Mar 07

SINGAPORE
Singapore has changed quite a lot in the 10 years since my last visit. There appears to have been plenty of renovation with sections I remember differently, now having rows of new wine bars and very trendy restaurants, the public transport is new, very cheap and reliable and the locals even look more fashion conscious! One thing hasn’t changed though and that’s the insane price of wine here, a glass will cost you as much as your meal, but they serve up the Aussie stuff, so its definitely quality! Anyway, I’m impressed with the new Singapore, maybe its the Chinese economic boom, but its sure inspired me to visit again.

We spent our first day (with a long awaited visit) to the Singapore Zoo. I’ve been raving about this place to Kev for years, and finally got to take him. Its better than before, and more beautiful. How they have managed to keep those animals in without fences is amazing, but they have done a marvellous job with this place and I recommend it to everyone. We finished our first day off with the traditional Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel, a Singapore icon. It was nice but paid twice as much as anywhere else just for the experience, but Raffles is lovely and I’d like to be able to afford to stay there just once in my life, so I’ll add that to my ‘to do’ list.

SABAH
Selamat Datang – “welcome”. The people here in Borneo are full of big smiles and nearly every person on the street will say hello with a big cheesy grin. Its such a friendly place. The town of Kota Kinabalu doesn’t have too much appeal but the highlights are elsewhere. Of course the food is sensational and Kev & I have done the market place and had our fair share of banana fritters and fresh out of the wok Nasi Goreng.

We spent our first day of arrival in what seemed to be a monsoon, never quite seen rain like it, but was an excuse to work out in the gym, spend 2 hours at the buffet, check our money situation on the net, book in for a traditional Borneo massage, and finish the day with a couple of Long Islands!

Day 2 was a ferry over to the islands for an overnight stay. The islands here are so thick with jungle that its quite a sight to approach. With clear water, white sand and dark green jungle it’s a very beautiful sight. We enjoyed a BBQ lunch on the beach and some snorkelling, then stayed in our 2 storey bungalow on the beach to enjoy the awesome sunset, with a freshly cut coconut to drink. The sun going down over an ocean is always a sight! The following morning we probably spent an hour with pieces of wood pulling plastic bags out of the water and cleaning up the beach. There is a fishing village not far from the islands where the houses are built on stilts over the water, the rubbish from these people must get swept out to sea and end up on the islands, we were frustrated the workers on the island weren’t doing much about it, so we did our own bit for clean up Borneo day.

Day 4 we met up with Kev’s business partner & wife and several other friends for a 7am flight over to Sandakan. Our guide took us all on a visit to the birds nest cave, which was very interesting. These little birds make nests out of their saliva in the very top of the 100m high cave. The workers climb up and take the nests and are sold to the Chinese who pay a fortune for them, they believe these nests, when made into a soup with keep them youthful. The Chinese will eat anything! We continued onto along a very bumpy dirt road for a couple of hours to the Kinabatangan River where we boarded a very long canoe type boat with an outboard and sped up the river to the River Lodges. These lodges have had quite a few famous people stay at them, including David Attenborough. In the afternoon we took the same boat up the ‘magic river’ in the hope to see the Proboscis monkey in the wild. We were extremely lucky as we saw heaps of them, the large males with their big noses were putting on a show. We were very fortunate to see one Orang Utan sitting up in the canopy, this is very rare to see them in the wild, and with the binoculars it was just amazing to watch. This was the highlight of our trip. We also saw a crocodile in the water, plenty of Macaques, a snake, and lots of brightly coloured Kingfishers. There were some elephant tracks as well, but not that lucky to see one drinking from the river. We spent the night meeting some new lovely people drinking Tiger Beer and had a wonderful night. On our way to the river huts, we came across a group of Macaque monkeys on the ground, we had been told not to show your teeth or stare them in the eye or the whole group will attack you. Well, these guys weren’t impressed by our presence and we kind of stood there for a bit until one charged us, and sent us running, would have been funny to watch! We slept under mosquito nets listening to the wild life, it was a great experience.

Macaque Monkey

Macaque Monkey

The following day was a 5.30am start to get on the road early to visit the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehibilitation Centre. That was the plan, until the smell of oil filled the bus about 30 minutes into the trip along the dusty bumpy road and that was the end of that. We watched our poor driver come out from under the bus completely covered in oil trying to fix the..as he put it ‘hoss’, ‘the hoss is broke, very very sorry’. He tried and tried to fix it but we had to wait 2 hours until 3 taxis arrived to take us to the Centre. Anyway, the day could have been worse if the people we were with weren’t wonderful, so we chatted and joked around to make the day go by pretty quite. The Sepilok Centre was a little disappointing after seeing so many monkeys in the wild, but they are doing a wonderful job rescuing orphaned Orang Utans and have a great park.

Well have finally checked into the Sutera Harbour Resort for the conference. Check out the resort at http://www.suteraharbour.com this place is huge and the nicest place Kev & I have ever stayed in. There’s a 50m Olympic pool just in front of us, so I’ve no excuse now! Probably won’t be updating the blog for a while now as it will just be all about eating, drinking, swimming and meeting new people. So until later, Terima Kasi (thanks) for reading my blog.

LATER...
Well just signing off on this trip, met some wonderful people during this conference, enjoyed some lovely food, but glad its all over. Buffets for every meal and drinking and late nights gets a bit much after a while. Unfortunately our bag was stolen while we were at the Hyatt poolside, and there'll be no more photos of this trip as the camera has probably been sold by now! Both wallets were gone too, but we sorted it out as best as we could. As long as you've got passports and a back up plan everything else can be replaced. It was annoying as we are very careful on the street where ever we go, but being on private property you drop your guard, we saw the security footage and it was amazing how quickly it happened. Anyway we are over it and have learned from it. Next trip for this blog....TASMANIA IN MAY!!