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It's Tuesday evening now and I'm writing this from Kudat, a small town towards the northernmost tip of Borneo, about 3 hours drive from Kota Kinabalu.
Yesterday, still in Kota Kinabalu, we had an early start with a tour to Kinabalu National Park, about 2 hours or so north of KK. We shared the tour bus with 4 Aussies and they made great company.
We visited the botanical gardens, not really my thing but some interesting pitcher plants to see amongst other things. The highlight for me was a walk through the jungle canopies, precarious wooden and rope bridges dangling 300m above the ground, shaky as ever and providing super views of the treetops - you couldn't see the ground from up there!
Then it was on to Poring Hot Springs for a dip in the hot pools followed by the ice cold ones to cool off. We had a shared lunch of several Chinese style dishes - meat, fish, veg, rice, very tasty. We got back to KK about 6.45 pm so all in all a long day, rounded off by more nasi goreng and mee goreng at the night market.
Today was a very different
story! We began by collecting our laundry from the local place where we'd dropped it off a couple of days ago. I lost a sock (the guy at the laundry did tell us this and reduced the bill because of it so no worries) and gained a strange pair of knickers, but only realised this hours after collecting so the knickers went straight in the bin! I do have standards, clean pair or not!
We checked out of the hotel, D'Borneo, which was a pleasant place to stay and headed to the place where the 8-seater cars wait for enough people before setting off on their journey. We met another Australian, who was originally a Polish man from the Czech Republic and was going to Kudat to return to his boat, interesting chap to talk to. I know Poles don't come from thre Czech Republic but that's what he told us!
About half an hour later we set off with a near-full load, a couple of detours later the car was full to bursting and we had a 3-hour bumpy ride to Kudat, so bumpy that I bounced out of my seat a few times! The lack of
leg room meant we fell rather than climbed out of the car in Kudat!!! All good fun and oh so familiar!
The Lonely Planet only lists one hotel for Kudat and unfortunately that was full, so 3 hotels later we decided it was too hot to keep trying them out and checked into the fourth one we came across - cheap, yes, first choice, hardly. Well, it's only for one night............
We had lunch at a place a few doors away, at last I got to have a roti, something I lived on in Penang 18 years ago! Delicious, like a pancake stuffed with vegetables and accompanied by dahl. Mac opted for the chicken curry and a very strong coffee, which he said was fantastic (so much so, he had two more later)!
We got talking to a guy in the street who rang his brother to take us to the tip of Borneo, cheaper than what the taxi drivers were asking for and a nice bump-free (ish) ride. The tip is about half an hour from Kudat and is Borneo's northernmost point, characterised by a huge globe and a walkway down to the cliff edge.
Back in Kudat we strolled through the market, bought some pineapple but didn't see anything else that caught our eyes. We had roti again at the same place for dinner and did some reading on where to go to next, partly because there's only one TV channel that works in the room (football) and partly because it started to rain. We'll probably head back to KK tomorrow and try to get a ferry to Labuan Island, which will be our last stop off in Sabah before heading to Brunei.
It's so much hotter and more humid here, if that's possible!
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Dorothy Collins
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Wonderful
Hia you2. Lost blog address, Penny sent it just now. Wow, what a fab time you having. Amazing pics too. Look forward to seeing you fairly soon!! still looking..... Love Dotxx