In a shameless contradiction of my earlier claim that "I never return to places I've already been", please humour me whilst I waffle some more about previous travelling experiences.I travelled round Malaysia for a month as part of my backpacking trip in April 2006, and spent a bit of time in Borneo. What I saw of the place was just incredible, though as I remember it it predominantly catered for expensive diving or wildlife sanctuary packages for tourists. As I was on a backpacking budget, I couldn't really afford to do a lot of the things that I would have liked to here. One such thing was climbing Mount Kinabalu. I've never climbed a mountain and wouldn't consider myself the fittest person in the world, but no matter. At the time of my travels, I was relatively fit and this is something I should have done. I don't have many regrets, but not climbing Mount Kinabalu is definitely one of them.
NB: While looking for some images to accompany this post, I discovered a Guardian article about climbing the mountain. It talks of how ill-prepared the guides organising the climbs are, and how little or no reference is made to health and safety or climbers fitness levels, etc. This was something that really struck me whilst out there. The general message received by most travellers was that anyone could climb the mountain, regardless of health or fitness. You can read the article here.
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