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Published: October 28th 2009
Amazing view
This is the view of the South China Sea from where we stayed. It's an amazing mixture of ocean and jungle.The first big holiday of the school year falls in October. This year it included two major Chinese holidays: mid-autumn fest and the national day. This year China celebrated 60 years of the establishment of communist China. There were celebrations that rivaled the open ceremonies in Beijing this year. We were planning to stay here, since I had given up the search in frustration. Each trip requires a ridiculous amount of research and planning, unless we’re willing to pay the highway-robbery prices charged by the expat-focused travel agents here.
However, the week before the holiday began, a fabulous deal fell into our lucky laps, and we were off to Borneo. The first thing we determined was that cannibalism was fortunately a thing of the past in Borneo,
so we were good to go! Borneo is the world’s third largest island and is comprised of three countries: Malaysia, Indonesia and itty-bitty Brunei. We spent our quick four days in the north near Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. I can’t say we really saw Borneo, as this was really just a quick relax-at-the-resort vacation. This is not our usual style, but we had a great four days relaxing together.
Borneo is heavily
It's he cute?
Yes, it's a boy. This was one of the young orangutans at the refuge we visited. They raise the young orangutans through a series of centers, with the goal of returning them to the wild. They were very entertaining. jungled (I guess I’m making up that expression). My mission was to get to Mt. Kinabalu in the center of the island to go hiking. In the end the four-hour roundtrip drive kept us away with our limited time. I guess we’ll just have to go back.
We spent most of our time playing at the resort - boogie boarding in the great and very warm waves, swimming in the pool, ATVing through the jungle and on the beach, visiting a orangutan refuge center, and
EATING! We ate so much that we joked that we had to come home.
We ventured into town one day for an interesting walk through the food market. We sampled some of the local deep-fried yummies and then headed to a waterside table at a local food joint. It was interesting, as our food/drinks came from three different vendors, even though we ordered everything from our waiter. First the beer arrived from up the street with its own bill. Then the satay arrived from a woman with a little stall outside the restaurant, again with its own bill, and then the rest arrived. It was interesting and delicious!
We always say that
Jungle walk
We walked tree-top to tree-top on bridges high up in the jungle. The views of the ocean where beautiful. we’ll go back to places, but we never do. However, if we ever make it back to Borneo we have a lot of adventurous exploring to do.
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Ruth Anne Queenan
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What great adventures
It makes our wily adventure of searching for a new dog pale in comparison. Take care. Ruth Anne