With that all sorted we just had to pop to our hostel just outside the park (more money saving) and get some good kip before an early start...
We arrived and met the owner. After a very short and confusing conversation (understood not a word of English) we gathered she had no computer or internet, therefore no idea of our booking! No loss, there wasn't a soul booked in due it being off season and the weather being "a bit unpredictable".
We dropped our bags in a nice big room with en suite (ooh la la!) and the owner checked the light. Nothing. She pointed at the switch and informed us "no light". Ok, so we understood that well enough, no electricity. Oh well, we'd just wait, we had no plans after all. Time passed, the weather closed in. We sat in the common room but it was open to the elements, thus we soon had mist around us and the rain and wind were picking up too. Helpfully the owner popped in occasionally to inform us "no lights!", thanks. We moved to the bedroom and played scrabble on my phone by candle light, ate trail rations for dinner and went to bed with storms rattling the building.
The morning brought us no respite from the rain and wind (nor arrival of electricity), so our early start was delayed and we headed to breakfast at the truck stop outside the park at 8am. Breakfast was delicious and the weather was clearing minute by minute!
We headed into the park, grabbed our guide from HQ and hit the trails! All was well again. The climbing was steep and incessant (very much expected) and it was great to be on our way. We passed at great waterfall, I made friends with a Borneo ground squirrel and we even saw some red leaf monkeys!
We were making incredible time, so our guide suggested that, with an uncertain forecast, we should blaze through base camp and summit in the same afternoon! We were already climbing 1404m in one day, he was suggesting increasing this to 2229m with 15mins for lunch! We told him we would decide at base camp but the decision was lost to us. 30mins from base camp the winds and rain came in hard, it was hell. Really, the worst experience I've had on a mountain. We were soaked from head to toe, the temperature bitingly cold, the water turned the path to a steep, rock strewn, fast running river and we had visibility of about 3m.
The hostel was clean, dry and out of the wind. Thankfully there were also large, thick duvets, an absolute savior as the room had no heating whatsoever. We got in to all our remaining dry clothes (including all warm layers packed for the summit) and both dived under two duvets on a one bunk. 15mins later I finally stopped shivering, another 15mins and I could feel my feet again (they weren't feeling great). That was basically it for the day. We had reached base camp in 4 hours and now it was early afternoon with wind and rain battering the building. We chatted to other climbers who arrived even later, ate trail food for dinner again (we had no dry clothes we could waste heading to the canteen) and then went to sleep hoping the trails would be open at 2am for the original scheduled summit attempt.
2am. No change. Slept till breakfast at 6:30am and then hiked down in the unchanging weather. At the bottom we grabbed our bags from the hostel (still "no lights"), I changed in to my very last dry clothes (vest, shorts and flip-flops, not warm at all) in the truck stop toilets and got the midday bus onward to Sepilok.
Cold, disappointed, bags full of sodden and smelly clothes, neither of us could be happy at all. To add insult to injury, where once only primary rainforest resided, all we saw on the second half a 5 hour bus journey was endless palm oil plantations.
You read about it, hear about it, but nothing prepares you for it. We'd walked, trekked and frankly marvelled for weeks at Malaysia's wild jungles and forests, the most stunning and beautiful I've been lucky enough to see and experience. To see it laid to waste and replaced as such is agonisingly heart breaking. Things could only get better for us, I fear for Borneo's forest's future though.
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