Borneo... just the name evokes thoughts of remote unexplored jungles, with elusive tribes known as "headhunters". Although, tribes no longer takes heads for trophies, there is still truth to the exotic romance of Borneo with wild coastlines, rugged jungle mountains surrounding lush valleys, and friendly people.
We were lucky enough to get to visit this stunning island with our cousins, Todd and Roxy. They had flown in from California the week before Christmas. It was a breath of fresh air as they marked our first visitors since arriving 5 months ago. After spending a few days together in Macau we took the short 2 1/2 hour flight to Kota Kinabalu, where we quickly got down to business and climbing SE Asia's massive Mt. Kinabalu. It would be a three day adventure that included hiking up 8,000 feet of elevation to reach a nearly 14,000 foot peak before sunrise. Needless to say, it was a trek. There were moments of pain, moments where we asked ourselves why we thought we should do this on our holiday, and many moments of feeling completely awestruck by the raw beauty that surrounded us. The elevation change, the never ending stairs, the torrential downpours, the sheer granite slabs, wet hand ropes, and the shortness of breath had nothing on is though and we sweated to the top and were rewarded by glorifying views and feelings of accomplishment. If only, we could have taken pictures in the rain, and if only our camera had worked. The joy of climbing Mt Kinabalu lasted long enough to see us through the pain our bodies felt for the following days and the memory is still fresh.
Quickly after Mt Kinabalu, we boarded another flight and said farewell to Sabah and hello to Sarawak, the southern region of Malay Borneo. We were greeted by another amazing host and stayed in the cultural center of Kuching. We foolishly looked for the wild orangutans during fruiting season (foolishly because they have plenty of wild food this time of year and don't want to be bothered by coming out for a snack), toured a traditional in use longhouse, ate delicious laksa, ate delicious laksa (not a typo), took a cooking class, ate more delicious food, made friends at the thatched rooftop lounge of our guesthouse swapping travel stories playing pool and cards until the wee hours of the morning many mornings, and took a two day trip to Bako National park where we were met with wild hairy boars, proboscis monkeys, mischievous macaques, pit vipers, flying lemurs, and the most densly packed tropical rainforest we've been fortunate enough to visit. All in all, it was a brilliant 2 weeks, that went by far to fast.
It was incredible, so incredible in fact, that this will be a short blog. As you have probably noticed, the blogs come less frequently these days as our day to day life is just our day to day life, and a busy one at that. Although, it won't be too long before you hear from us again as the holidays are still among us in China. In fact, the biggest, most celebrated holiday of all is being to pick up steam right now, Chinese New Year. This holiday will be extra special indeed, as we anticipate our second visits to arrive shortly...
