Climbing half a mountain and breaking a bed

I've got to Mount KK, Borneo's highest mountain, early in the morning after one of the most beautiful car trips ever. The scenery was breathtaking. I stayed in a small hostel outside the national park. All the hostels inside the park is very expensive, and as I didn't plan to ascend to the top of the mountain, if felt unnecessary to stay there. The first day I did some of the trails going up almost half the mountain, again the nature was fantastic but the trails very quite muddy, I almost lost a shoe in the mud bath that was the last 500 m going back down. I had planned to do more walking the day after, but I woke up to torrential rain. After a couple of hours, I decided that even if the rain would stop, it would just be miserable trying to do more trekking, so I decided to leave early to go to Sandakan instead.

Sandakan is a small city by the coast in east Sabah. The first night here in Sandakan, when I climbed up to the top bunk bed, the bottom of the bed fell through! Lucky that Paul, who had the bottom bed, was not there or he would have been flat as a pancake... The side of one of my arms is one big bruise. I'm not looking my best at the moment with a leg covered in bites (that are slowly healing) and a blue arm. Ah, the joys of travelling. And all my clothes smells a bit funny, especially my sneakers that refuse to dry. I'm going to have to throw them away when I leave Borneo or they might stop me for carrying a biology hazard with me...

It has more or less rained since I came to Sandakan. Yesterday I and two Aussie girls, Kylie and Kate, tried to keep us entertained in this quite boring little city by going bowling and then to the cinema. Don't see 'Bedtime stories', it's not very good...

Today I'm wasting time watching TV and trying to keep up with e-mails. Tomorrow I'm supposed to go on a 2 day trip down the Kinabatangan river. I hope it won't rain as much then, or I'm literally going to spend two days more or less soaking wet, despite having now both a rain coat and rain poncho. After Kinabatangan I'm going to Semporna to snorkel and dive, and then I'm heading to the Philippines via KL. I'm so looking forward to sunshine and beaches, I'm starting to really resent the rain.