Get­ting to KK from Brunei is best done by catch­ing a ferry to Labuan Island and then another to main­land Malaysia, either straight to KK or via Menum­bok and a bus to KK which is what we had to do.

KK doen’t have good value hos­tels, but if you look thor­oughly you will find a few new hotels for the same price: 65MR. Most of them are man­aged by chi­neese, and because of the good value they dete­ri­o­rate quickly but appear again soon after. With acco­mo­da­tion sorted out my next task was to pre­pare the climb to Mount Kin­a­balu, but alas my wis­dom tooth hadn’t had its last word.

I had to look for a den­tist again and was con­firmed that extrac­tion was needed, which meant com­plete rest for a few days. I was not happy. But i had’t had my last word either. We made a flight reser­va­tion to Manila (Philip­pines) for 2 days later and I decided to climb as much as I coul the fol­low­ing day.

Thus off I went to the den­tist, hav­ing pre­vi­ously con­firmed a visit to Dr Wong’s clinic. Clean, with accred­ited Euro­pean degrees and many cus­tomers it appeared to be a good option. One hour later I had one tooth less and a short clip of the extrac­tion which I will post soon.

Doing exactly what I was told not to doI pro­ceeded with my ini­tial plan and woke up at 6:30 am to catch a bus to Kin­a­balu moun­tain. Liza would not join me this time– too much exercise.

The bus slowly and noisly makes it way there, allow­ing bet­ter views of the moun­tain as you get closer. By the time it drops you at the park head­quar­ters you are at an alti­tude of about 1200m. I paid the manda­tory fees for what I wanted to do (trek mid moun­tain and request per­mis­sion once there to pro­ceed fur­ther for bet­ter pics) and began the hike.

KK is usu­ally climnbed in 2 days, stop­ing first at Laban Rata for a rest and wak­ing up at 1 am the fol­low­ing day to reach the sum­mit by sun­rise. About 150 ppl of all ages climb the moun­tain every day, so you might assume that is it not a dif­fi­cult climb. Tech­ni­cally speak­ing this is true, but you need some car­dio resis­tance to make it to the top slowly, a lot if you want to do it quickly.

About 30 min into my hike I was already sweat­ing more than what I ever had in that amount of time, and I am not kid­ding. My day­pack was soak­ing and the small water bot­tle I had brought was very tempt­ing. I would only be able to use my Nikon D90 once I reached my des­ti­na­tion because there are to many trees to be able to take any pics before.

I slowed down my pace a bit but was still quicker than the rest of the hikers-I had less than 4 hours to do what peo­ple usu­ally do in 6–10 hours.

Long story short, I accom­plished my goal. I was allowed per­mis­sion to walk beyond where my fee allowed me to and made it to the 3000m point. The tem­per­a­ture at that alti­tude had droped to about 10–15 degrees C, and the clouds were skid­ding along the mountain’s side.

A few pic­tures later I had to make my way back down, not with­out mixed feel­ings because I would not make it to the top– even­though I was merely 1000 m away from base camp. I would not do what I had come to KK for, and had made a big effort to reach that place; thank­fully my dent­lat surgery was hold­ing on but there was no way I could con­tinue, plus the last bus would leave at 5 pm.

And so I did. The  way down is also very tir­ing, and  I wll admit that I got dizzy at the bot­tom when I crouched to take a pic­ture. I then real­ized I had done all this exer­cise with­out break­fast or lunch, dur­ing a den­tal surgery recov­ery day, and with only a small water bottle.

I  slowly walked to the park store and bought a Kit Kat and some Gatorade, then reached the junc­tion where the bus would take me back to KK. Sat­is­fied yet exhausted I made my way to KK chit-chatting with Emma, a friendly british girl who was trav­el­ling for a few months as well. Once in the city I headed straight to a cheap stall to get some food and made it back to the hotel, where Liza did not look half as tired as I did.

On the way up