World Challenge is an organisation that works in conjunction with schools to help students experience life in third world countries and to develop leadership, teamwork and decision making skills. 

Midway through last year, a challenge began for 11 students and two teachers as we began planning and fundraising to go on a trip of a lifetime. We spent days de-lateralling peonies, organising a quiz night and running car boot sales as some of our fundraisers. 

We left on 27th June and, after stopovers in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, we arrived in lush, tropical Borneo. 

Once in-country, we began stage one of our trip, acclimatisation. This phase involved a day of trekking at Niah caves, where we experienced amazing, natural cave formations and the delightful smell of bat poo. We stayed in some nice accommodation and had to acclimatise to the weather which was on average 30-34 ᵒC. 

We started on our main trek at Lambir hills where we saw and swam in beautiful waterfalls and experienced the hot, humid jungle first-hand. It was here that we reached the summit of Bukit Pantu (Mount Pantu). What an achievement we felt when we finally scrambled our way to the top and saw the fantastic views. 

We then travelled to the village of Long Atip where we did our project phase. It was a long and bumpy 4WD experience with a ferry crossing, taking us deep into the heart of the Borneo jungle. Here, we concreted an area out the front of the church. The village was a great way to experience the culture of Borneo. We worked hard during the day and had fun playing games with the local children, swimming to cool off and assisting our host family in the evenings. On our last night in the village, we took part in a cultural send-off, where the people of Long Atip taught us traditional dances and songs. This was an amazing experience and really opened our eyes to the culture of the Malaysian people that live in the village. 

The next stage of the journey was a trip to Kota Kinabalu to begin our rest and relaxation phase. The first half of our Kota Kinabalu (KK) experience involved swimming at the beach and doing some market shopping. We then embarked on a six hour road trip to Sepilok where we saw orangutans, sun bears and proboscis monkeys. We managed to get close to the animals, which definitely made an impression. 

Once we returned to KK, we got the adrenaline pumping with white water rafting and zip lining (which terrified a number of us) and then finished with some really cool snorkelling, where we saw a turtle and lots of little Nemos (clownfish), as well of loads of other brightly coloured, interesting fish and coral. 

We left Borneo on 19th July and, after a stopover in Singapore, arrived back in Christchurch. Overall, this was an amazing experience for us, to learn about the culture and lives of people in such a different country. We had loads of fun and got to know each other and our team really well. We would highly recommend taking part in a World Challenge expedition.