One week after returning from the northern tip of Borneo that is Sabah, I write these memoirs, of the trip to reach its peak...It's not easy.
Waking up at four in the morning. And having the Malaysian minibus we hired pick you up from downstairs for the airport in Johor Bahru. Infact, I didn't dare to sleep after drinks with a friend the night before. Not that I could afford to anyway since I hadn't finished packing and I got home at a very
responsible hour of two-thirty.
I slept on the bus though. Waking up twice for Immigration and thrice to adjust the vents of the air-conditioning that was blasting cold air on my face. I was soon to find out that on the mountain, my nose would take a similar beating from the gusty winds. So this was perhaps a good warm up, or cool down, whatever the case.
Senai Airport, for all the horror stories I heard, was a reasonably well-appointed hub. I dare say even better than Singapore's own Budget Terminal, which really doesn't surprise any traveller with a name like that. I suppose when they say the government is transparent, it really is. No bluffing. The Air Asia flight was to depart at 0730hrs and 10mins before boarding, we were frantically chomping into our Mary Brown breakfast chicken burgers purchased in a mad frenzy from the departure lounge.
Needless to say, I slept somemore on the flight. And I think so did the other four. Although I cannot really be sure because I thought I heard them shout
UNO! from 2 rows down. But no matter, I had another 2 hours (so I thought) of blissful slumber and no interruptions from the less than desirable stewardesses and their DimSum trollies.
I awoke, bleary eyed, to find that we had already touched down in Kota Kinabalu (KK). The pilot having announced that we had landed 30mins ahead of schedule. Did the dear Kapitan turn on his rocket boosters or something. I was so comfortably ensconced in my Economy chair, I swore repeatedly as I got up. Could we turn around and fly again?
From the window of the 6-seater taxi out of relatively modern KK Airport, the city looked clean. Of course in our benchmarked Singaporean hearts, it would never, never be as clean as our beloved island city-state where you could roll a fishball down Orchard Road and still feel confident enough to eat it. Yes, hyperbole. But its true you know. We compare, whether consciously or sub-consciously and sometimes, we forget and verbalise our comparisons much to the chagrin of our neighbours.
KK Airport must be one of the few airports in the world to be located so close to the city centre because within 15mins, we were at the Hotel Holiday. Yes 15mins. And I thought I could snooze somemore.
Drats! You know in a little map we picked up from the airport, a list of hotels with their assigned star-ratings sat tucked beneath the grid lines of the city. 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, topped off with the 5-Star Hyatt Regency Kota Kinabalu. Hotel Holiday, to our utter dismay, had no stars and sat nestled above a row of dirty shop-houses in an old, decrepit part of town. Whilst lugging my bags up to the room, I felt like a Narcotics officer on a drug raid, half expecting to find a used syringe on the stairway. Yes there were no lifts. No star you still want lift?
Ironically, The Hyatt was just one block away, by the waterfront. And as we passed the not-so grand lady on our way to lunch, I contemplated leaving the young 'uns to their own devices in the fantastic holiday hotel and checking myself into some 5-starred bliss. Oh how I looked at The Hyatt longingly. But this was a group trip. All for one, one for all!
Espirit de Corps! Camaraderie! Bullshit! I was counting the seconds before we got into each others' hair. You know what they say about your friends as travel companions. You start the trip off as bosom buddies, and end the trip being investigated for Culpable Homicide. Fingers crossed though. Patience.
On closer inspection, the city was not so clean afterall. For this, we heaved a collective secret sigh of relief. I mean its cleaner than KL or Bangkok or Jakarta but it certainly does not rank up there with our beloved Singapore. A fishball rolling down its main thoroughfare will, I say
will, give you KK's version of Delhi Belly.
The city is small by any standards and immensely walkable. And like all colonial waterfront real-estate, it has nice parallel roads and intersections leading from the main Jetty and the typical bank or two near the boats that used to bring the merchants from faraway. Shopping, for the most parts of town, is a throw-back to the early eighties. Save for maybe Warisan Square down on the water's edge where at least the familiar ring of Quiksilver, Timberland, Espirit and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf tell you that all is not lost. We are in 2007 and yes there is a shopping god we can thank.
One of the few places we enjoyed was Jesselton Jetty. Jesselton, we found out, was the old colonial name for KK. A row of quaint eateries and restaurants lined the boulevard boardwalk where the motorised boats took day-trippers out to the islands in Tuanku Abdul Rahman Marine Park.
We quickly decided that we wanted to do Whitewater Rafting the next day since we were only going to climb Gunung Kinabalu on Tuesday. On the Padas River no less, reputed to be world-famous by an obese lady at the Sabah Divers shop we went to. She looked like she herself could occupy one large dinghy on her own. OK, infact, she looked like a small boat or some other large flotation device. I asked her sheepishly,
So you won't be on the boat with us right? She said she couldn't swim. And here she was, Manager-ess of a Dive Shop, with PADI and SSI accreditation. But the Rotund One was a nice, schweet lady, and she got us on the morning bus and train out to Rayoh the next day. Jessie was her name.
And so we ended Day 1 at one of the waterfront restaurants. Watching the sunset and fishing boats return from a day out at sea. Dinner was crap. So we were soon to find out that East Malaysians can't cook to save their lives. But we were thankful. Thankful for the beer on our table and the breeze in our hair. Thankful that we were finally on vacation.
Although the River and Mountain beckoned in the days to come....
Labels: Travel