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2010 Borneo

Day 15 – Sandakan -> Kota Kinabalu

Thursday, 27 May 2010

We woke relatively early (Tracy didn’t have a good night’s sleep anyway – probably still too full from the previous night’s dinner?) and packed our bags.  We went for a coffee at what-has-become our regular kopitiam, then went back to the hotel to await our taxi to the airport.  The driver arrived (duly arranged by Mr Lum from the hotel), he was spot on time.  On arriving at the airport we spotted Craig and Dean waiting for their flight to KL then on to Australia.  We checked our bags and went to the Air Asia office to arrange some onwards travel from KK; we waited and waited, then eventually we were served and they didn’t have any useful flights for us to get to Kuching in the next couple of days.  We went to the Malaysia Airlines desk, and although the sign on the counter said that we could not make booking for future flights, the attendant was only too happy to help us and made bookings for us to fly KK to Kuching on Sunday.

Whilst waiting in the departure lounge, we said our last farewells to Dean and Craig then boarded our flight.  We left pretty much on time; we were offered snacks and drinks on the 45 minute flight to KK.  Air travel in Malaysia, a summary: MAS is cheaper than Air Asia, their flights leave on time (touch wood), you are offered food and drink — so much for the discount airline?

We touched down in KK and grabbed our bags and made for the pre-paid taxi stand.  Our room at the Step Inn wasn’t ready so we dumped our bags and headed out in search of some lunch.  We wandered back up to where we had lunch a few weeks ago, the place that did the great steamed and baked buns.  Obviously, we had some more of their buns and Scott was feeling a bit peckish so also had a bowl of soup with pork(??)  After grabbing another takeaway bun each we headed to the Tourism Office to gather some more information.  It’s very hot and humid in KK today, so we both had quite a sweat on.  Our shirts were soaked through, but they instantly froze into solid blocks when we entered the Tourism Office!  Pushing aside the penguins and polar bears to get to the computers we did a little bit of browsing for some activities whilst in KK for the next two days.  We didn’t find much so will probably just “wing it” and head off to the islands tomorrow for some snorkelling?

Stepping out onto the streets again, our shirts instantly melted and our sunglasses fogged up.  Nice to be out of the cold!  On the way to our accommodation we stopped to buy a small tripod to replace the one which broke a couple of days ago.  We went into a proper camera shop which only supplied proper camera equipment – we only need something cheap and nasty, so we headed across the road to the cheap and nasty shopping centre.  It still beats us how some of these shops survive, especially the multitude of mobile phone stores.  At one point in just a small corridor within the bowels of the centre there were about ten phone shops out of the 12 or so shops there.  We found our cheap tripod and made our way passed another several dozen phone shops back onto the street, and eventually to our accommodation.

The Step Inn is a couple of streets from the waterfront and quite centrally located.  From the shared bathroom, you have a view of the harbour; our window (which has a bullet hole in it!)

Scott takes me to all the fancy places
Scott takes me to all the fancy places

looks over a busy street corner.  The hotel is clean and our room is quite large, but is a bit noisy at times.  They provide free tea, coffee, drinking water and breakfast.

We went up to the room and started sorting some of our stuff.  We still have quite a lot of diving-related stuff with us, which is going to be of limited use when we head South and into the jungle, so we are trying to decide on what to take and what can be left behind in storage here at the hotel.  This was busy work so naturally, we needed a bit of an afternoon nanna-nap in the cool breeze of the air-conditioner.

We got up and ready for dinner.  Even before we had left the hotel that we decided to revisit the waterfront Indian restaurant from a few weeks ago.  We headed towards the water and was surprised to find a sprawling night-market; this market had all the same foods as the Sandakan market, and more!  It is a true market where people were selling fresh fruits, veges, fish and chicken.  There were food stalls selling cooked foods; the seafood looked very interesting with huge prawns and some very small lobster (obviously no size limits around here!)  We stuck to our guns and left the market to find the Indian restaurant, but have promised ourselves to eat the market tomorrow night.

The Indian restaurant was just as good this time as last.  We sat at a table on the boardwalk on the waterfront and ordered our dishes.  As we were waiting for our meals to be delivered the first spots of rain started falling.  Within moments, waiters at all of the establishments along the promenade sprang into action, erecting/unfurling umbrellas etc in time before the initial drizzle became light (but continuous) rain.  We finished our dinner, paid and wandered into the night mist.

On the way home we poked our noses into the Times Bookshop.  There was a vast array of book categories, nearly all titles were in English, but the books were no cheaper than at home.  As Tracy has already got five or so books to read, and the fact we spent the day lightening the loads in our backpacks, we decided not to buy anything.  (I think this is the first time in a looong time that Tracy has walked out of a bookshop without purchasing anything!) See http://www.ourbookclub.net.au for proof.

We went to hotel and Scott started chatting with some of the other guests to try and gather some more information from their travels.  Unfortunately the three (Swiss?) guys had been drinking just a little too much for anything really useful and they had only been in the country a few days anyway.  One lady (UK) had been here a while and was on a scuba diving mission, but could only afford her experiences about places we have already been i.e. Mabul and Sipadan.  She is leaving tomorrow(?) to go muck diving at Kapalai (been there!)