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...

It's the dog days in Saratok after the Chinese New Year and I had to drag myself out for a run this evening. As usual I went to the running track a couple of kilometres out of town where the car park was full.  Several people were walking or running around the track and a football match was in progress in the middle.  I did a slow warm up, nodding every now and then to one of the regulars, then launched myself onto the track for a five kilometre trot, which my GPS watch tells me is just under eleven circuits in the outside lane. Whenever I begin a run I have this anxiety that my body won't carry me, that this is the day when my old legs just refuse to budge and I stop immediately or fall flat on my face.  It never happens, muscle memory kicks in and the body just goes through the motions.  People seem surprised that I don't get bored, running round and round in circles, but there's a surprising amount of stimulation.  I have my MP3 player, on which I listen...

With Chinese New Year looming Sue and I decided to make a quick getaway to the Marriot in Miri.  This is a resort hotel in the north of Sarawak, next door to oil-rich Brunei.  Miri itself is an oil town so there is money here, which in turn attracts expats and sleaze. We flew here from Sibu at dusk in a turbo-prop which took off in heavy rain and thrummed and bumped its way to Miri in and out of thick cloud with the odd flash of lightning.  One of the main reasons for coming was that we can apparently stay using the "government rate", which gives a 50% discount for public servants.  This proved harder to wrestle from the smiling but wary staff at Reception than I expected, though I think we finally succeeded.  A number of Sue's colleagues had the same idea and it's been good to catch-up with people around the pool and over dinner. Because the hotel is out of town we've been insulated from the Chinese New Year celebrations, apart from being woken up by a...

I started teaching again ten days ago and now our holiday feels well and truly behind me.  This term I have more classes and a routine more like a full-time language teacher.  I work Monday to Thursday and most days I teach for six hours, which with preparation time makes for an eight to ten hour day.  It's been good to see my students again and to say hello to some new faces.  Up to now all my students have been Chinese, but I now have a group of eighteen year olds which includes some Malays and a feisty bunch they are. Looking back, I wish I'd written more about Sri Lanka and the experiences we had there.  One morning in particular keeps coming back to me when I was lying in bed at dawn in our B&B up in the tea country and as I tossed and turned I could hear church bells competing with the chanting from a nearby Buddhist monastery.  Haputale, where we were staying, is up at about six thousand feet and quite chilly at night and at dawn you can get...

I used to think jet lag was a myth propagated by people who secretly wanted to boast about their travels, but for the last week I've been a zombie, psychotic with tiredness yet unable to sleep.  Sue and I occasionally meet up in the living room at two in the morning to catch an old episode of a Jamie Oliver cookery programme or a sniper competition.  If only they could combine the two. We had been away from Saratok for five weeks and now everything seems strange again.  The day after we arrived I sleepwalked into Everise, our local supermarket, to be greeted as a long lost friend by one of the assistants who urgently directed me to the storeroom.  "Tiger beer" he said proudly, indicating a pallet load of blue cardboard wrapped twenty-four packs.  His logic was clear - a pink man coming to the store on New Year's eve must be in need of beer.  I staggered to the check-out with a case while smiling dutifully.  Then I witnessed another mystery I've yet t...