I was stripped down to my boxer shorts and with my bare hands was clawing great clods of mud out from under the wheel arch. Occasionally I would take a rest from cleaning and lie down in the shallow water to cool myself off. Even with the help of a second tow truck it had taken us nearly an hour to free an old Landcruiser that had got stuck on the way into Imbak Canyon. All three vehicles were now parked in the middle of the Imbak River to receive a much needed wash. By way of taking a holiday from Maliau Basin I had decided...

As we were tucking into our dinner last night we were rudely interrupted by an extraordinarily loud crash. It scared the life out of Eda who immediately leapt into Jamil’s arms, thus confirming a point of gossip that Andy and I had been debating for some days. We continued munching our steamed fish for a few more moments before Andy voiced what I had been thinking. ‘That sounded like it came from the region of our hammocks’. Having managed to let go of Eda, Jamil rushed off to investigate and returned slightly animated...

In front of me the river is making it’s way over a small waterfall and behind me I can hear the girls carrying on in the kitchen as they prepare lunch. I am sitting next to a 1:50,000 scale relief model of the Maliau Basin Conservation area which is to be my home environment for the next three months. Home itself is an accretion of zinc roofed shelters that meander across folds in the ground between leggy rainforest trees. As a white man and therefore head and shoulders taller than most Malaysians, I have to continually watch...

My meeting with Prof Ho is documented at Arkitrek under the post of his name. Another fascinating thing for me about Prof. Ho is that he was a member of the 1964 Mt Kinabalu East Expedition during which Prof. E J H Corner of Cambridge University made the third ascent of Kotal's Route to the Eastern Plateau of Mt Kinabalu. This is the route that I followed in complete ignorance with friends Emma and Matt in June 2004. The account of that ascent follows. * * * * * The rotting branch takes on a fresh intensity as I decide to trust...

When I first met Prof Ho Coy Choke he was hunched over his plate clumsily shoveling rice into his mouth. He spoke in a loud abrupt tone without looking up. Once his meal was finished he straightened up, slid a pair of heavy rimmed glasses onto his nose and transferred his attention to me. I tried hard to return the scrutiny but between his heavily squinted eyebrows I was not even able to determine the colour of his pupils. That he was a man of powerful intellect was immediately apparent by the chain of his questions. That he loved...