Kinabalu. That was what’s next. A year and a half on from Kilimanjaro and we were putting the band back together. Well some of it anyway.
The UK-based Kili crew, Terry, Martin and Matt, were rather obviously not flying all the way from the UK for a short trek, not least because Terry and Matt had been to Kinabalu before, but Callum, Cormac, Toby, Kevin and of course myself, were off to climb Mount Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo. And our Kili five was to be supplemented by Will Pirie and his wife Flora, and Barry Haynes, a friend of Toby’s from Hong Kong hospitality circles.
Most of us returned from Kilimanjaro enthused by the whole experience. Except Toby of course who continued to maintain that it was a miserable experience and he had a headache for the entire time. But we knew he was only being a Grinch and he enjoyed it really. The success of the trip naturally led to lots of enthusiastic talk of other adventures. Callum was keen on Mount Elbrus in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains, the highest peak in Europe and the tenth most prominent in the world. I think we all knew that was never going to happen given that the rest of us had never even heard of it. Despite his purported negativity Toby was keen on the Simien Mountains in Ethiopia, which seemed far more plausible – a longer trek in “superb wilderness with stunning scenery, enormous cliffs and escarpments and the chance to spot unique wildlife such as the Walia Ibex and Gelada Baboon”. But the Gelada Baboon would remain undisturbed, by us at least.
But Mount Kinabalu was on our doorstep. It’s the most accessible mountain in South East Asia (somewhat disappointingly it’s only the 20th highest mountain in the region – there are several higher in Myanmar and New Guinea) and having lived in the region for over twenty years, in a sense it was ours. Most people outside of South East Asia have probably never even heard of it. And given the brevity of the climb it’s not something you’d travel half way round the world to do. But we were living in the region, we had heard of it, and we’d thought of climbing it many times.
Kilimanjaro wasn’t a life-changing experience. That karmic moment which I wasn’t seeking didn’t happen. I came back to Hong Kong, went back to work, and everything carried on very much as it was before. That was not disappointing. That was simply expected. But what it did do was open our eyes to the fact that these adventures can be done, if you can just get off your arse and be bothered to do it. All it takes is a few like minds, a bit of money and time, and enough enthusiasm to make it happen. It just takes one person to put in a bit of effort, to light that spark, and everything else follows suit.
What we needed for Kinabalu was a window, which was duly provided by Easter 2016, a four day weekend, which gave sufficient time to fly down, spend two days on the mountain, and fly back again – without even taking a day off work. Once that window was identified, Toby made some enquiries, and Bob’s your uncle, we were signed up. Exactly what we’d signed up for is not entirely clear. It would appear that all the places for the bog standard walk up and down the mountain were gone, and the only packages available included something called the Via Ferrata, whatever the hell that is. Whatever, as long as it meant we’d go, it was fine. Buy now, worry about it later.
Gunung Kinabalu, as it is known locally, sits on the East Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo. It’s part of Kinabalu Park, a World Heritage Site, and the highest peak in Borneo’s Crocker Range. It was thought to be 4,101 metres (13,455 ft) in height, but in 1997, it shrunk. It didn’t really, it was just re-surveyed using satellite technology and found to be 4,096 metres (13,438 ft), five metres shorter than previously thought. Which is probably a bit of a pisser if you’re a mountain and height is everything. Mind you, it is apparently still growing half a centimetre every year so in another 1,000 years it will have reached it’s original reported height.
Kinabalu is also believed to be the youngest granite pluton – a huge ball of molten rock forced up from deep beneath the earth’s crust – in the world, as it was formed only a million years ago, which puts humankind’s position on earth into its rather miniscule perspective. (Kilimanjaro, incidentally, was formed around three quarters of a million years ago.)
In 1994 the mountain achieved a degree of notoriety when a British Army expedition attempting a first-ever descent of Low’s Gully, the sheer 2,000ft canyon below Low’s Peak, went disastrously wrong, ending in an eleventh-hour rescue operation, with worldwide media coverage, and a very lucky escape from death. Not to mention three books and one movie.
The local Kadazan and Dusun communities have long held the mountain as a sacred place, and the resting place of their ancestors. They believe that their loved ones must be buried facing the mountain when they die so their spirits can see the mountain as they start their journey to the afterlife. Their imperfect souls rest on the peak of Kinabalu and await emancipation, before continuing their journey towards their creator in the sky.
In June 2015 the mountain and surrounding area were shaken by an earthquake which killed eighteen people, including hikers and mountain guides, and the hiking routes were closed for a while afterwards, reopening only as recently in December 2015.
Six days before that earthquake, a group of around ten western backpackers summited, then stripped naked and posted the pictures on social media. This naturally outraged the locals who believe their disrespect angered the spirit of the sacred place, resulting in the earthquake.
The tourists’ behaviour was unacceptable, especially when all visitors are advised that Kinabalu is a sacred place and their guide apparently urged them not to take their clothes off. Any punishment they received was wholly deserved. But to suggest that a scrawny white arse can cause an earthquake is just nonsense, and for a senior government minister to proclaim this is laughable. But at the end of the day, it’s their land, their mountain and their customs, and you have to respect that. Sabah Parks, the government body who administer the Mount Kinabalu National Park, go so far as to advise climbers not to “shout, scream or curse at the mountain”.
So keep your tweeds on Cormac. And no swearing please.
The travel arrangements were, as to be expected with this group, a bit messy. I liked the idea of us all travelling together, on the same flight, staying in the same hotel, a merry band of happy adventurers, enjoying our shared excitement. One for all and all that. Not quite. Whilst I was casually awaiting instructions, i.e. waiting for someone else to arrange everything, it emerged that Toby and Kevin were going a day or so earlier to have an extended break and had already booked their flights. Callum and Caroline, and Will and Flora, were planning to do something similar. Even Cormac had gone ahead and booked his flights and hotel. Methinks I was out of the loop somewhat. Or they were trying to tell me something.
So I got Cormac’s details and booked all the same stuff. He and I were to fly on the Thursday evening and although I didn’t see much point of a day hoofing around Kota Kinabalu and would rather have flown on Friday morning, at least the Thursday flight would allow us some wiggle room for things to go wrong. And I’d rather fly with someone, have a few beers and a bit of craic, than tootle along on me own. Where’s your spirit of togetherness fellers?
And we’d be flying with AirAsia, a regional budget airline, with whom I’d flown once before and wasn’t very impressed. Budget airlines still amuse and bemuse. The whole concept of optional add-ons which you’d normally take for granted takes some getting used to but that is of course the business model – stripping these items out of the base price, and paying for them only if you want them. Pay extra for baggage. Pay extra for a meal. Pay extra to choose a seat. Pay extra for priority service. (Pay extra for Trainspotting style prose.) There is a loudness and brashness about budget airlines. Joining AirAsia’s frequent flier program gives you the title of ‘Big Shot’, which felt to me that while they’re welcoming you to their ‘club’, they’re taking the piss at the same time. “We’re a budget airline, our passengers are cheapskates, and you’re paying extra for priority service? Knob.” Full credit to them though. Their brashness enabled them to once run an ad for flights to a certain Thai island saying “Cheap enough to say, Phuket, I’ll go”.
Similar to Kilimanjaro, it’s simply common-sense to make yourself as fit as reasonably possible for an attempt on Mount Kinabalu. Sabah Parks even go so far as to recommend that all climbers have themselves medically checked before attempting the climb, and list a range of conditions which might prevent people from climbing, including obesity, diabetes, arthritis and asthma. (I’d think some sufferers of diabetes or asthma would take umbrage at the suggestion that their ailments should exclude them from climbing.)
While the Kinabalu expedition is short (just two days) and the height significantly lower than Kilimanjaro (4,000 metres compared to 6,000), from all accounts it is tough going. Champion mountain runners at the annual Mount Kinabalu International Climbathon, proclaimed the “toughest mountain race in the world”, have been known to complete the run up and down the mountain in less than three hours. Our itinerary was not quite so aggressive: a five hour walk on the first day, ascending 1,406 metres; dinner and a few hours sleep; then up at 2am for a further three hours, and another 823 metres, to the peak. Then a six or seven hour schlep back down again. In total that is just 8.5 kilometres (5.25 miles) to the top. Which ain’t much. But from all accounts it is steep, there are a lot of steps, mostly with deep treads and high risers, i.e. not compatible with the average stride, it can be wet and slippery, and the last section involves hauling yourself up on ropes.
Peak fitness was therefore a good idea, and lots of training sensible. Instead, in mid-November, I broke my collarbone playing football. I’d like to say it was in the process of making a spectacular goal-line clearance or putting my neck on the line to score a glorious winner. But it wasn’t. We’d only been playing about ten minutes and my sole contribution to that point had been one defensive header, which actually cannoned off my face. Then came an innocuous long ball over the top which I expected to shepherd to safety until a nudge in the back from the chasing striker sent me tumbling to the ground. It wasn’t a major fall but I must have landed awkwardly, and while the latest astro-turf pitches are very good, they are still hard surfaces underneath. I didn’t realise how badly hurt it was and heroically tried to carry on, only to accept a few minutes later that I wasn’t going to run this off.
So I spent the rest of the game prowling the touchline, gesticulating wildly and encouraging the fellers on to a 1-1 draw. When our stand-in centre-half pulled up with a few minutes left, I even offered to go back on, although thankfully it wasn’t required. Then I hopped in the car – an automatic, not a manual – and drove 30km home from Tai Po in Hong Kong New Territories to North Point on Hong Kong Island, went out for dinner in the evening, and carried on drinking until around 2am, suitably anaesthetized from the pain.
The following morning it hurt like buggery, and I meekly confessed that I might need to go to hospital. So off we went for an x-ray which confirmed the collarbone to be broken, for which the consultant advised the best form of treatment to be to leave it to heal itself. I considered surgery as a means of getting rid of the pain immediately and recovering more quickly, but at the last minute the surgeon advised that the position of the break – near the acromioclavicular joint – meant that two operations would be necessary; one to put a plate in, and a second one to take it out again. Aside from the fact that there is a risk of infection in any surgery and that two operations would take a damned sight longer to heal than if left to heal naturally, it would cost something in the region of HKD 150,000 (£13,000). Yes, health insurance would cover it but there’s still something wrong about spending huge amounts of money when you don’t need to, even if it’s not your own. So that was a no-brainer.
When the doctor said the pain would subside in six weeks that was all I heard, and confidently predicted I’d be back on the football pitch in January. My optimism was wildly misplaced and the three-month-plus recovery that most websites alluded to was more appropriate. None of which was an issue or was going to stop me climbing but it did mean that by mid-January I’d done no exercise whatsoever for two months, not to mention gorging myself excessively over Christmas and New Year. I appear to be one of the few people in the world who loves turkey. Between Christmas Day and New Year I managed to eat turkey, in one form or another, every day for a week. In mid-January I forced myself back into the gym, albeit for a lot of walking, gentle jogging and Stairmaster-type things – no hard running (not that there ever really was) and no weights or upper body stuff.
And then, in February, after twenty one years, TNS made me redundant. A phone call which was scheduled as a performance review was joined by two HR people, prefaced with the words “a difficult conversation” and I’m not sure I heard the rest. I was completely broad-sided. There had been times in the previous two years when redundancy may not have surprised me, but at that time, it genuinely did. There was a restructuring going on across the entire Kantar business but I genuinely only saw opportunities in it for our unit. And then bang, I was out.
So aside from all the mental anguish about severance payments, gardening leave, unemployment and finding a new job, it meant I had no excuse not to go to the gym more often. I’d have good weeks when I’d be enthused and be in there almost every single day, and other weeks when everything became rather lethargic and slow. Come the end of March I was convinced that my overall stamina and fitness had improved considerably even if the bathroom scales dared to contradict me.
We also got ourselves out and about on Hong Kong’s wonderful walking trails again, which is a pleasure in itself, although the first jaunt induced some mild concern. The hike from Discovery Bay to Mui Wo via Tiger Head, or Lo Fu Tau, begins with a 400 metre ascent straight up a rather steep gradient, which left all of us struggling a wee bit. I remember thinking that if Kinabalu was anything like this, I was going to need some serious training to get my thighs and calves into shape and my stamina up.
And so some serious training was undertaken. Every Sunday for six weeks or so, myself, Will, Flora, and occasionally Cormac, would head off to places such as Needle Hill, Sharp Peak, Castle Peak and the glorious Pat Sin Leng range, which must rank as one of the best hikes in Hong Kong. Will’s cousin, Jamie, also participated in, if not led, each walk although unfortunately he wasn’t coming to Kinabalu. A clash with a work commitment which was subsequently rescheduled had seen him waiting in the wings doubtless secretly hoping one of us would sustain a serious injury prior to departure. Fortunately for the original eight, and less fortunate for Jamie, this didn’t happen.
Will Pirie is from Wales. He’s not really but he lived there for a while and that’s enough for us. Besides which, it exasperates him to be repeatedly described as Welsh. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Welsh, just that it’s not correct; in the same way that I’m not Scottish because I’m from the other side of Hadrian’s Wall as Toby repeatedly likes to claim. When he does that I remind him that it wasn’t my fault some egotistical Italian built his wall in the wrong place or that Toby’s so uneducated he doesn’t know what is in England and what is not. Then I’d tell Will he’s from Wales, such is our hypocrisy.
He’s a keen hiker and it was only work commitments that prevented him from coming to Tanzania. Or so he said. He’s also a football fan and it was Will, myself and Toby who made a long threatened sortis into becoming followers of local Hong Kong football. Local Hong Kong football it should be explained, is dire. In the 70’s and 80’s, the likes of Bobby Moore and George Best graced the scruffy turf of Caroline Hill and Mong Kok. Nowadays they don’t, rather obviously as they have both passed on. Nowadays no one of any note graces the local game. The last player anyone might have heard of was probably Nicky Butt, who played for South China for a few minutes in 2010, at the very, very end of his otherwise illustrious playing career. And no offence to Nicky Butt, who the great Pele once described as the best player at the 2002 World Cup, but that was as it good as got in recent years.
So we decided to go and watch some local football, and Will rather arbitrarily decided we’d support Citizen Athletic Association, on the grounds that they were mid-table, were not likely to go down, and were not South China Athletic Association, the Manchester United of Hong Kong football. Will decided Citizen’s Brazilian striker Detinho was his favourite player on the grounds that “he’s older and heavier than me”. Given that Will was near forty at the time, and he’s not a small lad by any stretch of the imagination, you get the idea of the standard. When Detinho was injured in a game, two St John’s Ambulance men rushed on with the stretcher, rolled him onto it, and then had to call for reinforcements to help lift him up. My own favourite was Citizen’s central defender Festus Baise, a Ghanaian whose claim to fame was scoring one of the most ridiculous own-goals imaginable. Described as a reverse scorpion-kick, it was selected as the 5th best own goal of all time by the Daily Telegraph, and the video had apparently been viewed over five million times on YouTube. It truly was sensational.
So for one season we went to around half a dozen games, invariably at the 6,769 seat capacity Mong Kok Stadium, which enjoyed ‘home ground’ status for half the clubs in the league. Mind you, there were only twelve clubs in the top flight at the time. And aged from our late-thirties to mid-forties we must have lowered the average age of the crowd significantly. Most of them were old fellers, presumably escaping the clutches of claustrophobic apartments and nagging wives, and enjoying the free admission for pensioners. Even for us fee-paying customers it was only HKD 60 (£5).
We sat with the twenty or thirty die-hard Citizen fans for whom we seemed to be a source of amusement as we got more excited and more animated by the football than anyone else did. We made up our own songs, greeting the player with the initials Y.Y. on his shirt with a rousing chorus of Delilah, but it didn’t catch on. We even enquired about getting hold of some replica shirts only for the guy we asked to proudly tell us that he had made his shirt himself. And on closer inspection, indeed he had. Pretty badly.
At the end of that one season the existing league was disbanded and an exciting new Premier League created. Unfortunately Citizen opted not to join, i.e. couldn’t afford it, and our interest waned. At the time of writing Detinho was still playing for a second tier team, Wing Yee, and had netted an incredible twenty goals in just nineteen appearances. Form is temporary; class is evidently permanent.
Flora Wong is not Welsh either. She’s Chinese. Australian-Chinese. And in September 2015, for better or for worse, she married Will Pirie. Which meant that, apart from all the other benefits which marriage to Will Pirie has bestowed upon her, she got to join our merry band of hikers. Lucky her, eh?
Go to Chapter 15: The gateway to Borneo