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Published: June 17th 2007
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Beautiful Kapalai
An arty shot of the resort Touching down in Kota Kinabalu (KK) in the Malaysian side of Borneo we both were struck at how clean and tidy everything was. After a month in the Philippines we had become used to seeing everything being cobbled and bodged together - for instance, the sink drain in one of our rooms was the top half of a soft drink bottle funnelled into a hollow piece of bamboo. All the cars in the Philippines were customised jeepneys belching out smoke, home-made-looking cars and tricycles with too many passengers, also belching out grey or black smoke - by contrast in KK all the cars were modern western style cars, in reasonably good condition.
This was all a huge shock to us - living in Singapore, we had previously thought of Malaysia as the poor relation, heading over the causeway for a weekend was heading into the third world or so it seemed, but this part of Malaysia was a world apart. It felt safe and clean and, ‘nice’.
We had had an easy morning in Angeles city, even having a foot massage. The pollution in Angeles affected both of our eyes and throats so we weren’t sorry to leave, it’s
Al and the turtle
Alex examining a green turtle very similar to Manila in that respect. The Air Asia flight from Clark airport (the former US base, which is as big as Singapore!) was uneventful, apart from the ‘free’ seating scramble in which the ground staff act pretty much as starters in a no-holds barred race for the best seats - children and old people got stuck in with their elbows to participate in a comedic and dangerous race across the tarmac. Lise managed to sweet talk our way out of a fortune in excess baggage charges again. We had a walk round the centre of KK and found a nice restaurant to have dinner, we had hoped for a curry, but ended up with a Chinese type meal - but instantly we both agreed that the food was better in Malaysia than in the Philippines.
After just one night in KK, we caught another Air Asia flight, (and talked our way out of more excess baggage!) to Tawau which is on the south of the island. Another even more vicious scramble ensued and we had some great seats though Lise did knock out six teeth of a ninety year old Malaysian invalid. And break a four year
Kapalai
Balcony view at Kapalai olds leg.
Only four hours after leaving our hotel room in KK, we were speeding across the water to our next home-from-home - Kapalai resort. This was to be our biggest indulgence to date, but boy was it worth it. The resort is about half an hour offshore by fast speedboat and is a collection of cottages built over the water. Our room had a huge bed, luxury bathroom, stingrays, parrotfish, a shark (Lise thinks it was a shark anyhow) and hundreds of other marine creatures swimming underneath our feet. This was to be our base for diving Sipadan Island - regarded as one of the best dive sites in the world. By 3pm we were in the water, diving on the house reef, and if we had gone down with a checklist of all the cool stuff to see we would have run out of ink. Frogfish, ornate pipefish, octopus, leaf fish - pretty much everything! We were both stunned and speechless after surfacing and were itching to dive and dive and dive!
That’s exactly what we did and the diving was great. Perhaps we’d heard too much about Sipadan though and we found after a few
Flamboyant Cuttlefish
One of Lise's great close ups taken near Mabul Island days we were all turtled and sharked out and the diving started to get a bit samey, even though it was great. Being out on a sand bar, the weather was very changeable, with some really extreme rain storms followed by beating sun. We did about 15 dives in all, squeezing in as many as we could as it was a dive-as-much-as-you-can package. We did have a lovely time and would return again to Kapalai given the chance!
We spent one night in Semporna, suffice to say that all the guidebooks say it’s pretty awful and we wouldn’t want to argue with them. From there we travelled to Sandakan, about 6 hours on a bus away. Sandakan was a nice town although very hot and trawling around looking for accommodation had tempers starting to fray. We found a room at a new backpackers and although it was infested with mossies (mossie coils to the rescue) the owners bent over backwards to help us and the facilities were fine. We also found the tourist office and encountered the most helpful tourism officer we have ever met, so if anyone ever goes to Sandakan go to the tourist office first- they
Roughing it at Kapalai
Lisa enjoying a glass of Evans and Tate Australian! wine at Kapalai will help you with everything! We came to Sandakan to go to Uncle Tan’s jungle camp, a fairly famous part of the backpacker experience in Sabah. Uncle Tan’s is a basic camp on the banks of the Kinabatangan river. You share a hut with up to 6 people, everyone has a mattress on the floor and a mossie net. It was great fun, very muddy and we saw a lot of wildlife. They take you on river cruises in little punt boats at all times of the day so you get to see a wide range of animals. We mainly saw monkeys including proboscis monkeys- funny looking monkeys with big noses that they hoot through. Here we met Nikki and Lottie, 2 english girls and they decided to come with us on our next stop- trying to conquer Mt Kinabalu.
A bus brought us from Uncle Tan’s to the foot of the mountain, well to nearby. We had booked at Peace Valley lodge which is in a town, Pekan Nabalu (Pekan means small town) The bus dropped us off - it was dark and raining and cold. We had come to this place on a recommendation from our backpackers
Titan Trigger Fish
For those of you paying attention, you might remember that Al was attacked by one of these in the Philippines - about 30-40cm long in Sandakan and our first instinct was “what have we done??” We had passed the entrance to Mt Kinabalu National Park 25 minutes earlier and were fairly sure we’d made a mistake. We finally located the lodge/café with the help of a kind local and instantly fell in love with the place.
Peace Valley Café is a little café run by Captain Ikhwan and his wife, Orchid. They started the café (which has 2 rooms above it) because Captain teaches paragliding and they needed somewhere for their students to stay. Orchid was away, so we didn’t get to meet her but the Captain was a wonderful host. He also has the most amazing coffee that we have had yet, he blends the beans himself. He had booked us onto the waiting list days in advance to climb the mountain- all the accommodation near the summit tends to be booked out months in advance and you need to have accommodation before you are allowed to start climbing. We should have been at the top of the waiting list. We got there, all psyched to climb to find out that due to an administrative error we weren’t even on the list!
Hanging around on the wall
Lisa diving the wall at Sipadan- the wall is pretty much vertical for several hundred metres down After ensuring we were on the list for the next day, we trekked around some of the trails in the park and it started pelting down with rain (well, it is rainforest) and then we realised there were thousands of leeches, all keen on us. The thee girls were a little squeamish (may be slightly understated) and Al was amused to watch the dust as the girls took off and made the 1 ½ hr track in 1 hour flat. We spent the afternoon at the Poring hot springs soaking away in some sulphur smelling hot tubs.
After all this our enthusiasm for climbing the mountain disappeared, the weather was supposed to be getting worse so we made a decision to head back to KK and work out a plan from there. We said goodbye to the Captain and wandered to the main road where Nikki sweet talked a university bus into taking us for free. They were apologetic that they couldn’t take us right into town but we were just delighted to get a lift!
We all went for dinner together at a highly recommended Italian restaurant and much pizza and antipasto was consumed by all (err
Close encounter
Lisa photographing a (harmless) white tipped reef shark and perhaps some beer) and had a fabulous night. We spent one more day in KK, shopping and getting our stuff sorted. We’re now waiting at the airport to head to Kuching, the other Malaysian state in Borneo - our plane was supposed to leave 15 minutes ago and on the boards it says final boarding call but we’re told the plane hasn’t even arrived yet. Oh well, we’ll get there sometime!
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Rhona
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kapalai looks amazing! love a splurge every now and again :o)