The tallest mountain in southeast Asia is called Kinabalu it is in Sabah, Malaysia, which turns out to be a 2 hour flight across the south china sea from Singapore . Kinabalu is actually in Borneo, which is a large island ( 16 Million people) which is part Indonesia and Malaysia with a little dot that is Brunei. Kinabalu is 4095 Meters high, making Borneo the 3rd highest island in the world, it is also billed as having the “most varied human social groups “.
I was researching how to climb, what permits required, guides required, where to stay ? availability, airline tickets? ? not to mention coordinating all of this? holy moly i have a job , when i realized “I can’t spend time doing this”. So i did what i usually do , hand the hard work to someone else( a travel agency) this one specializes in trips to Kinabalu, so it was just a matter of plugging in the dates, transferring money and off to the travel agency for the orientation. www.pacwest.com.sg. These folks where fantastic, everything was as it was listed? guides, drivers, airlines, meals, cabins, all were where they needed to be when they needed to be there.
We had a threesome: Jerry who is the Bovis PM on the Lonza project, and Khalid who works for the major electrical contractor (Wahloon) out here in Singapore.
As on most trips there is usually a little drama, never know if it is at the end, in the middle, in this case we started off with it. The flight was with Silk Air which is Singapore air’s low budget carrier, so the flights are usually right on ,as well as the service, food, etc. We were to leave at 8:30am, at the airport we were told that the flight was moved back to 11am, okay, I should have checked on the flight status before leaving ?? but i could still do e-mail work, review specs etc. 
yeaah Right!. Finally got on the plane, all seemed normal, we taxied from the gate, after about15 min the plane stopped, , seemed like the engine sounds were running up than down, mixed in with hydraulic sounds, hmmm. Another 20 min of this and the pilot gets on the PA, and tell us that they are not able to get one of the engines started (seems important), we have to go back and have a mechanic check it out, hmmmm. Back at the gate we wait for the mechanic for awhile, eventually the captain gets on the speaker and lets us know that the mechanic was successful and the engine has really started, we all cocked are collective heads trying to hear it, yeeaaah , now we can leave??? No, no, no at this point 5 passengers have lost what ever comfort level they had, and have decided to get off the plane as fast as they can, so off they go, and for the next hour more and more people get off the plane, we end up having a total of 24 people dis-embark, the more people that get off, the more nervous the other passengers get, finally a tall German (not picking on the Germans, hell he could have been Russian, but definitely was not American 
) looking man gets up and walks to the front of the plane, the next thing i see, is that he is pushing the stewardess around trying to get off the plane,, drama, drama, finally a police officer shows up, walks down the aisle and asks if if anyone else wants to get off the plane, this is there last chance. At the same time there is a young Australian couple with a 5 year old boy, they than proceeded to ask their son if he wants to get off the plane??? what the hell is this world coming tooo? Now we have to wait for Silk Air to unload all of the luggage and sort out who got off the plane and who didn’t . We finally take off around 3pm
Here is Jerry looking concerned, He is happy he can strech out his 6’7″ frame.
Looks Like Khalid is pretty nervous??? Well the good part is that we all had plenty of extra room.
During all of the Drama I was SMS’ng Aileen at PacWest, so she could let the driver know,that we were going to be a little late? 5 hours late. Once we landed in Borneo, the driver was there, now it was just a matter of sitting back and enjoy the scenery and relax for tomorrow.
As we were driving along, it seemed like i was seeing way to many churches?? for this part of the world. 
I asked Khalid, who said that Sabah has a very large Cristian population? who would have thought? So i tried to count how many churches and crucifixes along the way ( lost count) but here is a picture of one of the largest crucifixes. I have the capacity to throw in a few witty comments about this and inadvertently insult a large group of people, so lets move on.
The drive from Kota Kinabalu ( Capitol of Sabah) and the mountain is about a 2 hour drive, this is our first view of the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia. 4095.2 M or for Americans 13,453 feet.
The first night we stayed at Rose cabin , which is 5 min. from the park entrance. The place looked like a motel anywhere in NH, Whites.
This is the back side of
Rose Cabin~. They even have pine trees here, feels like home, yeeahhh I am going home in 2 months!!!! i cannot wait!!!!
Down below is our Guide (LoLah) and Jerry . Not what i would have envisioned as our guide? LoLah is the mother of 3, and she leads folks up and down Kinabalu3 times a week. She use to be a porter, eventually passed her test and now she is guiding, makes a few more dollars and it is certainly easier on her back.
Also, it is a requirement to have a guide, helps lower the un-employment, And lowers the amount of folks that get lost.
As soon as i heard her name, i could not get the lyrics out of my mind “ She walked up to me and asked me to dance” Well I am not the most phisical guy” ” but when she squeezed me tight she almost broke my spine” “Can’t understand why she walked like a women but talked like a man”.
At any rate Lohlah was a great guide!!!!!! but it was funny? i wondered if whe knew the song? 
This is the gang, ready to go, all smiles
The next couple of pictures are of the trail. Stairs are always the hardest.
This part of the trail looks just like a trail in new Hampshire, just a bunch of rock steps.
As we got higher we started getting above the clouds.
As most of you know when ever there is a hut system at high elevation, there is only a couple of ways to get supplies to the top. In Kinabalu there is only one way, on someones back. There are 3 huts, with the largest serving a full buffet breakfast and dinner . Along with construction there was a continuous line of porters bringing up food, drinks, and then the parts for construction which included steel beams, washing machine and here we have a mattress.
I was about 5 min from the hut when i looked back and noticed a mattress catching up with me, No way was that going to happen, so I dropped down one gear and was just able to keep up with this mattress.
This is the guy driving the mattress. He does this every day! Not the matress everryday? but something on his back everry day!
Well we all staked out our bunks and sorted our gear and here we are on the deck after dinner. Khalid was cold so we tried to keep him between us, like the penguins.
This is Jerry studying the route. Note the dining /hanging out area, very nice place, clean and the staff were exceptionally helpful. They supplied sleeping bags with liner as well as breakfast and dinner. The only thing they did not supply was snoring suppressors, which we all could have used, except Kahlid? no Khalid did not loose, not even 5 min. worth of sleep? i tried the shoe method, which only lasted 5 min, maybe i was using the wrong shoe application? oooohhh that’s right , maybe the shoe goes in the mouth?? 
. By the way these huts are about 10,000′ high.
So the deal, is, you wake up at 2:30 AM, but if you never went to sleep than it’s not a problem. The purpose of waking up early is to catch the sunrise! but as you can see below, we were blessed with a little sleet with a
little rain with little wind. 
But it was still goodYou can see a few people behind Jerry , if I was to guess i would say there was at least 100 people scattered over the mountain. The mountain is big, so it never got that crowded, except at destination points, like summits.
Here on the left is Khalid and Lolah just coming down from the summit. Kahied said that it was so cold he could not feel his lips. We kidded him and told him that it didn’t seem to affect how much he could talk.
This is the terrain below the summit , all rock slabs. Those 2 rocks sticking up are called the donkey ears.
The next few pictures are just below the summit, this area is very barren, all granite slabs, they do have a large rope stretched from the the last ranger check in point to the summit. Like the White dot trail? But still folks do get lost
See the rope, even if you are in a fog bank? you can always pick up the rope and follow it. But folks still get lost.
Another one of those weird Ivan traits? Just figured out how to stand on my head, so on every mountain that i climb i will be spending some time on my head. The head has started getting flatter, so this seams like a good use of it. ( the head !)
Here is Lolah and the boys, Lolah tended to stay in the back, but always seemed to be near us when we started to stray? As these boys will do.
To the left is the last Ranger station before the sumit. Everyone climbing this mountain, are funneled through this station. The ranger has a spread sheet with everyones name that may climb that day, so as you go through the gate, the Ranger checks your name off and hands you a survival whistle? when you return he verifies you have passed this check point heading back, and gets his whistle back? hey its there system.
One of the options we had was to climb the last section down to the hut via a series of fixed steel cables. It is called the “Via Ferrata” there are a few throught he alps, this happens to be the highest one in the world.
Here is Khalid going throught the steepest section
The guide put me in the front, i think becasuse i was the oldest? most expendable .
Here is Jerry walking the wire, over a gorge! Yikes, he doesn’t seem to worried
This is the wall the Ferrata is on? pretty impressive
Jerry and Lolah on the final stretch
I think Khalid’s lips have thawed out
Well, we had a good time, it was hard but definitely doable, the best part was getting to climb this mountain with friends. Feeling cold wind , sleet on my face.
Before I finish i wanted to show you a picture of a couple of the porters, most people ( not us) hire porters to carry their pack, it turns out to be a way for local to pick up a few bucks. There are not a lot of prospects in this part of the world. 
That’s right some of the porters were high school kids?
Most of the folks climbing seemed to be from Singapore although, as we were climbing up a group of 40 japanese tourists were coming down. They were the oldest people i have ever seen? All of them must have been over 70? it was quite amazing. I wish I had taken a picture of them.
Well, time to say good by for now! i will be attempting to climb Kilimanjaro in Africa new week and will be posting that trip as well.
Hope all is well and you find this somewhat interesting.
Lova You All………………Ivan
Nice form with the head stand, hope to see it more often…..I think the guide felt you had more expirience to lead, or maybe you lost his sense of humor in the translation….Well another great trip, thanks, love ya