Kota Kinabalu

After winning a hard-fought 5-day weekend from Avalon (every attempt at vacation from a Korean hagwon must be fought for tooth and nail, it seems), I ran up an uncomfortably large credit card bill and made my way to beautiful Malaysian Borneo for a New Year's holiday. Why Malaysia, you ask? It was actually quite spontaneous. A month or two ago, I was browsing Wikipedia, falling farther and farther into its depths of links -- you know, as one does when bored at work -- when I came across this picture:

That's Mt. Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Southeast Asia, and the highest east of Everest, in fact. The main summit, Low's Peak, tops out at 13,435 feet (4,095 m). Having stumbled upon this picture, I simply decided that I had to make Borneo my first vacation stop. I showed one of my Korean colleagues, and upon seeing the elevation, he asked "Why would you want to climb that?" To which I answered, obviously, "Why would you not?" The island of Borneo consists of parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, and the small country of Brunei. Sadly, five days was not enough time to see much of it, so my trip was confined to the monolith you see above and my port of entry, the coastal town of Kota Kinabalu.

After a four hour flight -- quite short in my experience -- I arrived in Kota Kinabalu at around 2 in the morning. My first impressions:

• It was blissfully, amazingly, stunningly warm. Daegu has been treating me to an average of 20 degrees Fahrenheit and dumping snow on me with uncharacteristic regularity (according to my coworkers), so it was wonderful to leave winter behind, even if just for a few days. It was terribly humid, but the combination of the rainy season and the cool seaborne breeze made it actually quite comfortable.
• I also realized in my taxi ride from the airport to the hostel that it was the first time I'd seen the stars in nearly four months. That realization truly frightened and disgusted me. I have been cooped up in this pollution-choked, neon-lit, sprawling city of Daegu for too long! Getting away from the ambient light and noises of civilization is turning out to be much harder here than anywhere else I've been.
• Even something as innocuous as the Latin alphabet can offer great comfort. English words abound in Korea, you usually see at least a few in every establishment you enter, but you are still nonetheless effectively hemmed in on all sides by Hangeul. The Malay language is just as confusing to an English speaker as Korean, but it uses our alphabet, and seeing billboards, signs, license plates, and brochures in the familiar A-Z was like having an old blanket wrapped around me.
• Korea may be dirty and fairly well-littered with garbage, but it's got nothing on Kota Kinabalu. The stench was almost overpowering, and no matter where you went, the beautiful turquoise ocean was marred by floating trash. It boggles my mind how anyone can look out into a sea of garbage and not be disgusted enough to avoid adding to the pile, but it was depressingly common.

My hostel, the Lavender Lodge, for a meager $8 a night, provided me with a cold shower (actually quite alright considering the heat), a 6-bed dorm all to my self (that was just dumb luck), and an almost unethical amount of air conditioning. I spent my first day in the city simply walking around, taking in among other things the fish market, the seaside promenade, and the local mall.

 Malaysia is predominately Muslim. Islam was introduced by traders and well-established by the end of the 15th century. It was strange to walk around an Asian country featuring mosques rather than Buddhist temples, and even stranger to see women walking around a tropical resort town battling the heat by covering up as much as possible, as proscribed by their religion.

 I only spotted one bicycle the entire time I was in Kota Kinabalu. Truly surprising. Motorcycles were very common, but most people seemed to get around by car. Due to some time as a British possession, Malaysians drive on the right, leading me to several confusing pedestrian maneuvers. Even after five days I hadn't properly trained my head to turn the right way before crossing the street, and I was constantly shocked to see people driving the wrong way or making crazy right-turns across multiple lanes of traffic!

My next two days were spent in the mountains -- more on that in the next post -- and I used my final day to recover from the grueling climb and to relax on the beach. Off the coast of KK there are five islands that make up, quite inconsistently I think, both a national park and collection of resorts. We hopped out to Manukan Island for a much-needed day of convalescence.

 Look at the color of that water! Absolutely marvelous. It was so warm and so salty that even I,Connor the Quite-Sinkable, was able to float comfortably right off the beach.

Beware of jellyfish.

 Mike and Yvonne, two Southeast Asia backpackers that I met on the mountain and with whom I spent the rest of the trip.

Truly, an expensive but much-needed vacation. I'll recount my daring and brutal summit of Mount Kinabalu in my next post, but for now I'll leave you with some statistics:

• Miles hiked - 11.18
• Vertical miles - 2.77 (up and down)
• Orangutans spotted - 0. Bummer.
• Money spent on 12 mediocre beers - $6.00. It is super cheap to eat and drink in Malaysia, if you avoid the tourist locations. Perhaps the good price was to make up for the cockroaches and rats that were just as happy to frequent the bar as the people.
• Hiking poles discarded - 1. I took a gamble and tried to bring my $80 Leki hiking pole on the flight (I was told that sometimes they'll allow it, and sometimes not), but sadly they would not have it. With no time left to send it back home, I was forced to abandon it in the airport. Very sad.
• Modes of transportation taken - All. Praise be to Asia's efficient and omnipresent public transport systems.