Sometimes a little bit of luck puts you in the right place at the right time.

I’d been travelling around Kuching and Kota Kinabalu – Malaysian Borneo’s two largest cities – with a group of newfound friends for a week or so. However, the time had come for us to go our separate ways. Two of these friends had managed to organise a last-minute reservation on a two-day trip to climb Mount Kinabalu – Borneo’s highest peak – which stands immensely above the city of Kota Kinabalu. I had been tempted to join them, but I had a date with the mystical Danum Valley which I was determined not to miss.

We said our goodbyes on a Sunday morning as they departed for the hike. I was due to fly out the next day on an early flight to Lahad Datu, from which I would get a connecting bus to the Danum Valley. There was a 6:05am and a 7:05am flight to Lahad Datu from Kota Kinabalu. Anyone who has travelled with me knows that I’m not a morning person, but that I also arrive at the airport unnecessarily early for flights. So naturally, I had booked the 7:05 flight, but had arrived at the airport early enough that I would’ve been able to get the 6:05 and still have had time to relax over a coffee.

Not being a morning person, I was still half-asleep and failed to realise that the 6:05 flight had been delayed slightly. When the announcement came a little after 6:00 that a flight to Lahad Datu had begun boarding, I thought for a split-second, ‘Wow, they’re getting us on early’, before lining up without considering any possible explanation why.

When I arrived at the check-in desk, I cheerfully presented the QR code boarding pass on my phone, by which the also half-asleep check-in assistant looked thoroughly confused. He jotted down my ticket number on a scrap of paper and, gesturing towards one of the ricketiest planes I had ever seen, said, “Just down the hall and across the tarmac, enjoy your flight.”

It wasn’t until the plane started taxiing down the runway at around 6:30 that I realised I was on the wrong flight. Since I was still going to the correct destination, I thought to myself, “Well, there’s no point telling them now.”

I arrived in Lahad Datu without any problems. But this series of coincidences led to one of my all-time favourite photos. The sunrise over Mount Kinabalu, taken through an airplane window from above the clouds at 30,000 feet.

Had I been on the 7:05 flight, this image never would have come together. And the best part? This photo was taken at the exact moment that my two friends were sitting on the summit, watching the same sunrise (shout-out to Julia and Anne-Sofie).

I hope the 7:05 flight didn’t wait too long for me.

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Mount Kinabalu, Borneo