because they were having electricity failures! We were fully clothed under a thick blanket and still managed to freze. Second worst night we have ever had - the first being the Whitsundays! Robs cold also worsened as his nose totally blocked, he was sneezing everywhere and had to take some paracetamol to reduce his temperature. He was starting to worry that he was going to have to abandon the summit in the morning. The alarm went off at 1am and we dragged ourselves out of bed after less than 2hrs of broken sleep and started layering up for the cold night time ascent to the summit. It was a 2.7km hike with only a head torch for light, so the ascent got steeper and steeper. In some areas the gradient reached approx 70 degrees, requiring the use of a rope to pull ourselves up - it was a relief to be using our arm muscles instead of our legs finally! We later realised how glad we were to be doing the ascent in the dark as daylight revealed sheer cliff faces so one slip without the rope (which we were only able to hold on to) would have left us tumbling down the mountain! Pretty dangerous when you think about it, but when adrenaline sets in you just get on with it! Looking up and down the summit you could see a snake of light flickers from other peoples head torches trudging on. It looked like a candlelit vigil to the moutain. Also we thought the Mt Cook sky was amazing in NZ but it was no comparison to this night - the stars were so big and we were so high up it felt like we were in space looking down on Earth. The ascent was hard, passing numerous people breaking down in tears or vomiting at one side due to the altitude, but we managed to carry on. After 3hrs of clambering up bar granite, struggling to breathe in ever thinning air, we reached the summit at sunrise . Howvever to reach Lows Peak we had another 200 metres of crawling up the rock to do! We finally made it to the 4,095.2 metre summit sign at 6am, took a couple of photos then started our descent! We were not hanging around! We felt so ill, were so hungry and tired. Robs cold was getting even worse. The views were spectacular, it was amazing being so high up, but as we said earlier the sunlight revealed the true extent of our journey as we then had to abseil down the summit with no harness, just rope! I was very proud of the way I dealt with the height, I managed to stay calm and keep the vertigo at bay. We naively expected the descent to be easier and quicker than the the ascent, but when you take into account all the hard work we had already done on no sleep and the size of the steps we had to climb down it was soul destroying, if it wasn't for the guide being with us, I would have screamed the whole way down! Each step down delivered one more blow of pain to our joints ripping our leg muscles in half, at the 4km mark we thought it would never end. We soon realised why everyone passing us on our way up looked so miserable! Robs temperature soon got worse and he was eating paracetamols like sweets! He couldn't believe that he was still on the mountain with a cold and what he later found out to be a chest infection. When normally he would have the day off work and be tucked up in bed with a lemsip. We finally made it to the bottom after what seemed like 9hrs of torture. We've never been so glad to get to bed and rest our poor limbs. We went to bed at 7pm after an awful bus journey back. Both of us were feeling sick due to the exhaustion, we couldn't sleep on the bus because of this. When we woke the next day we could hardly move. We were on the 1st floor of our hostel and the sight of those steps down to the front door almost made me scream! We were walking like sideways cowboys down the street to get some lunch, getting more than our usual odd stares from the locals! Even the small kerbs took time to get down from! We now have a greater sense of empathy for the elderley as we have walked in their shoes for the last 2 days! Off to Singapore tomorrow for one night then we catch an early train to Kuala Lumpur.....