Pulau Labuan: coconut pudding and lovely people!

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Sunday 29^th April 2018

It is Sunday afternoon and we are relaxing after the best meal of our travels so far. Our splendid Sunday lunch, eaten at one of the top seafood restaurants along the east coast of Labuan (according to the locals who flock here from the town) was awesome. It cost £15 for both of us! It would have been really tops if it hadn’t been a “dry” restaurant as 99%!o(MISSING)f them are. We drank tall iced smoothies, pineapple for me and orange for John and started with a big bowl of very spicy soup full of chicken, tomatoes, lemon grass, ginger, chillies and more. It tasted very similar to Thai Tom Yam but with more tomato and it was hot! This was followed by a large dish of crispy fried prawns, gorgeous salted egg-fried squid and a fragrant chicken fried rice, with lots of other added ingredients (we needed to beware of the little whole red chillies). Then we had the most wonderful dessert to freshen the palette, a fresh Coconut pudding to die for! Coconut pudding is simply a kind of blancmange made from the flesh and milk of the coconut, sweetened, cooled and set in the fridge and then heaped back in to the coconut shell to serve. Delicious! Best of all, this restaurant is next door to the beach chalet we are staying in!

We arrived here early evening on Friday and have really enjoyed doing little for a couple of days, apart from getting the washing done and getting lost in Bandar Labuan town yesterday. We went in to Bandar, just about four kilometres south of here, to buy ferry tickets for tomorrow morning to get us to Brunei and to ask if anyone had handed in the detachable keyboard from my Surface tablet/PC which I had left on the ferry. The girl in the Labuan ticket office said “Well, it hasn’t been handed in. I will phone the Captain!” She phoned him up, he had just docked in KK and he said that he had it and when the ferry docked in Labuan later that afternoon he would bring it to her. What kindness! What service! We were very impressed. So, we had the entire day to explore some of Bandar Labuan until 5 p.m. We did more walking than anticipated, however, due to a lot of roads all looking the same and not having a map or our compass which was back at the chalet. It was very hot. We got back to the ferry terminal by 5 p.m. however and recovered the “lost” keyboard. This little incident is just one example of how kind the people here are. So far in Borneo we have met so many friendly people. Folk of all ages say “Hello” as they pass by in the street, nobody rushes about, the drivers must be the most courteous and careful in the world and they all love us because we are English, from the Mother Country. Borneo is for us very close to being one of the best locations ever; it comes very close to Fiji for warmth and hospitality. Love it!

Last night, after a really sweltering day we had a terrific storm. The temperature was still 32 degrees at 6 p.m. (on Google, “real feel 39”) and the sky turned orange and the wind bent the palms then torrential rain hammered down on the tin roof. The noise was tremendous. Twice in the night the noise was just as bad, as the tropical storm raged overhead. John slept through it all! Today, the sun has shone down again relentlessly. Locals are complaining about the heat, which is apparently exceptionally hot for so early in the year.

So, chilling out now and we have a bottle of wine to drink! Labuan is a duty-free territory, so all those who don’t drink in public must do so in private, ‘cos there are a hell of a lot of booze shops doing a good trade in Bandar and very few tourists! We have only seen one European couple and one Japanese couple since we got here on Friday. There were none on our ferry. Tomorrow morning, we must get up early to get the ferry to Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city of the Sultanate of Brunei where booze is strictly forbidden! So, we shall open the wine bottle now. Cheers everyone!

NOTE: When there are a lot of photos on the blog, several are displayed at the end and further down the page, so you need to scroll down to see them.

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Photos

View from the chalets
Kampung Nagalang Seafood Restaurant out on the end of the jetty

Same view before the storm
Orange sky and wind-blown palms

Sunshine again today
One of two wrecks along the beach

Nagalang Beach
Not a bad view from our Sunday lunch table!

Comments

[Barbara Collins]

Lovely food
What a treat for you to eat Sunday lunch like that. Looks an idiotic spot and wine as well. Love Barb and Dave xx

[ALAN]

COMMENT, WHAT ELSE!!
YOU SEEM TO BE SUFFERING FROM A BOOZE SHORTAGE SO WE'VE HAD A COUPLE OF EXTRA GLASSES TO MAKE YOU FEEL EVEN WORSE..HA,HA. (SORRY) COULD NOT STAND THAT HOT WEATHER YOU HAVE SO GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. KEEP WELL.