The night in the hostel on Mount Kinabalu was my second in a dormitory and therefore my second with virtually no sleep.  I just can't get off when I'm surrounded by others shifting, snoring and farting into the small hours.  Well, maybe it was me farting.  I rose at two and dressed in warm clothes and a head torch hired from the hostel and at 3.00am I and my climbing companion Glynn, joined the throng for the procession to the summit.  I'd met Glynn two days before and we'd decided to hire a Guide together, for companionship and to save costs.  Glynn lives in Greenwich in London, near Sue and my old stamping ground Blackheath.  In his early forties he'd casually mentioned he'd had a hip replacement only a few months back following a kick boxing injury.  Glynn was one of many interesting folk I bumped into on the mountain, including Wally and Faye a retired couple from Australia and a strapping pair of Scandinavian girls, one from Finland and one ...

It's been the school holidays in Sarawak this week and while Sue was busy writing an essay I took myself off to Sabah with the aim of climbing Mount Kinabalu, at 4,000 metres the highest thing in southeast asia.  It's a well-worn track being on quite a few peoples' list of things to do before they die. Even before starting there is a bureaucratic mountain to be climbed, permits to be bought and hostels booked, insurance forms completed and guides hired.  Once arranged most people are committed to climbing with a Guide over two days.  On day one you climb a steep path for about 1,400 metres to a hostel below the summit.  On day two you rise at 2.00am and climb another 800 metres to catch the obligatory sunrise, before descending the 2,200 metres back to the starting point.  The descent is the killer with one's knees and thighs getting a relentless pounding down the steep path. Most of the climb on day one was through cloud and mist in dripping forest and lat...

A tragedy looks like it's unfolding in Sabah, the Malaysian province in the north of Borneo, about 900 kilometres from us here in Saratok.  If you don't live in the region you probably won't hear of it, unless the death toll gets large enough.  How many will that need to be?  The news agencies must use a formula - anything above ten in the so-called developed world seems to get a mention on CNN and the likes, but here in Borneo?  A hundred?  A thousand? The story in brief is that a couple of hundred armed Filipinos arrived in a remote coastal area of Sabah a few weeks ago to pursue a claim to the province by the Sultan of Sulu, himself a Filipino citizen.  For a few days there was an uneasy stand-off between the "invaders" and the Malaysian police, then the police and army went in and to date there are sixty-odd people reported dead, about ten Malaysian soldiers and police, the rest Filipinos.  The latest information is that the remaining Filipinos...