Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Up and packed for a moving day. It is sad to leave the diving of Miri, but we need to get to Kota Kinabalu for our flight home. The weather looked similar to the last few days, so the diving would be good – damn.
We had morning coffees at our usual brekkie spot before saying goodbye to the Somerset Hotel and heading to the Miri Airport. The Airport is the usual efficient setup and we checked our bags through and headed up to the departure lounge, having a coffee at Coffee Bean. The airport seems to be setup for the oil rig workers as there is a lot of people heading to Miri Helibase etc and the workers on Labuan are also oil rig workers. Once our flight was called there was no faffing around and we were straight on the MASWings flight and took straight off. It was a strange flight as it was really fast (you only got a drink of Milo) and we seemed to spend most of the flight avoiding pockets of clouds etc. We landed at Labuan and jumped straight into a taxi to Ambassador Hotel. Well after not booking anything for the last 4 weeks, we found the hotel was full, bugger, but ventured to another one across the road who had two free rooms, so we selected what we hope is the quietest one. We popped across the road to Abdullah’s and had a fantastic Roti Telur with dahl. I have to say we have found the food in Sabah to be much more towards our liking than in Sarawak which seemed to be predominantly Chinese and extremely bland after a while.
First off was a trip to the Peace Park/Surrender Memorial in Layang Layangan. So we headed to the local Bas Mini depot and found Bus 4 which took us straight there, although we don’t think that is their usual route, but they did a circuit of the park and after much discussion between the lady driver and one of the other occupants about the location of the entrance they dropped us straight out the front – perfect. This is the memorial for the Japanese and commemorates the Japanese surrender. It is in the process of being tidied up as indicated by the plethora of gardeners.
There is also a plaque to remember the spot where the Japanese surrendered to the Australian’s and where the tribunals for war crimes against allied forces occurred, particularly the Japanese officers responsible for the Sandakan war crimes.
I of course wonder if the Japanese ever come to places like these and feel remorse for what happened, but I wonder the same about the European countries as well. Anyway it was a quiet place and we wandered along the paths etc in contemplation of what it was like for those here in 1945. There is some interesting statistics on the number of Japanese killed during the conflict, the majority occurred towards the end of the Japanese occupation and done by the locals who probably had had enough by then.
We then headed back to the main road and caught another Bas Mini back into the town centre. We wandered to the ferry terminal to see what are the departure times for Kota Kinabalu tomorrow. Labuan is also famous for being a duty free island so we priced up some alcohol (which seems to be significantly cheaper than home) and then caught a taxi to our next destination. The Labuan War Memorial.
This is the war memorial for all the commonwealth servicemen that were killed in the Borneo conflicts and also holds the graves of those that died in the Sandakan death marches. This is a beautifully maintained memorial and it is so sad to see the rows upon rows of names, in addition to the rows that are for the unknown soldiers.
There is also a really lovely memorial for the Indian soldiers that were also killed in the conflict. I suppose you forget how many countries were involved. It was strange that directly above the cemetery is the flight path for the military planes, but keeps you focused and kind of puts things into perspective.
We caught a taxi back into Labuan and Scott looked up some prices of duty free online and then went shopping for some Scotch. Now to make sure he doesn’t drink it before we leave.
As the sun began to set, the clouds rolled in and then came the lightning, thunder and heavy rain. It didn’t actually look too bad from the vantage point of our hotel room, but when we stepped outside to go get some dinner, we were met with a deluge and deafening thunder-claps. We ducked in and out of sheltering sidewalks and made it to Choice Restaurant. As usual, not all of the food on the menu was available, so we settled for our second preferences. The mango lassi was good, the plain lassi wasn’t plain (but neither was it sweet, or salty!); the dosai was really good. It wasn’t raining as hard when we left the restaurant, so instead of ducking rain we only had to dodge deep puddles.
Back in the hotel room, the internet connection is down, but the cable tv is still working (pity there isn’t anything good on) so we watched out the window as the lightning silhouettes the nearby buildings. Tracy is hoping the storm blows over quickly as she isn’t looking forward to a rough ferry crossing back to KK.