I was only in Sandakan to catch my flight to Bali but it was a nice little town to wander around in. I travelled there with Simon and Rose and met up with the guys for a lovely dinner by the harbour, and then we sat in the lounge of our hostel eating popcorn and watching Slumdog Millionaire. I spent basically a whole day by myself doing nothing but santanning on the roof of the hostel, watching the simpsons at the hostel with people and getting ready for seeing the girls again in Bali and also HELEN and MICHAEL! who I hadn't seen in over 3 months.

The next destination was Sepilok which is home to one of only three orangutan sanctuaries in the world. I stayed at a place called Uncle Tan's and had to walk from the bus stop [VERY tricky with a big packpack and completely fucked up legs that were swollen and kept shaking with every step] with an Austrian guy who told me he'd scaled up and down Mount Kinabalu in just one day and didn't seem to be feeling any side effects. Twat. The hostel was incredible - it included 3 buffet meals in the price with constant tea, coffee and snacks, internet, hammocks, basketball court, and ping pong table. I shared a dorm with an english girl Holly and met 2 guys Hitesh and Peter who I hung out with and taught 'arsehole' to [which had been pretty much The card game of the trip that me, tom and shapiro played constantly], and we were joined by a couple Simon and Rose who it turned out had bought shapiro and robbie's tent off them.

I got a shuttle bus to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre and met the boys there. The centre is a home for semi-wild orangutans who have been orphaned and need to be trained to go back in the wild. There is a feeding platform where they are fed milk and bananas and where a gang of little monkeys try and steal their food, and there is also a video to watch about the centre and walks through the forest you can do to see other monkeys.

I CLIMBED A FRICKIN MOUNTAIN!! that was 4095m high which is HALF THE HEIGHT OF EVEREST and it was the hardest and best thing I have ever done in my whole entire life!

I remember driving to Kinabalu National Park and catching my first sight of the mountain and completely losing it, just freaking out hardcore. The guy driving me, Eddy, was really safe and laughed at me loads and he kept making jokes about how I'd get a certificate for climbing regardless only it'd be black and white, the special coloured certificates were reserved for those who actually reached the very top. He let me stop to take a picture of Mount Kinabalu on the drive because I realised that I had never actually seen a mountain in my life before. But no pictures can ever do justice to its magnitude, how completely daunting and impressive and magnificent and FUCKING HIGH it is, so I was completely overwhelmed and terrified. I was meant to be with a middle aged group of Hong Kong people but they decided to do the longer but easier Mesilau trail up so it was just me and my guide Jonny the whole way. The first day was 5 hours up to base camp and that was unbelievably difficult, imagine five whole hours solid of continuous uphill - absolute death. My legs were in total agony and I kept stopping having to catch my breath partly out of exhaustion, partly because the air was getting thinner and thinner. It was a beautiful walk though, really scenic and I saw pitcher plants, orchids, little mountain squirrels, incredible bonzai trees nearer the top, and apparently I passed through four different climate zones. Then I had dinner with people from my hostel I'd met the night before, the 3 miners, a maths teacher Roshan, an aussie couple and dutch couple. It was incredible being above the clouds for sunset and the views of Sabah were unreal. I went to bed at about 7pm but I was in a room with the Mesilau group and they finished dinner SO late and woke up in the morning SO early and talked really loudly about their action plan for the day it was the most irritating thing ever.

Everyone has to get up at about 2am and scale the mountain in the dark for 3 hours to reach the top by sunrise and this part is the most difficult bit. There is no path for you to follow, it is freeezing cold because you are so far from sea level and up in the clouds, it is SO hard to breath for lack of oxygen when you get higher and higher (which meant that my guide wouldn't let me stop for breaks at all because it was best to just keep going), there is no sunlight for you to see by, only a stunning blanket of stars in the black night sky [which is why I had to wear my little balaclava and head torch combo!] and the hardest part is that you are climbing in the dark using ropes as your guide, pulling yourself up on sheer barren rock surface. GOD! it was literally insane, I have never done anything like it - there were times when I was getting to the top where I genuinely thought I would have given up because imagine, you've been climbing for like 2 whole hours with no real breaks and you still can't see the summit and your guide tells you you've got another 1.5km left which is another hours climbing and you've already stopped so many times to catch your breath because the air is so thin and the climb is so tiring and difficult because you have to scale up ropes on sheer rock cliff - and I just thought to myself, what is the point of carrying on because if I just stopped and sat here and waited for the sunrise it would be just as amazing because I'd still be on top of a frickin mountain. But then I realised that I didn't climb all that way and suffer all that pain to catch a bloody sunrise, I did it because I wanted to reach the top [and get a coloured certificate!]. So I soldiered on and made it and, no joke it was the best fucking feeling in the world, I literally cannot put it into words - the sunrise from the top of the mountain was sheer magnificence except I was too cold and tired to take any pictures so Jonny took them for me! And once I'd got back down to the camp, I just sat on my bed and cried because I was so proud of myself! (LOL, only a little though, and they may have been tears of exhaustion also..) It's just the weirdest feeling when you're looking up at the mountain and you see that the top is further beyond and above cloud level, and then thinking that you got to the top and therefore walked all the way to the clouds.. insane.
I had such a big breakfast with everyone but my guide moved me on pretty quick, then I took 4 hours getting down cus my legs were absolutely fucked up by that point. Sometimes I would take a step down and completely collapse on the floor, and Jonny had to help me down a lot of the way which prompted him to tell me that I should probably try and do more exercise at home..

My passport definitely filled up during the drive out of Bandar and into Kota Kinabalu - it involved seven border crossings which means seven new stamps and seven arrival/departure cards to fill out. So there's not that much to do in KK - it's the stop point for people on route to Kinabalu National Park. I met up with the boys, now just shapiro and robbie, and some people they'd met travelling, went wandering around the shopping malls, the waterfront markets which is probably the best thing about the city, and we also went bowling one night. I also booked my MOUNTAIN CLIMB! and the people in the tourist agency kept talking about me in chinese like about what they thought my fitness levels were and whether they thought I'd make it to the top, not knowing that I could understand every word.. I also met a bunch of people from my hostel also doing the climb the same day as me, including 3 miners from Tanzania and Australia in my dorm room, who were really nice and supportive and made me feel a lot less scared even though I was terrified. I'd not done any exercise in ages, I just assumed all the travelling would count towards upping my personal fitness levels but stopped kidding myself and started getting really nervous and worried.

I spent about 2 weeks in KL and pretty much stopped travelling to stay with my fam, and it felt like being back at home for a bit. I just chilled out mainly, read a lot, went shopping, hung out with my cousins and some of their really really cute kids, took classes in tai chi, buddhist meditation, lots of yoga, and I also went to volunteer with my aunt at this temple orphanage for girls teaching english and maths to 3 mentally disabled girls who were the nicest sweetest people I've ever met. I also met up with shapiro, tom and robbie at the Hard Rock Cafe because it was tom's last night in Asia and I hadn't seen them since Ko Phangan. It was way nice seeing family and my mummy again because we overlapped for a few days before she had to fly back to London.