After a short hop via Kuala Lumpur we arrived in Kota Kinabalu (KK) Sabah In Malaysian Borneo, once the domain of the British North Borneo Company chaired by Charles Jessel and known as Jessleton until 1967.
After checking into the excellently located budget hotel New Nan Xing in downtown KK we strolled out onto the historic Jessleton Point and ate a seafood Tom Yum, served in a fresh coconut, and a delicious fried fish with shredded green mango. The sun set over the South China Sea.
Over half the population of KK are Chinese so we really could have done with Joe and his Mandarin speaking skills to avoid the numerous food order errors that occurred during our stay! We mainly ate breakfast in the Kedai Kopi noodle bars, so it generally consisted of pork noodle soup, duck with rice, or dim sum. Hot drinks seemed to be the most likely to end in a disaster - the attempts to get a 'nice cup of tea' usually ended up with us receiving a large mug of cold iced super strong stewed tea with sweet UHT milk in it! We also ate at the seafront seafood night market where you select your sea creature or fish from a huge range on display, and then sip your fresh coconut water whilst waiting for it to get grilled and served with ferns in oyster sauce and rice.
Our first booked excursion involved another Air Asia flight to Sandakan in the North East of the island and after a brief visit to the Orangutan and the Sun bear sanctuary at Sepilok we were then off to our two night stay on the banks of the Kinabangan, Malaysia's second longest river.
We drove for about 2 hours past continuous, and endless oil palm plantations which eventually brought us to the narrow strip of remaining protected rainforest along the edge of the river and a 5 minute hop across to the Bilit Adventure Lodge run by a man called Nelson.
We were the only people staying at this resort for the first night and took a fabulous 4pm afternoon boat journey where we saw huge amounts of wild life. Proboscis monkeys, monitor lizards, crocodiles, silver leaf monkeys (langurs) and amazingly an orangutan in the wild. Sadly the rich animal life along the Kinabatagan River is due to the fact that all their habitat has been destroyed and is now oil palms - so they have nowhere else to live.
The accomodation was luxurious by our standards, a little wooden chalet raised up on a wooden built structure in the forest. We saw macaques from our room window, and could hear hornbills in the trees around.
After an evening meal we went into the forest for a night walk where we came across several very colourful birds perching on little branches at head height. These included a Spidercatcher, an Ashy Tailorbird and an Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher who were all asleep until our camera flash hit them!
Leeches managed to find their way into our boots that night and one even buried it's self in Nick's belly button- leeches are incredibly elastic and troublesome to remove!
The following morning we took an early morning 6am boat trip up the river to see more birds and wildlife, and then after breakfast a jungle trek to an ox-bow lake where we saw the rare Oriental Darter- known locally as the Snakebird due to its habit of swimming below the surface of the water with just it's head poking up so it looks like a snake.
We were pleased and surprised to be given "priority seats" by Air Asia for the 45 minute flight back to KK, this simply meant we sat in red topped seats in the first dozen rows and nothing more, but was a sign for more unexpected upgrades in Borneo.
Mount Kinabalu stands as a 4000m granite giant above the forests of Borneo. It is revered by some of the people of Sabah as the resting place of their ancestors. It has many peaks extending from it's plateau: Low's peak, the highest pont, named after the colonial administrator who was a keen naturalist and made the first recorded ascent of the mountain in 1851; The shapely south peak which was featured on the old one Ringgit note and the Donkey's ears that have been the scene of many new rock routes pioneered by Japanese climber Yuji Hirayama who claims to have found one of the worlds greatest E1's if only one could climb at that grade!
We had booked a standard 3D2N Kinabalu Climb package which took the alternative, quieter and more rugged route up the mountain starting from Mesilau Resort. We spent the afternoon exploring a little forest trail, and when we returned to our dormitory style hostel that we had booked, we were unexpectedly upgraded to a lovely little heated chalet as we seemed to be the only people staying in the hostel and they wanted to clean it ready for the high season. In the upmarket restaurant we ate the first of what was to become a very familiar meal provided by Sutera Harbour Resort- the company who now own all hostels, mountain huts, chalets, restaurants, and transport within the Kinabalu National Park, and large parts of the luxury hotel market in KK.
The densely forested trail from Mesilau climbs up (and then down and up again!) for 5.5km when it meets the main trail from the park headquarters. There were only about 10 others on our trail so it was quiet and well vegetated. We saw large Pitcher plants as we ascended the mountain.
After joining the main trail we started to see large numbers of other groups including a cheery Japanese group who were perhaps inspired by the oldest Kinabalu ascentionist- a fellow countryman of ninety.
We had brought Joe to climb Mount Kinabalu when he was just four years old and we had all gone up to the Laban Rata rest house at 3200m arriving in the rain. We remember being booked into a cheaper hut several hundred metres from the cosy main building, and when we arrived late, Joe burst into tears which then precipitated the sympathetic offering of a room in the main Laban Rata building and all was well. Sue and I were also treated to a similar upgrade on this occasion but without tears this time!
The sleepless night in the dormitory was followed by a 2am breakfast and we were off in head torch light by 3am
Steep wooden steps soon give way to the high grip granite slabs. A white rope leads all the way to the summit (mainly for navigation purposes and help on the steeper sections) but although this was Nick's third time on the mountain it still proved to be a delightful journey again. As dawn broke we saw the shadow of the mountain on the western skyline as the alpine glow began to appear on the mountains many peaks.
After a brief pause to view the sunrise on the summit at about 6am, we descended back to Laban Rata hut for yet another Sutera buffet breakfast.
Then we continued the long decent totalling about 3000m to the Park Headquarters and another Sutera buffet before the drive back to KK. The decent always hurts but it was reassuring that the after-affects on our bodies were not as bad as 13 years ago!
The day after saw time to sort and plan. First we put 5kg of laundry into the shop next to our hotel for the princely sum of four pounds. This was the third occasion, since our departure from the UK on 22 August, to get our clothes professionally washed - the last two were a rock pounding job in Kathmandu. We should point out that underwear was washed on a daily basis (by Nick). The addition of five metres of cord, clothes pegs and a collapsible rip stop nylon "kitchen sink" weighing about 20 grammes have been vital additions to our travel kit over the years.
The last item on Sue's bucket list before leaving Borneo was to see the elusive Raffelesia flower, this parasitic plant only grows on a very specific liana vine, and takes 9 months to bloom from the first appearance of a golf ball sized bud erupting on a ground traversing root of the liana. The bud expands to about football size then explodes into a rather stinky red monster which can grow to be up to a metre in diameter. To make matters more tricky they stay in bloom for just four days after which they decay to a black smelly mess.
The man in KK Sabah Tourist Office was very helpful in tipping us off about two locations where current blooms had been reported. The were both back on the other side of Mount Kinabalu so a taxi ride on a beautiful clear morning took us to the first location. After a bumpy track and a £6 fee to an enthusiastic villager we were led up through some trees to where a temporary shelter nursed the flower in a patch of rainforest on his land. After so many years of hearing about these it was nice to finally feast our eyes on such a fine specimen of this rare plant.
We then set off to Vivian's place near Poring Hot Springs which by contrast was a well kept garden with many varieties of fruit trees being cultivated. There we not only saw a blooming Raffelesia but also the decaying remains of several older plants plus the buds of many potential flowers. It appears that there is no season for them and flowering can happen at any time of he year. We suspect that the careful nurturing is the key and it is surprising that Raffelesia spotting is not on the standard package tours for all visitors to Sabah.
In our remain time in Borneo it seemed fitting to continue the search for wildlife but this time closer to "home" so a short walk took us to the last remaining vestige of mangrove in Kota Kinabalu. A tired board walk, some hides and a small tower enabled us to do some final spotting. Not a great deal was seen other than fiddler crabs, mud skippers and a brief encounter with a monitor lizard.
KK has certainly changed since our last visit and we suspect that it will be equally unrecognisable on our return in a few years time but we are optimistic that the biological significance of Sabah in providing the world with an accessible snapshot of a huge biodiversity, together with it's continued World Heritage status will hopefully keep the natural environment safe for the future.
