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Published: March 7th 2009
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Debbie Arrives
And a new friend for us - Mary We left Bangkok early to catch our flight to Borneo via Hong Kong, after travelling for 12 hours we reach our hotel The Shangri-La, Tangjun, Kota Kinabalu. The hotel is huge and after checking in we go to our room to freshen up and then off to find some food. We decide to eat in the hotels Cantonese restaurant, which on entering decide it has no atmosphere but not quite sure why. We order and find crispy duck can only be ordered whole so we settle for a different duck and pancakes which they seemed to be able to serve half a duck to us!! We also ordered for our main course two dishes, one was stir fried beef with black bean sauce, very nice and the other we ordered deep fried grouper with soy sauce and shredded ginger. Unknown to us the waitresss decided to change our order to stir fried wok fish as she thought the grouper dish would be too much for us!! After finishing our meal we retreat to to cavernous lobby bar for drinks, listening to the sound of a 3 girl karoake enhanced group singing popular songs - very loud. Not sure why hotels do
this in their bars.
Next day Bills off diving early, a bit disappointing but funny. Dive 1, the other diver is German, down they go and at 10 metres the german realises he has forgotton his camera so back up they go to the surface then back down again to a reef at 22 metres - reaching 26 metres no bottom - they have missed the reef due to current and camera problem so ascend back to the surface - back down again to find the reef but by 10 mins have lost the german. The dive master ascends finds the german and brings him back down again!! The second dive the german does a fast ascent - too fast for Bill to catch him, Bill tells the Dive master who has not seen this!! Back to shore safely Bill goes back to the hotel pool to find Sue has met up with Debbie and her friend Mary and are having lunch in the sun at Coco Joes. Lots hugs and kisses again and Sue, Debbie and Mary decide to spend afternoon sunbathing only to have a black clouds come over. Tonight we decide to go into Kinabalu town
to eat - Debbie has the guide book and we head for the night market - but no food stalls 😞 While Debbie looks at the book for 10 mins and then consults a local Bill asks a tourist and gets directions in 30 seconds! We end up at a seafood food court, not much choice for Debbie & Mary - a vegetable dish & rice, but we tuck into a Mantis Shrimp and a big steamed grouper, which we had to get weighed first - its in a bucket and on the scales - Mary comes over to have a look only for the fish to make an escape bid and leap out of the bucket towards Mary - much screaming ensues and Mary makes a run for the table. Still the fish did taste nice and the local music and dancing on the stage was good - even if it was a bit touristy. After dinner we try to find a bar for a drink - we bypass two places having sent Bill in to check them out - it must be bad if he won't go in. Finally we settle on what is a locals bar -
they only serve beer in buckets and the girls are stared at - still we made an effort to inject money into the local economy.
Next day and up early for Bill to go diving again - more successful today, the highlight was a small dark red shrimp crab, the size of a fingernail on bubble coral - this may not sound exciting, but to Bill it was brilliant - the first time he has seen one of these - and he regrets sending the underwater camera back with Chris. Back from the dive and Gail and Malcolm have arrived - even more hugs and kisses than yesterday and we settle down to catch up over lunch, a bucket of beer and two bottles of wine 😉 Lunch over we head off for a swim in the South China Sea, from the hotel's man made sand beach !!! A much needed sleep follows, before we all meet up again at the Sunset Bar to watch what turns out to be the best sunset we have seen on our trip. So there we all are - what more could you ask for - a great sunset, good friends and oodles
of champagne 😊 😊 Well only dinner - and we head off to the hotels posh italian restaurant - great food, good wine, better company and OK it was a bit pricey, but worth it - the only thing missing was Angelo managing the restaurant !!
Its now time to move on again - off on our Intrepid Borneo Trip - The Land Beneath The Wind. We get a taxi to our start point hotel - Asia City - and check in - a big come down to earth cheap hotel - still we know worse is to come !
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