Last weekend, I, Lukas the austrian, Eric the kiwi and Hatim the Pakistani Canadian did a jungle survival trip on Borneo. We stayed at hostels in Kota Kinabalu and over two days, one night we took a guided jungle tour located a 2 hours car-drive away. In Eric’s words, it was the most miserable fun we have ever had in our lives, and I will tell you why now. First, however, here are some tips for the tip:

• We booked our jungle trip through L.O.S.T (Live On Self Track). A 2-day, 1 night survival trip costs 600 Malaysian Ringgits (ca 123 EUR). For 500 Malaysian Ringgit, you can buy a regular jungle trip, which has the sole difference that you will not make your own cooking gear in the jungle (in my opinion, it is probably worth saving your money and going for this alternative instead).
• If you want to stay at a hostel, go for Akinabalu Youth Hostel. I booked a bed at H2 Backpackers, because I tried booking at Akinabalu Youth Hostel, and I was quite jealous of the others’ hostel. Their hostel had good breakfast, was cheaper, and had a big common area to hang out in. Mine had no common area, a breakfast consisting of toast, butter and one kind of marmalade - although a quite comfortable bedroom with Air Conditioner, but too small beds for someone taller than 1,70 m. A bed at Akinabalu Youth Hostel costs about 25 Ringgit (ca 5 EUR) per night, whereas it cost me about 30 ringit (ca 6 EUR) per night.
• Eat a brunch at Nook Cafe. They have great quality food for brunch and it was a great end to the trip eating here.
• If you want to eat good seafood, go to Welcome Seafood Restaurant. The food is delicious and to a quite good price as well!
• For the jungle trip, bring mosquitoe spray, a backpacker bag (mine was 40 l), hiker boots, long-sleeved torso- and leg wear, as well as a headlamp. Most, if not all, of these things are listed in the recommended-to-bring-with-you list L.O.S.T. sends when booking.

As always, here is the google photos album we created for this trip.

Let us start. This trip was definitely different from the other trips in three regards. First of all, I got to Kota Kinabalu one day after the others, as I had to attend a german oral exam. Secondly, I had to stay in a different hostel than the others, as I unfortunately had forgotten to book a room at their Akinabalu Youth Hostel in time. Thirdly, and foremost, we were going on a survival trip in the middle of the jungle.

Starting out, I woke up 6 am to get to the airport in Singapore. From there, I took a flight to Kuala Lumpur, and then another flight to Kota Kinabalu, which landed around 15.30. The only direct flights to Kota Kinabalu with reasonable prices seemed to land around 20, which was too late for me, as I wanted to explore the city a little bit before going on the jungle trip. It was nevertheless a long trip, but two things that made up for it was that there was a good live band playing music outside the airport, and the short and cheap transfer from the airport to my hostel - the H2 Backpackers hostel.

The hostel was located just upstairs of a Durian shop (ugh…) and I paid 100 Ringgit + 20 Ringgit (ca 21 + 4 EUR) deposit for a bed over 3 nights here. It was a quite fresh environment, but there was no common area, the beds were too small for someone taller than 1,70 m and the breakfasts consisted of a toast, some butter and one kind of marmalade. The Akinabalu Youth Hostel, that the others stayed at, had a big common area, a good breakfast and was cheaper than my hostel. They paid the exact same price as me for their beds, although they spent a whole more night at their hostel.

Anyways, I quickly checked in to the hostel and left to walk around the city a little bit, whilst waiting for the others to get ready for the night. As in Melaka (the only other malaysian city I have been to), there was not that much to see, and the city did not seem to have much planning going into it during construction. I went to a clocktower and an observer outpost. As can be seen below, this was not that spectacular.

The view from the outpost:

Next, I met up with the others at their hostel, and we ate some food at a local restaurant called Yee Fung Restaurant (the food was okay, as can be seen below), and then went to the durian market located just outside my hostel (yes, I picked a bad spot to sleep at), and then to the local street food market. On the way to the street food market, we saw a beautiful sunset, mixed with one of the most horrible smells I have smelled in my life. It literally smelled like a fish had pooped out another fish that had eaten durian and rotten right there (a desciption of mine that the locals found very funny).

The street food was not that impressive, but we tried some sticky rice anyways. Then we went for a beer at a bar by the river, followed by going to Akinabalu Youth Hostel to play some card games and talk with some of the other hotel guests. Apparently one of them, a New Zealander had recently become very famous in Brunei, as he had publicly chasen and tackled down a local who tried to steal his phone. Local newspapers had written false news stories of his heroic actions, and everywhere he went, locals could not leave him alone, and wanted to take selfies with him. It was a pretty funny story to end the night with.

Next day, I went up at 7 am and had a sad excuse for a breakfast at my hostel. I quickly went to the others’ hostel, where we met up with our jungle guide and took off for the jungle around 8 am. It was a two and a half hour drive to the jungle, and the last half hour, we drove on an extremely bumpy road. It was nice to get out of the car and start the exploration.

We quickly got information of plants to gather for eating to dinner. Then we got handed machetes and trained a little bit with them by cutting down pieces of wood for walking sticks. We then walked for half an hour on a half walked-up path down to the river. It was a slippery path, and we all fell at least one time during our hike in the jungle. During our walk, the tour guide gave us information on what to look for in fruit in order to determine their edibility. Apparently, if they have a bitter and spicy taste, and there does not seem to be any animals having eaten it, it is probably poisonous. If animals have chewed on it, and the taste is only bitter, it could be fine. Best is, however, if the taste is as far away from the poisonous description as possible.

Down by the river, we saw some other people cooking and eating fish. These were the last people we were going to see throughout the trip. We quickly passed them by and made our way across the river, where Eric and Hatim tripped and fell into the water. Then we walked upwards for an hour, which was a quite heavy exercise.

Over this time, we only saw insects - almost only ants of different sizes - and I began to realize that this was probably going to be the only kinds of animals we would see during this trip. My initial fear of encountering a dangerous animal on the path was now quite low, and instead I was impressed by the size of some of the ants we saw - the biggest ones were about 2 cm long! My fear heightened a bit when the guide, who walked first, all of a sudden jumped because of a cat snake that slithered away in front of him. A couple of minutes later, we saw a decent sized spider by its net. As it turns out, though, this would be our last encounter with other animals than ants, mosquitoes and ‘small’ insects.

We stopped for lunch for half an hour, and ate a lunch box that the tour guide had prepared for us. Then we all took turns leading the way down from this height towards the river. At 15, we began looking for somewhere to set up a camp. The tour guide also cut down a banana tree and cut out its middle part - apparently this is edible, and elephants often eat this.

Finally, we found a place to set up our camp, and it began to rain quite heavily. We pulled down wild vines from trees and used these to tie up our tarpaulin (svenska: presenning) roofs between two trees per person. Under these roofs, we set up our hammocks that we were going to sleep in. The rain kept on pouring down, which made next part quite hard, as we tried to find dry wood for our campfire. Somehow, we managed to gather this and cut it down within an hour, which was good, as it now was pitch black dark in the jungle.

We now saw fireflies flying around our camp, and shortly thereafter, we managed to get a fire burning. Our guide cut up cooking gear out of bamboo to make a stew for us, and in the mean time, we were given hot dogs (yes, supermarket food) to eat. The real western experience, however, came when I managed to get internet connection in the middle of the jungle. I guess there is no escaping emails and social media these days… Anyways, the rain kept on pouring down, and we all felt quite exhausted and cold. Luckily, the rain stopped when we went to bed around 23 at night, when another experience happened.

This was one of the weirdest nights of sleep I have ever gotten. Throughout the night, I could not tell what was real apart from my dreams - probably because I woke up after every dream I had. I dreamt that the trees were falling down around me; that there sometimes was a big animal walking on the trees that my hammock had been set up on; and that I got pushed around in the jungle throughout the night - something that made me very surprised when I woke up to see that I was back at the place I started out at. The others had similar experiences; for example Hatim dreamt that there was a big snake lurkng around in the trees, for example. It was also very cold, even though we were so close to the equator. This will definitely be a night I will forever remember.

In the morning, we ate toasts with marmalade. Our guide had made bamboo spoons for spreading the marmalade, and we got to try making our own spoons. Furthermore, we all made our own bamboo cups to drink coffee out of. It was a quite nice breakfast, that got ruined when I suddenly started feeling food poisoned. Yes, I got food poisoned in the middle of the jungle, and had to find some nice leaves to dry up my experience. Luckily, I had brought pills that helped me throughout the rest of the trip. Still, not a nice experience…

When I had finished my business, we brought down the camp, packed our stuff and began walking again. It was quite a long walk through heavy rainfall and steep, vegetation-rich terrain, but we finally got back to the river. 20 minutes later, we had made our way to a waterfall, where we swam and ate some snacks that our tour guide had packed. It was a great end to the trip, and all the miserable fun we had had before disappeared, as we could embrace ourselves in this unique experience.

After the river, we walked for 30 more minutes and lastly ended up on the road where the guide had parked the car - 10 meters away from the car! It was a nice two and a half hour drive back, and we were really happy to be back to civilization. As Eric put it, we were happy to walk into the jungle, and we were happy to walk out of it.

Now that we were back, we went to Welcome Seafood Restaurant to eat some delicious seafood consisting of fish, prawns and squid. Later, we went back to Akinabalu Youth Hostel to drink some tea and chill out.

Next morning, we slept out, and me, Eric and Lukas went to Nook café to eat a delicious brunch. We all ordered a salmon dish with our own sorts of coffee. Eric and I also ordered a müsli, which, when Eric got his bowl, made Lukas also order one. We were so happy with the place that we ordered one extra cup of coffee each and two pieces of cake to share. We tipped them well and left very happy.

We really enjoyed the food…

This was also the last experience we had in Kota Kinabalu, as we afterwards met up with Hatim and took a grab to the airport for a direct flight back to Singapore. This was also my last trip as an exchange student in Singapore, and I was happy to do it, as it was so different from any other trip I have done. I do not want to go into the jungle again, however, as it first of all reminded me quite alot of walking around in a Swedish forest, and secondly was a quite miserable experience with the upside being that it was a new experience, and that we would quickly get out of there.

With that said, thank you Lukas, Eric and Hatim for this trip!