The changing weather systems I mentioned earlier were really starting to drift down to us now, we circled around six times in an air traffic jam before landing in a sodden and flooded capital, Kota Kinabalu.
Its quite bereft of charm in fair weather, bad weather really showed off its dreary side. We took a rare taxi to save the bother of figuring out buses and finding our way to the hostel in the downpour.
Our aim here, aside from heading on to more easterly regions, was to summit Gunung Kinabalu. We'd marked it out early in our plans as our first challenge to be conquered. At 4095m she's the highest peak in the Malay archipelago:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kinabalu
We'd done all our homework, made our plans... Now we spent the rest of the day pouring over weather forecasts and working when we should head over for an attempt (the national park was still another 2 hours away on unreliable transport links).
Eventually we were all set again. We had what looked like a 3 day weather window approaching; we would leave the day after next, travel to the park and register to climb early the morning after that. In the meantime we attempted to enjoy KK.
Its a bustling port city and that night we dined on fresh sea food in the night market (under a tarp in the rain, obviously). There were breaks in the rain the following day though, so we got out and about, completed a few odd jobs and took in some minor sights. Next morning the weather cleared early, we packed our bags and headed to Kinabalu National Park for the adventure to begin...
[Everyone loves to see crow dissecting a rat at the harbour, right?]
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