Terima Kasih, Sama Sama

Sandakan is a strange little town. The former capitol of Borneo before WWII, the Japanese reduced it to rubble and today it is rebuilt to little more than a port town and former home of the not-so-famous author, Agnes Keith. Walking around was interesting. A third of the people gave me strange stares, a third of the people smiled at me, and the other third walked by me without notice.
Walking around town with my camera hanging around my neck, several groups of people asked me to take their picture. Some of them spoke English and we talked for a bit, others, for whatever reason, just wanted their picture taken. Here's some of them:
These punks put a lot of effort into the hagard clothes, odd hairdos, and extreme piercings. My favorite: the kid in the white's cut umbrella.
These two ladies worked a tiny restaurant where I had lunch. They also took pictures of me with their camera phones. When I paid, they asked if I could pay them in a single dollar bill instead of 3 Malaysian Ringgit.
These Malaysian dudes stopped me walking down the street just to pose for a pic. No English, nothing other than "photo! photo!" They posed and were on their way.
The back pocket of my shorts had a hole big enough that my wallet would fall out of it. This set up his sewing business on the sidewalk and fixed my pocket in a matter of minutes for 1 RM.
These are fisherman's kids who, when I walked by, were fishing a watermelon out of the filthy water of the Sandakan harbor. These kids loved the camera and loved to see their picture on the display after I took the shots.

Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary

Just over 20 kilometers outside of Sandakan is the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary, a rehibilitaion center created to help re-introduce Orang Utans back to the wild after being displaced by deforestation. Here guests are welcome to watch the two daily feedings in which the great animals swing from the jungle to eat a hefty helping of bananas and milk.Sepilok is one of the few Orang Utan sanctuaries in the entire world. Threatened by extinction, Orang Utans are only found on the islands of Borneo and Java. It is predicted that they could be extinct as early as 2012. That's 5 years away. Less than 7,000 remain in Java and the larger population in Borneo is constantly threatened by the unrelenting creation of palm oil plantations that have taken over an incredible amount of land on the island. The map below shows the remaining areas in the world where Orang Utans live. According to Harvard psychologist, James Lee, Orang Utan's are the world's smartest animal next to human. They use simple tools, build and live in nests often constructed with roofs to cover them from the rain.Orang Utans are the world's biggest tree-living mammal. They rarely come down from the trees and, unlike most other monkeys, do not jump between branches but always swing. They are also more solitary than most other primates, usually only coming together to mate. In Malaysian Orang Utan translates to "man of the forest." They are the official animal of Sabah and their pictures are found all over cities, advertisements, and souvenirs. Ironically, the country and the rest of Borneo has not done enough to ensure the preservation of the species. A bus ride through the Sabah countryside is more than enough cause alarm. Nearly the entire way the mountains and valleys are covered as far as the eye can see with palm oil plantations. I've never in my life seen one crop dominate an entire landscape so fully.
Above is a picture I took while spending 5 days living up the Kintabantagan river in the protected jungle. I was lucky enough to see this Orang Utan in the wild, swinging from tree to tree, stopping to pick and eat some fruit. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about travel is because in the constant change of the world there are many places in the world that won't be the same for much longer. Sadly, Borneo and its population of Orang Utans (as well as pygmy elephants, Sumatran rhinos and other endangered species) is one of these places that are unlikely to last unchanged long enough for my children to see.

The Sandakan Fish Market

Of all the markets I have been to in the world, the Sandakan fish market goes unparalleled in the variety of its catches, the character of its vendors, and its rank smell of its venue in the middle of the day. A breeze blowing through the building made the air bearable. The friendly men selling the fish proudly showed off their goods well aware I wasn't in the market to buy. The fish lying dead on the metal tables were tropical catches of such diversity that, had they been alive, an aquarium could have been opened and charged a hefty admission. Some men still hacked at the fish with butcher's knives, methodically chopping up large barracudas, tunas, groupers, sting rays, sharks, rays, and other fish I was planning to go scuba diving to see a week later in Semporna. When grabbing their whole fish to show potential buys, men secured their grip with a thumb in the fish's eyeball. After presenting the fish, the quickly held it over the scale ready to weigh it and give a price. Those without customers looking called out for attention announcing their cheap prices. When no one looked over their table, the men washed over their fish with buckets of water and cleaned the extra guts and eyeball jelly off the table down to the floor. Some of the fish had been split right through the cranium down the spine and, well, looked far from appetizing. Sharks and rays had tails and fins sliced off, each with the same precision.
The men spoke with limited English but held me in friendly conversation until they said every word in their vocabulary. Most were happy to have their picture taken but made me wait until they could hold up their biggest catch to pose with.
This large barracuda would have been only a tiny fraction of what it would cost in any major city but with no possible way of cooking it -or eating more than a couple small fillets of it- buying it, or any other fish, was out of question.
I never even knew sting rays were good for eating. Evidently some people like them, and there's obviously a specific way of butchering them to get to the good meat. I love seafood, but these were only fascinating, not appetizing.
How these rays were caught, I'm unsure but seeing just one flying through the deep waters on a day of diving makes a boatful of happy divers. Here, they lie having lost their grace a sad sight to any diver.

Nescafe with Milk-Water Rafting

The rafting is what interested me but the ride on the antique train through the Borneo jungle sold me on the trip. Picked up early in the morning, I met a Swedish couple I'd be rafting with and chatted with them on the way to Beaufort, a small town south of Kota Kinabalu. There we waited for the train that was to take us down to the rafting spot on the river.

It was no surprise that the train was late. Ask a local and they'll claim that the trains regularly run on time but, come on, who do they think they're fooling? In all fairness, the train did arrive on time, but it departed late. The reason was that the single engine that was used to drive the train also had to run around all of the seperate tracks, organizing the different cars. It shifted between each of the three tracks taking one car of cargo one way, the coming back with a passenger cabin going the other.

A single driver in the engine and one man shifting the tracks, they only took 15 minutes to organize the cars and get ready to pull away, heading for the Padas River. By this time everyone ready to board was waiting, bags in hand, ready to rush on and grab a seat. The passenger cars came to a halt next to the platform and before the passengers on the train had a chance to get off, the rush to get on began with no holds barred.

Forgetting all the manners my mother taught me, I squeezed my way on trying not to shove the old ladies too hard and I found my way to an open seat. Savvy locals skipped the fight by going through the windows to set their boxes and bags on open seats to reserve them. Thus I sat next to an elderly woman of little more than wrinkles and bones, who would have never fought her way to a seat but instead used all her strength to lift her bag up through the window to claim the window seat I wanted.

My romantic ideas of a museum train still running on old tracks through a rugged jungle came true, but not without the realities of, well, an old train running on old tracks. Each of the three passenger cabins was overfilled with people squating and standing with all their belongings. Each was a sweat box. The heat made most people sit quietly and, other than the constantly clickity-clack and loud clang-ing of the train against the tracks, the only sound heard was the constant flapping of newspapers and anything else that people used to fan themselves.

The train traveled through lush forest and brushed past the walls of mountains carved to make way for the tracks. Ferns and vines grew off the walls and were so close I could have easily reached out the window and grabbed them. The tracks twisted and turned through trees and eventually ran alongside a wide, chocolate-brown river. Along the way there were numerous stops at small houses that were little more than make-shift jungle housing. These bamboo and wood houses appeared to have no connection with the outside world other than the railroad tracks.
After an hour and half we arrived at the rafting camp. Here, while the train and the rest of the passengers just sat and waited, we took our things to the camp and then returned with only the things we needed on the river. After a fifteen minute stop the train then chugged back in motion and drove forward another 10 kilometers before dropping us off where the rafting trip would begin.

Before rafting we were given a humorous introduction to the dangers of class 3 and 4 rapids and were instructed on how to handle them. Paddling like on a honeymoon was, they warned, asking to get flipped into the water. Watches made in Thailand were to be taken off as they would not be waterproof as guaranteed. Watches made in Malaysia, however, would withstand any force of nature and continue to tell accurate time. Offering the handle, oars could be used to help pull someone back to the boat, the paddle end was used to beat away those you wished to keep out of the boat. And on, and on.

It wasn't so much 'white' water rafting. Even the rapids hardly turned white. According to our guides, the more accurate color of the Padas River was "Nescafe with Milk." True enough.

The rapids were no joke. We lost at least one person on every rapid and a couple times, the entire boat flipped scattering us all over the river to fend for ourselves. It was great fun. At one point, when flipped across the boat, I caught a random knee in my nose and came up with a nosebleed. I felt it but there was little to do about it then, floating down rapids in a life jacket.
To our advantage, our boat was filled with guides. Beside myself and the 2 Swedes there were 5 guides in our boat who rode the river daily. This meant we took all the rapids head on and if anyone was "honeymoon" paddling, they heard about it. On the last rapid of the hour-long trip they decided to play a "game" they called Last Man Standing.

This was not a game. The ordered everyone to the back of the boat, grabbed a rope tied to the front of it, and just before we hit the rapids, we leaned back, the guide pulled the rope and the boat was flipped on purpose. It was awesome being flung through the huge rapids. Recent heavy rainfall had meant the river was deep and there was little chance to collide with the rocks. Instead, it was a roller coaster ride in the water with the main worry being gulping too much river water.As I was sent through the rapids without anything I could do about it, I soon realized I was headed for the shore. I wasn't necessarily too alarmed at first, but then as I was washed to the edge of the river, the flow of the water reversed and I was soon flowing back up river. Helpless against the current, I could only enjoy the ride. But as the slow flow back emptied me back in the rapids I was flowing up river again, back into the same pattern. Again, I was only on the edge of the rapids and was swirled right back upriver, and along river bank again. I was caught in a cycle in the river.

Eventually a guide made his way back up the river to help. I made it to the edge of the river to meet up with him and, instead of walking along the shore down river to the ending point, we hiked up river in the rocks and mud to where we could re-enter the river, well ahead of the rapids and swim back across -to the middle of the river- and enjoy the perils of the river again. This worked and ended up being a great time. Others were jealous I had another go at the rapids, but for my extra run, I was exhausted. We ate lunch casually until we heard the train coming back down the tracks and we hustled to collect our things and meet it at the tracks. It was the same ride home, only hotter in the mid-day, but eventually I made it back to my hostel and looked in the mirror to find that on the way home my knock in the nose had turned into a rafting souvenir of two black eyes.

The Top of the World

At 6 degrees latitude, it was the closest I've ever been to the equator, but standing at 4,095 meters above sea level atop Mt. Kinabalu, it was the coldest I've ever been in South East Asia. Having finished the two-day's climb to the top around 5:00 am, there was little more to do than sit and wait for the sun to rise. Resting, looking off into the dark distance, soon I was shivering cold rubbing my thin gloves together trying to keep my fingers warm. I couldn't do the same for my toes, of which I had already lost all feeling.On the way up in the pitch black of 3:00 am, I followed a single white rope with my headlamp up the last 2 kilometers of the hike. Slowled to a crawl's pace, in the final 100 meters of boulders that made up Low's Peak I was reduced to climbing over individual rocks with hands and feet, one at a time.

On the top as the sun finall began to rise, the 360 degree view of the world around me ever so slowly became illuminated and, eventually, I could see more than the thousands of stars in the sky, the faint lights of Kota Kinabalu in the far distance below, the slowly moving lights of the climbers still making there way to the top, or the short distance my headlamp lit in front of my eyes.

As the orange in the distance grew and I could finally see where I was -on top of a mountain, the highest place for hundreds of miles- for the first time in the hike I felt scared of heights. Just below me, to the west was a long drop falling into jagged shards of the mountain. To the south were other peaks, lower but steep and rugged, impossible to climb. To the east was a sloping grade of sharp boulders leading to a drop off into a deep abyss of a valley. Down there the mountains looked like wrinkles in the earth and it was hard to tell if the whites wisps were clouds or lakes below. The north was where we had climbed and suddenly the prospect of going back down the same way was worrisome, now that I could see where I was going.

I can't possibly describe how incredibly beautiful it was up there, and though these pictures show what it looked like, they lack perspective and a depth of field that I enjoyed with my own eyes. They also lack the icy chill of the wind that I could not hide from, the fresh but cruelly thin air that I inhaled in deep breathes, the soreness in every muscle of my legs, and, most importantly, the exhilaration I felt from finally reaching the top of the mountain that had been looming over me since arriving in Borneo.

The wind whipped but the peak seemed to exist above and excluded from, all weather. Though only half as high as Mt. Everest I felt, quite literally, on top of the world. The ocean I flew over days before seemed impossibly far away. The mountains the mini bus had difficulty climbing along a hectic road to the base camp were reduced to tiny hills. The clouds in the distance slowly floated near the mountain and as they reached nearby mountain tops, they flowed over the peaks spilling into a newly formed ocean of fog. They moved quickly, like time-elapsed video, showing a similarity between sea and sky.
I was relieved of my fear of heights climbing back down the mountain, realizing that taking it slowly there were few immediate steep cliffs. It was only in the distance that the mountain appeared to drop off into nothing. Having climbed down the the very top I was able to get my first glimpse of Low's Peak from just below. The photo below is of Low's Peak. Don't jump to conclusions about its accessibility until you look closely: follow the thin white rope from the bottom-left of the photo up to where there are climbers reduced to small bits of color against the huge backdrop.

BACK TO THE BEGINNING: Base Camp to Laban Rata
On the eve of the hike we spent the night at the Rock Hostel at the Base Camp of Mt. Kinabalu National Park. Of note were the extremely friendly and surprisingly beautiful all female staff of park rangers, dressed in skirts and shirts so tight it was obvious they spent no time hiking the trails around the office. That night I attended a briefing about climbing the park and packed my bag carefully, intending to pack only exactly what I needed for the hike so as to not carry up extra weight for no reason at all.

I started my climb at 8:00 am the next morning. I hiked it with some friends I had met the previous days, a Scottish girl, an Irishman and an Englishman. It was an endless upward hike. Despite some wooden stairways, hand rails, and rocks positioned as ideal footings, the hike was difficult given my physical shape. The altitude didn't help. At the the first check point we only made a small stop and felt optimistic we had conquered the first kilometer with only a healthy increase in heart rate. But the first leg was by far the easiest. The trail steepened and we began to notice the rare flat stretches in the trail. I felt like I was floating over these as I could walk them without looking down for good footings and instead gazed around at the jungle while my feet moved on autopilot.

In the middle of the hike we hit a groove, helped along by any silly word games we could think up. We played games naming all the countries beginning with A, then B, then C. We told every joke we could think of. We took turns making up shorts stories. These games kept our mind off our muscles and we hiked up into the clouds without realizing we were tired at all.

For a long stretch we hiked in the clouds. We could only see the trail ahead, the forest around us was amidst a dense white fog. At rest points offering benches to sit and rest our legs we stopped briefly to snack and catch our breath. We enjoyed these breaks but made sure not to loose our sweat or let our legs stiffen up.

The landscape grew rockier and the trees grew shorter and more rare. Fatigue started to weigh on us and we began to walk slower and slower, breathing heavier and heavier. But the clouds began to break and we started to catch distant glimpses of the mountain top that excited us beyond exhaustion and we kept moving, albeit at a much slower pace, stopping more often but only long enough to snap a couple photos and continue on.

The tops of the clouds traveled so quickly over and around us that by the time we would notice the peaks were exposed and managed to get our cameras out, the clouds would already have rolled back over hiding it from view. Without a doubt we were tired, but when we first saw the large yellow-roofed, white building we were again energized by reaching our day’s resting point and marveled that we had made it with so much energy left.

LABAN RATA

Our resting place for the night, the Laban Rata is a sturdy hostel of paper-thin walls, an all-too small back porch, and an expensive, but good restaurant. We were the second group to reach there that day. We didn’t take long to throw down our bags, untie our shoes, collapse into a chair and start devouring our late lunches.

Fellow hikers slowly trickled in, each equally excited about reaching the stopping point, happy to sit in a chair, eat a hot meal and take a cold shower. Grabbing a table amidst the limited seating of the back porch we watched the clouds roll and sun pass behind the mountains teacing each other card games to pass the time.

Some locals took to playing takra on one of the coolest playing fields I’ve ever seen. It looked as though a ball kicked hard enough would land atop the fluffy white clouds. The guys played without notice of the views behind them and when the ball did soar off the playing field, someone would follow it off the edge and out of vision but never returned empty handed.

Exhausted mentally and physically I went to be a 6:00 pm, expecting to wake up at 2:30 am to start the final ascent by 3:00 am. It took no more than a couple seconds to fall asleep but I awoke in the middle of the night to complete darkness and no way to check the time. I knew it wasn’t near 2:30 yet, but couldn’t be sure. I did nothing. I laid awake for an unknown amount of time in a room so dark I could hardly tell if my eyes were open or shut. I don’t know how long I lied there awake, but I felt content knowing my legs were getting a break even if I wasn't asleep. Eventually the alarm went off and someone turned on the lights. As I layered myself in every article of clothing I brought, we realized that we had all been awake for the past hour or so, lying silently in the dark.

THE FINAL CLIMB: Laban Rata to Low’s Peak

The morning’s hike was the best part of all. Our bags were light since we were wearing all the clothes and had eated all the food we brought. Headlamps on, we started up the cold, wet rocks as scheduled at 3:00. It was fun. We continued with our silly word games and cruised past other hikers who had begun earlier. The air was much colder but we stopped and took off some layers. The air was thinner but we were refreshed by a good night’s sleep and the closer we got, the more excited we became. Slippery wooden stairs gave way to wet rock and then we came to the white rope.

Lying on the the ground, the white rope lead us the rest of the way up to the top. At some points the incline was so steep that we had to use it to climb up a rock face, but for most the time we walked alongside it up the slope. When we stopped for short breaks we turned off our headlamps to get a better look at the masses stars hanging in the sky. Below us a dim lights of other hikers dotted the line back to the Laban Rata.

There were no longer any trees or any bushes. It was all rock. We pushed ahead with very little way to monitor our progress. Meter markers were few and far between but we stayed faithful to the white rope that lead us slowly creeping up the rock. There were no signs of daybreak. The wind picked up and flew freely across the flat sides of the mountain. The air getting even colder, we stopped and put back on any layers we had taken off.

Eventually the smooth rock gave way to a tall, immense stack of boulders. The white rope fell between the jagged edges and we followed it up. Employing our hands to help us on the difficult way upwards, we started to rest every minute or so. It was a relief to use our hands; it felt like we were given our legs a rest. The rope fell between rocks where we could not follow and each of us found our own ways up around the rocks. Then, without warning, we came to two small metal signs, one black and written in Malay, and one green and written in English, congratulating us on having reached 4,095 meters, at Low’s Peak.

THE LONG WAY BACK: Low’s Peak to Base Camp
For the first time in my life, it felt like it took longer on the way back than on the way there. We hiked back down the entire way that morning, using different leg muscles than we had used on the way up. Soon my knees were feeling each step. The initial descent was great because it offered spectacular views we had missed climbing in the dark on the way up. The slope was never bad but in the distance the drop off always looked like a long way down.

We learned that we hadn’t needed to follow the white rope so closely. On the way down we strayed far from the rope to peer down valleys, get angles for pictures or just to zig-zag our path in an attempt to rest our quads and calves.

The clouds seemed miles and miles away for a long time, but we eventually made it closer and closer to them. This allowed us better views down to the smaller, green mountains below but eventually we arrived back to the cloud level, just below Laban Rata. Then we were forced to endure the -then- boring hike through the clouds that gave no breath-taking views and offered no rest from the endless steps downward.

I was amazed we had hiked so far up. The path down seemed twice as long. My body weight grew heavier and I could particularly feel it in my knees in every step down. It was then our turn to wish good luck to the hikers making their way up to the top, but we soon became bored with this and as we saw people coming our way we started to recount fictitious tales of nearly fatal accidents that had occurred at the top. I can't believe we saw a bear and it went crazy, chasing after that man! Could you believe how far that guy fell? He bounced off the rocks like a rag doll!

The end came and not a minute too soon. We crashed down onto the pavement back at the base camp, worn to the bone. It was a incredible relief to not have to walk another step. There I got my certificate stating that on April 23rd, 2007, I, Dustin Thomas Johnston, had climbed Mt. Kinabalu.