Greetings from Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia (on Borneo).

Owen and I never made it to Kanchanaburi (Bridge on the River Kwai) 
due to automotive distress and other logistical problems. Otherwise, 
my onward plans have progressed according to schedule.

I traveled via train south from Bangkok to Chumporn, Thailand where I 
took a boat (3 hrs) out to Ko Tao, the smallest of three islands in a 
chain in the Gulf of Thailand. I spent 5 days on the island, diving 
on three of those days is the warm, clear waters around Ko Tao. The 
diving was inexpensive and excellent, with a profusion of colorful 
tropical fish and other reef life. I met a number of people there on 
the island, including other travelers, variously hailing from 
England, Denmark, Ireland, the USA, and Australia. On the non-diving 
days, I traveled by foot around on the island, checking out the 
restaurants and shops and lying on the beach for a while. It was 
quite relaxed and a nice change from the hectic pace of travel we'd 
established in East Asia.

Tearing myself away from the island, I took the boat back to Chumporn 
and boarded the train south across the border to Butterworth, 
Malaysia. There, I transferred to a bus, sharing a seat with a odd 
Finn who seemed to be on the lamm, saying said something about having 
been traveling for 10 years and not being able to live in the West 
anymore. He claimed to be heading for Jakarta in search of work in 
the shipbuilding industry, but I began to feel like he was following 
me around, either just for company or perhaps with more nefarious 
intent. I managed to shake him in Kuala Lumpur (KL) during some 
confusion about meeting up with my friend Matt at one of the hostels 
there.

After ditching the dodgy Finn, I found Matt at KL's old train 
station, where there is a hostel that appears to have been set up in 
some abandoned office space. It was clearly past it's prime, but 
sufficient for a couple days' stay, so we made that our base of 
operations while we explored Chinatown and Little India, sampling the 
culinary delights available there at various open air establishments. 
It was really nice to see a friend from Houston after so long on the 
road, and Matt and I spent a few late nights catching up and 
attempting to exhaust the Tiger beer supply at the Regae Bar we found 
in Chinatown.

On the 19th, Matt and I flew from KL to KK (Kota Kinabalu), the 
capital of Sabah, a state in East Malaysia on the island of Borneo 
(shared with Sarawak, another Malaysian state, Kalimantan, an 
Indonesian state where they're still lopping off each other's heads, 
and Brunei). After a night in the Backpacker's Lodge, we joined 
forces with Mark, an Englishman we met there in arranging for our 
ascent of Mt. Kinabalu, a 4100 m peak and the highest point between 
the Himalayas and Irian Jaya. We spent a night in the Park 
Headquarters hostel and started our ascent of the mountain the next 
morning, nominally with a group of 5 others (two "Czechitas*" and 
three Danish women) and our "virtual" guide (we never saw him again 
on the first day, and then only at the beginning and end of our climb 
on the second day). It took around 4 hours of non-technical but 
relentlessly uphill, occasionally rainy hiking for us to reach the 
lodge at about 3200 m, where we spent the balance of the day and 
first half of the night trying to keep warm and fed. As the night 
progressed, a storm moved in and intensified, with high winds and 
rain pelting the lodge right up until we ventured out around 3:30 
a.m. Given the inclement weather, everyone was a bit skeptical about 
the climb to the summit, which is across some highly exposed, sloping 
granite faces, but most people decided to at least give it a try. We 
were a little behind the main body of hikers at first, there being 
somewhere between 70 and 100 of us out there that morning. We wound 
up passing most of them along the way, particularly after the initial 
clearing of the weather at 3 am reverted to windy, cold, and rainy 
conditions around 4 am. The lion's share of people retreated to the 
lodge around 5 am, but together with Mark, Matt and I continued on to 
the summit through the worst of the weather, going through no less 
than three sets of batteries and one bulb in our flashlights (that's 
torches, to you Commonwealthers) and slowly losing feeling in our 
fingers and toes. We didn't linger at the top, since it didn't seem 
to be abating at all. On our way down, we found our guide on his way 
back up, apparently coming to find us. After a rest in the lodge, we 
headed on down the mountain around mid-day, wrapping up a rather less 
than ideal climb, despite having reached the summit.

From the mountain, we moved on via minibus and taxi to Poring Hot 
Springs, a virtual resort within the same park. There, we found some 
excellent facilities for soaking our tired muscles and bones in the 
baths and a pleasant 40 m high suspended walkway through the forest 
canopy. Matt and I then made the dubious choice to hike off in search 
of a waterfall in the late afternoon, but had to turn back as 
nightfall was encroaching and we only had one flashlight with some 
questionable batteries in it. It turned into more of a hike than we'd 
hoped for, and my knee started to give me some serious pain. Matt 
also found a passenger (leech) along the way which he had to salt 
down to get it to disembark.

After two nights at Poring, Matt and I went on to Sepilok, where 
there is an orang-utan sanctuary. We visited the apes during their 
morning feeding and were amazed to see their human-like qualities as 
well as the antics of the macaques which hovered around the fringes, 
stealing bananas from some of the younger orang-utans and fleeing the 
burgeoning fury of the older ones.

Our next stop was a Jungle Camp, run by a old Malaysian named Uncle 
Tan. It was very much a shoestring operation, with shortages of food, 
water, and direction, brought about apparently by Tan's lessened 
involvement due to heart problems. It was a bit overcrowded, which 
may explain the relative dearth of wildlife we'd hoped to see there 
(although we did see bearded pigs, civet cats, a bat colony in a 
cave, proboscis monkeys, hornbills, and various other birds). Given 
the problems, we cut our stay short at two days, heading back to the 
region of Mt. Kinabalu for a night in the cooler climes at the foot 
of the mountain. The next day, we took a series of minibuses down the 
southeastern flank of the Crocker Range (which runs parallel to the 
Sabah NW coast) on a rather scenic but tiring drive to the town of 
Tenom. There, we found the Tenom Agricultural Center, a large complex 
with surprisingly well maintained gardens overflowing with every 
imaginable tropical flower and plant. We had an abreviated tour of 
the place, marveling at the carnivorous pitcher plants and the 
seemingly out of place cactus gardens, before returning via a long, 
slow train to Kota Kinabalu late yesterday evening. The train comes 
down through an interesting and scenic river valley, where a recent 
derailment necessitated a short hike and a long wait for a connecting 
train.

We're now relaxing for a day here in KK before flying back to KL 
tomorrow to meet our friends Jen, Rich, and Sid from Houston for more 
adventures in Peninsular Malaysia.

*Matt, with his usual wit, coined this term along the way, and I have 
shamelessly stolen it.