Sabah Trip 3: Semporna

I realised upon reviewing my two previous posts that my English isn’t very good. Shame.

The Tun Sakaran Marine Park consists of a cluster of protected islands off the coast of Semporna

Anyway, we spent pretty much the rest of 11^th December 2012 in Semporna. By the time we booked the trip to Mabul it was already too late for the lady to take us there as the package was meant to start in the morning. I didn’t mind that too much, although it did mean that we have wasted one full day of travelling. Like I mentioned in my previous post, in retrospect we probably should have just gone straight to Semporna from Tawau airport instead of spending the night in Tawau town itself.

Dragon Inn in Semporna. We didn't actually stay there but it was a floating village styled resort and I thought that it was interesting to take a picture of  

 

Swim kid! SWIM!

 

This slight hiccup did mean that we got to explore a little bit of Semporna. It was quite disappointing that the gateway to some of the most beautiful places on Earth can be quite dirty. Well, the sea water was so clear that it could probably put the sea around Kapas Island to shame, however, there was a lot of garbage. I mean A LOT! Hell, some of these kids were literally swimming in garbage. People of Semporna, shame on you.

Entrance to the water village. People were actually living on top of all that garbage

 

Near the market in Semporna. At least they were having these clean up campaigns going on. Maybe there is hope yet

 

Some of the locals took boats from this jetty which is also where all the day's catch was being brought ashore by the local fishermen. These boats go to... somewhere

 

We had a walk around the market and even ventured a little bit into the water village there. I thought walking around the water village was quite interesting. They seem to produce quite a lot of dried fish there.

Dried fish

Later on, after the tiring walk around the area, we went for a foot massage session. It was painful! Damn that lady really knew how to hurt my feet.

They actually put grated chees and 'gula Melaka' on their 'pisang goreng' in Semporna

 

We stayed at a place called Sipadan Inn for the night. For dinner, we had ‘ikan bakar’ at a restaurant near where we stayed.

 

Sabah Trip 2: Tawau to Semporna

We arrived in Tawau at nearly 6pm on 10^th December 2012. It was getting dark. It gets dark rather early in Sabah. Tawau airport was arather small regional airport catering to domestic flight needs and apparently ours was the last flight in. As is customary, I had to take a dump upon reaching Tawau. Unbeknownst to me, the guards actually locked the main door of the airport while I was taking a shit! WTF??!!?! I’ve never in my life heard of an airport locking its gate before 7pm before.

While waiting for the guard to arrive to open the doors (I was later chastised for not informing him that I was going to take a shit. What kind of airport requires you to tell the guard that you needed the toilet? What was I supposed to say? “Excuse me, I need to crap myself so please don’t lock the main gate while I smear your bowl with diarrhoea”?) I was told by the lady at the office that I now had two options of getting to Semporna. Since Tawau Airport is somewhere between Tawau and Semporna, we could either take a direct taxi there for RM100+ or so, or we can go to Tawau town by taxi for around RM40 and take a bus the next day for around RM14 to Semporna. Since it was getting late and we thought that it would be nice to also visit Tawau, we chose the latter. In retrospect though, if we had had a larger party, we probably should have gone straight to Semporna as the taxi fare can be spread cheaper between us.

I also gave Song a ring when I arrived in Tawau (yes, apparently Song JR now resides in Tawau, a fact I only remembered that upon reaching there).  Unfortnately he was in Lahad Datu so we couldn’t meet up.

It took about 1 hour or so to reach Tawau town where we spent the night at LA Hotel which I thought was great value for money. In the end though, I was too tired to actually go out and about in Tawau, though from what I’ve seen, it was a somewhat bigger and nicer town compared to Sibu. Cleaner too.

The bus station in Tawau

I know it says RM14.30 on the ticket but in reality we were charged only RM10 for the trip to Semporna. Apparently 'talun' meant jungle

 

The next morning we left the hotel at about 8am to get a bus to Semporna. The bus station was within walking distance from LA Hotel and apparently the earliest bus to Semporna was at 9.30am. There wasn’t much to see along the road from Tawau to Semporna but for some oil palm plantations and a few little villages. The road quality was rather good for some far off place. I slept for most of the journey.

The bus was actually pretty comfortable though I wouldn't recommend using the toilet

 

We reached Semporna in the afternoon where a friend’s friend who works as an AMO in Semporna Hospital picked us up to the jetty. Near the jetty area there were a lot of tour operators. Small businesses that offered cheap travel packages to the islands off Semporna. We went to Billabong Scuba which offered a package trip Mabul Island with day trips to Sipadan for RM350+. I thought that was a good deal since what I could find on the internet cost nearly RM2000 for such packages. Unfortunately since I was not a PADI licensed diver and I didn’t have a permit I couldn’t actually go to Sipadan. Mabul however, was more than amazing.

The bus stop in Semporna. You can try walking to the jetty from here but I didn't fancy it in this weather

Sabah Trip 1: Sibu to Tawau

We set off from Sibu in the early hours of 10^th December 2012 via taxi. It cost about RM35 to get to the airport from where I live since the introduction of taxi coupons not so long ago. I suppose this is a lot better than the greedy scheming bastards of taxi drivers in Sibu trying to rip you off whenever possible before they renovated the airport.

They way the Maswing's promotions work somehow made it cheaper to infact get a ticket from Sibu to Bintulu first and then to Kota Kinabalu instead of a direct flight. So we decided to take that route as it also offers an opportunity to visit Bintulu (again) in the process.

 

 The brand spanking new Sibu Airport. The people are still shit though...

 

Interior of an ATR 72. I love this plane!

We arrived in Bintulu after a bout 40 minutes of flight and took a taxi to the Tamu. There was a supposed ‘Malaysian Food Fair’ there but as with all such ‘events’ in Sarawak it was nothing more than just an extended pasar malam (or siang, as is the case).

 

The taxis in Malaysian airports generally operate via a coupon system. one goes to the coupon counter and purchase a taxi coupon that one then hands over to the taxi driver. It's a good system as a lot of Malaysian taxi drivers are dishonest schemers (such bitterness there...)

I didn’t get my passport checked in Bintulu because it was still well within Sarawak. However when we arrived in Kota Kinabalu at around 3pm, I had to produce either an entry slip, or my passport with a stamp that said ‘Akta Immigresen 1959/63’ which made me felt like a foreigner in my own country. 1Malaysia my ass...

 I had no idea what these are for but since I've never seen these before, I decided to take a snap

 I've been to Bintulu's tamu before. However, I decided that it was probably worth taking a second look

Apparently, Bintulu is famous for it's belacan. The more traditional way of packaging them are as shown above. The cheaper versions come in plastic wraps

 

KK International Airpport was nice. It had that same generic look as many smaller major airports in Malaysia but that is not necessarily a bad thing. We had lunch at Mary Brown. I’ve never had lunch at Mary Brown before and I thought that the Mary Browns here in Borneo was of a somewhat better quality than the ones in the Peninsular.

 

 Kota Kinabalu International Airport is located by the sea side! How cool is that! I know Changi is also by the seaside but this place has it's runway parallel to the beach. and the water looked so nice!

 

Airports in Malaysia tend to look the same. This is KKIA

We then took another flight to Tawau where there is the closest airport to Semporna. The whole idea of this trip was to make our way to Sipadan Island in Sabah and Semporna is the embarkation point to get there. The plane from KK to Tawau actually made a stopover at Sandakan for 20 minutes so all in all it took a total of four take offs and landings on Maswing’s ATR 72 to reach Tawau from Sibu.

 Sabah has a lot of these water villages as a lot of it's major towns are located by the sea. This one is in Sandakan, which I thought looked the best from air

 

Finally arriving in Tawau. These propeller driven planes are actually quite smooth. By the time we reached there it was already getting dark at 6 pm.

 I guess I should add here that this whole trip was planned pretty badly as I had absolutey no idea as to where I was going and how to go abouts getting there. However, as with all of my trips, I put value in the journey as much as the destination (sounds quite the bullshit doesn’t it? Hahaha). I’ll continue the story in my next post.

Sabah: Intro

It has been quite some time since I last posted in this blog. The reason being there has been hardly anything interesting happening as of late, compounded by the fact that I have been rather busy with SKT and CPD and whatnot.

However, last week I went for a trip to Sabah and there were quite a few interesting things to share.

I will be posting my trip in series of posts because the whole thing took about 5 days. I must say that it was quite an enjoyable trip.

There was a promotion by Maswings where you get 50% discount on a few destinations so I decided to take advantage of that got myself a week's worth of holidays to go to Sabah.

Home Visit

My parents came last week to Sibu in conjunction with the Malaysia Day. For most peninsular folk, Malaysia Day is a relatively new thing that was rarely mentioned prior to Najib’s tenure as Prime Minister. Regardless, it has always been a big thing here in Sabah and Sarawak.

My mom was understandably not very happy with my living conditions and decided to take matters into her own hands and not only did she purchase another full roll of PVC mat, she also supervised the installation of the said flooring. Now I can walk in my own house barefooted. Thank you mom.

She also brought up the issue of Pauline which I tried my best to evade. Bottom line is she is going to get me someone else to marry because nurses apparently don’t make good wives...

Roti Canai Goreng

I took the 8.30 am express to Kapit from the Sibu ferry terminal. The fare this time was RM20 and it was for the 3^rd class seat. The boat was not as packed as the last time I went there. I arrived in Kapit after about 3 hours during which time I spent sleeping mainly because the night before I was up hanging out with Pauline.

Initially it took me some time to find the exact place where the roti canai goreng was sold. However, after a few phone calls to Sherlyn the HO I finally found the place. It’s actually located inside Gelanggang Kenyalang which is a food court and once inside it wasn’t so hard to locate the stall.

On the number 17 stall in Gelanggang Kenyalang in Kapit one can find some newspaper cuttings regarding its famous roti canai goreng. The stall next to it serves the accompanying drink, the air agar-agar which is basically green jelly poured into milk.   

I thought it was a bit crazy of me to go to Kapit just for a roti canai goreng (actually I had 2), but guess doing something crazy like this once in a while can’t hurt...much

Sarikei Pineapple Fest

During the weekend of 1^st September 2012, I went to Sarikei for its annual Pineapple Festival. The venue for the event was in front of the Sarikei district council office. In addition to the main stage where there was a Ngajat competition (among others), there was also an extended pasar malam around the premises.

To be honest there was hardly any pineapple at all despite its name. The only pineapples were to be found at a decoration near the main stage and the big concrete one by the river (which is there all year round anyway). So, in that sense, the festival was quite a disappointment.

 

They might as well call it Sarikei Chicken BBQ Festival. There were certainly more of those than there were pineapples...

If you look hard enough, you can actually see the pineapples