all hail the majestic aki-nabalu

golden week travelogue part 3 ~ mount kinabalu
07-09 May 2008


it was late afternoon when our royal brunei landed back in kota kinabalu. it felt funny just about 24 hours ago we left for brunei and now we were back again on this same land. it was like a deja-vu.

view from my flight window

my friend has already booked a room for us at le meridien, so we quickly grabbed a cab and headed to the city. i was hoping we could be at the waterfront in time to view the sunset.

by the way, this friend who booked the room is my dearest friend's friend. i met him for the first time in brunei. apparently he has like thousands of hotel membership points so he used those for booking.

little did we know when we arrived at the hotel and opened the room door, that it was a suite!

i know he's rich and all that but this surely a bit too much, i felt a bit obligated to sell him part of my soul.

oh well, probably the bank he works at in brunei pays his salary in oil barrels or something (thanks khalid! :)


the room was totally sea view, i could see the lighted-up sky from by bed. probably even from my toilet if i looked really hard.

but then, we were invited to have free reception cocktail buffet on top floor after doing our royal gold-class member check-in there. the lounge has this wide window panel we could see the whole sea horizon from.

ok forget the room-view sunset, we were gonna enjoy the sunset right here right now.




there were we sipping drinks while observing the sun in its final glory. so this is how being on holiday really feels like. a non-backpacked money-briefcased 6-star holiday that is.

by the time i finished my cocktail, i already forgot how it was like being a commoners.

mt kinabalu park


the next morning started with some minor misunderstanding with our mountain-climbing tour agent about pickup timing. we thought it was 7.30am, they thought it was 12.30pm, in the end we settled at 10am departure. oh well.

2 hours van trip later we arrived at kinabalu park resort at ranau/kundasang. after doing all the registrations and took note of the schedule, we wondered around.

frankly, there was nothing much there. none that excite me anyway. there were some dorm buildings, some food hall which mostly serves buffet style menu, botanical garden and some walking trails that i didn't bother go in. i mean, the greeneries all looked the same to me.


this is where we stayed for the night.

notice the mt kinabalu at the backdrop? i shuddered to think that we were actually gonna climb all the way up to the top tomorrow. i mean, it looked very far and high up.

oh god.

this lady briefed us about tomorow's climb route




night time local entertainment while we were having our dinner.. and this fella visited our room

On your mark...get set.. GO!

by 8am tomorrow morning, we already had our heartfull breakfast, picked up our mountain climbing passes, handshaked our guide and set to go.

oh and a lil' prayer too...


a van sent us to Timpohon gate about about 1.5km away to begin our climb. so this was it - the starting point. the feeling was just surreal. i mean, if everything goes well, i will be at the top by sunrise!




ok the first mission was to go from point A (timpohon gate) to point B (laban rata guesthouse, >3000m high) which approximately a 6km journey through various steps - earth, stones, tree roots, well.. anything that could get us a step higher.

the first few km were pretty boring i must say. all normal plants around, so there were nothing special to see. plus, somehow i got a bit upfront than my group so i ended up plucking in my headphones and started humming amuro namie's numbers while making those steps.

i started off the climb with a long sleeve shirt and a track bottom but they ended up as 3-quarter sleeve shirt and a knee length bottom. the wind was chilling but i still sweat, at least up to almost 3m elevation as what above photo tells.

there were many resting booth like this along the journey where there was toilet and supply of untreated water (which we were warned could make us sick because our stomachs were not adapt to it unlike the locals).

what's cool about these booths are they have information on current geography.




as we got higher and higher, there were much more things to see. the plants here are those that thrived in cold weather and thinner soils. my favourite? definitely the pitcher plant. i caught one in its full red glory.

before we knew it, ok after much anticipation, sweat and cramped legs, we were above the clouds!

Laban Rata (3272m) ~ one stop before the final climb


it took us almost 5 hours the reach laban rata guesthouse at 3272.7m elevation where we would stay the night and resume climbing to the peak at 3am the next morning.

by this time, me legs were killing me, so i quickly checked in the 5-double-deckers dorm room and took a nap straight away to recharge. my friends fared much better in the leg department, only they had headache probably due to the thin air.

the final climb to Low's peak

we woke up shortly before 3am. while we were having our early breakfast (a pot of horlicks with some biscuits and energy bars), we could hear the wind roaring like crazy outside.

seriously it sounded just like the apocalypse out there, so i was all,' gosh, are we really really gonna go out there?'

apparently we were, of course.
...because the truth is out there.


to my surprise, it wasn't as cold as i had expected. to me, i was just full of anticipation of what might come. there were like gazillion people who failed to get on top, and i was about to find out why.

it was dead dark most of the pathway, with the only sights being the headlight trails from the people in front.

the final checkpoint before heading to the peak

after about 2 hours of early morning hike through carved steps, slopes, and especially towards the tops, steep rocks that requires rope to pull ourselves up, i managed to reach the low's peak!!

the peak was just pile of rocks with signboards. if this were the everest, there would be flag poles. i was expecting some kind of wide flat clearance where we could do line dancing while waiting for sun rise but instead, only few person could stand on the highest point at a time.

i'm not bragging or anything but to tell you the truth, i did not think the overall climb was that hard. the only thing killing me was the coldness that started to creep in my bones once i became dormant. it was 5.30am and i had a good an hour before sunrise. the wind was strong so i had to curl myself behind some rocks. once or twice some chap would tap me on my shoulder asking for help to take their photos, and i had to reluctantly leave my comfort zone. after all, obviously i had to ask one of them to take my photo considering the fact that my friends were nowhere to be seen.

oh yes, i had no idea where were they at that moment. not until the sun had risen (which to be honest, nothing overly spectacular because i saw the light one minutes, and then the stupid clouds covered it all) and i was starting to climb down when i met my dear friend.

which was cool because now that we have each other to snap each other's photos, we could cam-whore over 4000m above sea level. of course, cool on top of the fact that i would want my friends to succeed in whatever they do too haha ...

and this pretty much summed up our feelings at the moment haha...

only after it was bright we started to appreciate the surrounding sights. man, we were very very high up indeed. we were literally on cloud-9.

not for long though, because then i just realized how painful it was to climb down. gosh i must have been so engrossed for the effort to get to the top, i totally mislooked the going down part.

i cringed everytime my knees had to stop myself from sliding the way down. and the fact that now we could see all the steep edges half a step away didn't help either.

plus, it rained when we were halfway down so it got all slippery. i'd never forget that 9km climb-down misery, i even vowed to never climbing any mountain anymore.

not in near future anyway.

group photo at the end of the climb with our guide

all in all, i survived. i survived big time. it was such an enriching experience i probably have found a new respect for life.

eventhough probably while it lasted only 5 minutes after we crossed the finishing line, or within the 2 days MC i got due to muscle pain after i returned home, or even within the 1 week when i still could not walk properly let alone using stairs.

all i'm certain about is when anybody talks about the tallest mountain in south east asia, i could go, 'yeah and you know what? i've climbed it' with a full smug on my face.

and of course, they don't have to know anything about the climb-down.



...ed