Anything worth doing is difficult

I am at the same situation where I was 3 years ago. When I said that I wanted to write a book about climbing Kinabalu last week, I know it would not be easy. Writing this book is the same as creating my website 3 years back.

Yes. I am writing a book about Mount Kinabalu. A true physical book, that you can own, read and write on it. Not just some online PDF copy of an ebook. I did published an ebook about climbing Kinabalu 2 years back which you could get it for only USD7 (donation), but think I it needs a revamp and updates.

Have you found the gift for your loved ones this festive season? If you still do not find any, I would like to suggest these 3 books from Amazon.com that you can buy as a gift, if your recipient love backpacking around the world.

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

“If you have been looking for a source of inspiration concerning the wildlife and scenery of peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak, and Sabah, this is it … the caves, flowers, turtles, butterflies, birds, gibbons, and more that I’ve missed on other visits up the peninsula! The book is well organized with individual sections on peninsular Malaysia, with many subsections, and on Sabah and Sarawak. It is a coffeetable book that you will use.”
– Unique & Exotic Travel Reporter

What a little beauty this is!

Nearly 20 years ago, a gangling, footloose American gets boozed with a bunch of Borneo river-dwellers, and finds himself bound in a gentle obsession.

Soon after, he takes off across the island of Borneo on foot armed with a quick schooling in tribal bartering systems and not much else. He has no visa, no valid passport, an unreliable map, and a few sentences of Bahasa Indonesian.

An old friend of mine wrote this chronology in one of the forums on Mountains of Malaysia, based on the book by John Briggs. It seems that the book, Mountains of Malaysia is another rare book to be find nowadays. He even photo copied it from our Malaysian National library, as it is almost impossible to get a new copy nowadays. Last publication of the book was in 1988.

I love to highlight the time and people involved on climbing mountains in Sabah during the period of time.

February 1994, a team of 7 British soldiers and 3 of their Hongkong counterparts embarked on an expedition to climb 4,095m Mt Kinabalu and then abseil into Low’s Gully, a sheer 1.6km drop to a virtually unexplored forest floor. The members in the team were:

LTC Robert Neill
MAJ Ron Foster
SGT Bob Mann
CPL Hugh Brittan
LCP Kelvin Cheung (HK)
LCP Richard Mayfield
LCP Pete Shearer
LCP Steve Page
PTE Victor Lam (HK)
PTE Chow (HK)

This true story of survival has been the subject of two other books and a movie. In 1994, a ten-man group of soldiers, 7 British and 3 Chinese from Hong Kong, went to Sabah, Malaysia with the intention of being the first ever to successfully navigate Lows Gully. Lows Gully is a deep chasm off the northern flank of Mount Kinabalu. Superstition, mystery and intrigue surrounds this place instilling fear into some of the locals. It was into this situation that these men went to create history.

There are 14 mountain peaks in the world that tower to 8,000 meters (26,247 feet), and when Ed Viesturs finally conquered Annapurna, a peak on which one climber dies for every two who try, he joined an elite group of five people who have accomplished that feat without using supplemental oxygen.

The book is about two educated englishmen who venture to the Island of Borneo determined to capture the the sights of a rare albino rhino. The author sets the humor rolling straight off, and in his sardonic wit, recounts his adventures into the rainforest of Borneo.