Asia adventure trip Part 3: The Chill

          From Borneo I continued full speed in my plan and after three hours sleep I flew with the first morning flight to Kuala Lumpur to spend one day with sightseeing and take then the evening flight to Bankgkok. I had everything prepared so I knew how to take a train from the airport to the city, how to go with elevated monorail from train station to Petronas towers and which way to walk back to see the city’s highlights. Spotless!!

          Petronas towers, once the tallest building in the world were spectacular, but I knew that the better view than from its connecting bridge is from the slightly smaller TV tower, but which is on the hill, so you can actually see the towers from almost above J Amazing!! I spent a while there too. Then I slowly walked through the city streets to Chinatown, Sri Mahamariamman temple, Central artisan market and finished next to National mosque and the world’s biggest covered bird-arium!

          There unfortunately some stomach bug from a Chinese burger on the street came to life and after spending an hour on the toilet I had just enough energy to take a taxi to the train and back to airport!! When I landed in Bangkok I was still somewhere between, so the three hour drive to Pranburi even in spacious private van was a nightmare. But the next day after a good sleep in a fresh beach and jungle air I felt quite ready to finally relax, recover, enjoy and have proper holidays!

          Pranburi is a forgotten small village on the east coast of the Thailand gulf. But they have good and reliable wind conditions, so that’s why one Swedish entrepreneur Jay set up a kiteboarding center there and was organizing ITC courses to become kiteboarding licensed instructor. So actually these were not “proper” holidays…I came to study J I had nine days in there to do couple of preparatory trainings like First Aid and then five day ITC course.

          “Jiri…you should get a bike when you are here…that you can move around” said Jay and I had to agree that it was a good idea. “I call one for you” he added and I was making myself ready to pedal on a crappy city bicycle. What was my surprise that a lady brought a Yamaha 125cc scooter!! I have never in my life driven a motorcycle before so I was a bit cautious and afraid, but after a day I was fully enjoying riding slowly on the village streets with the wind in my hair. Holiday in Thailand couldn’t be complete without a scooter. Like this I was easily going from my jungle bungalow to have breakfast in open air restaurant, then pick up my kite gear, ride to the beach, then for Pad Thai noodle lunch…relax next to the pool, do some homework study, have Pad Thai dinner and go to a bar to have some beers…wonderful times and I felt sooo relaxed and kind of careless and free J

          Even when the ITC course started, which was more intensive than I thought with theory and practical real teaching sessions from 9am to 5pm, I didn’t feel bothered or tired. The peaceful and easy going atmosphere spurting from everything around you made the course really fun and enjoyable. Of course it was mainly because of an excellent and experienced instructor Ika from Serbia, who made all the information interesting and useful, so I felt that after the course I didn’t only get the Level 1 instructor license, but I became better kiteboarder and learned a lot of things about the equipment, environment and teaching techniques which will make feel better about the instructor job I’m planning to do back in Qatar over weekends.

          In such conditions as on Thailand beach the days easily merge into one, so before I could realize it there was my final day and departure back home, to Qatar, to work… L I had an overnight flight from Bangkok so I had one more morning to left. I chose to finally go to a dominant rock at the end of the beach and try to climb on top of it. Fortunately here was a nice trail up so I could enjoy the view and breathe the peace of that place once more from above.

           Standing on the top of the mountain and looking to the distance I recalled what happened in the last two weeks. Everything was great, the race, the climb and this chillout and went far beyond my wildest expectations!! I wish all my trips are like this…but wait…happened once, so it can happen again! So let’s do it…Let’s do another Veni-Vidi-Vici holidays J

Asia adventure trip Part 2: The Climb

         
          My holiday schedules tend to be always very tight and especially when I travel alone I give only little to no time to rest. Here it was no different, but I felt that after running 100k I should recover a bit, so I gave myself one day before climbing Mount Kinabalu, 4095m high Borneo prominent mountain and highest peak in the South East Asia.

Because the mountain is a National park you are obliged to pay many fees, hire a guide, sleep in a mountain lodge and purchase meals for two days. Agencies online or in Kota Kinabalu wanted 1500 ringgits, which was way over my budget, because I’ve read a blog that a guy did it all for 500!! So when I didn’t find anybody in the city to arrange the tour for that much I said “Ok then…let’s go to the park gate and see how is the real situation there” and on Monday early morning I took a shared taxi up to the mountains.

          By chance two Finish girls Iitu and Jenni were already inside on the same quest, so the two hour ride flew by nicely. Even bigger coincidence was that we met another two Finish guys Ville and Jarkko and Dave the Australian at the gate arranging the trip up. And this is the spirit of travelling J I was ready to do it on my own, but his was just excellent. More people, more fun!! I paid all the fees, booked a bed in the top lodge, which was supposed to be booked out, we hired one guide together, picked up a packed lunch pack and headed up. And with no commission to anybody the trip was exactly what I wanted. There are a lot of traps set for uninformed travelers. I luckily escaped this one ;)

          The climb itself is very easy, so a lot of people go up. Fortunately it was low season so we, all strong and fast hikers, didn’t have to fight our way up through a crowd on a narrow and steep trail full of steps. But I was definitely not the fastest. I had quite a hard time going up. Feet full of blisters, muscles still aching from the marathon and full backpack of survival gear for two days (just in case it wouldn’t go well at the gate) didn’t help either! But in around four hours we climbed those 6km and 1200 vertical meters to Laban Rata lodge and were waiting for dinner. Beer I was carrying up and the warm sleeping bag were well welcomed J

          As it is at almost all the big mountains, the ascent starts during the night to be at the top for sunrise. We had 2km and 800m more to climb so we started at 2am. And it was freezing cold with constant drizzling and quite strong chilling wind, but we were happy that we were allowed to make the climb.  The guys from day before couldn’t do it because of heavy rains!! And it was the same smooth and easy hiking up a wet stone slopes occasionally holding onto a fat white rope lying on the ground. This also served as an excellent lifeline that you don’t get lost in the dark as many hikers had none or very weak torches J

           I knew that were are starting too early and we would be waiting up there for the sunrise quite a while, but what to do…better early than sorry!! And it was work it…I had enough time to position my camera and film and watch the sunrise come up between the clouds. Because of the cloud cover it was not that spectacular, but still magical when the clouds were flying just around you and you were looking down up to the sea. I spend a lot of time up there and didn’t want to leave despite shaking cold, but after 45 minutes of recording flying clouds around I followed the lifeline back down to have the second breakfast with the other who left long time ago. I just love heights and mountains and was enjoying every step.

          After having some more food at the lodge we headed down back to the gate. Lower were getting more I felt that those awesome four days in Borneo are getting to its end. We regrouped once more at an Indian bar at Kota Kinabalu promenade, but because we were all quite tired from the climb we finished early, said goodbye and everyone continued its own direction of a free traveler. Dave flew to Vietnam, Ville and Jarkko back to Malaysia, Iitu and Jenni to Singapore and me to Kuala Lumpur and then to Thailand J