Every kid has his/her own imagination of a dream holiday. Since I was young (wait, I’m still young now :P), I have dreamed about camping on a beautiful isolated island with blue water, white sand and people whom I enjoy being with. I wasn’t able to do it for many reasons: no money, no time, no companion, no island, or more precisely, no “beautiful & isolated” island. However, my dream finally came true when I visited Kota Kinabalu last weekend.

Last Saturday, we, a bunch of beautiful, energetic & fun young people AND I, went to this island and did crazy stuffs there.

This island is called Sulug, about 40 minutes away from Kota Kinabalu by boat. It’s beautiful, yet isolated. Just few minutes away is Manukan island, heavily commercial but not more beautiful. Papi John joked that it’s because Sulug island is haunted. I think that it’s probably because the sea floor there is a little bit rough with a lot of coral & rock which makes it not good for swimming but perfect for snorkeling.

The gang on the way to the island:

Because we were fresh off the boat and poor, we decided to collect rubbish to trade for some money. Some people actually went further than that, they forced me to take pictures of them posing in cleaning position to send to the Prime Minister in hope for some sponsorship. We managed to collect about a dozen of big fat bags full of rubbish.

And then something interesting happened: a group of NINE healthy, well-educated young adults got into a fight with ONE MONKEY over FOOD!! A hungry monkey appeared from nowhere and tried to steal our food. I still don’t understand why my friends didn’t want to feed him but tried to scare him away instead. The monkey was pretty scary, he attempted to attack some of us with his vampire teeth. Rabies alert!

Finally the monkey backed off and we could went on snorkeling. Let me explain why being able to snorkel is so important to me. The first time I went to the beach, I was almost drown. Since then, my body developed a stupid phobia against water. I’m freaked out whenever water touches my face. I remember one time when the shampoo girl accidentally scattered some water on my face, I reacted so strong that I almost hit her and she thought that I was being paranoid. But that time, I did it. Marsha, Lester, Esther and all are professional divers and they were very patient with me, encouraged and instructed me carefully. The underwater world is amazing! I decided that I’d have to overcome my phobia, learn to swim and learn to dive. I’ve never heard of any traveler or explorer who can’t swim.

After we all got enough sunburn and looked like lobsters without shell, we headed to Manukan island. We decided to take all the rubbish with us to dump it later. Everyone at Manukan’s jetty was like: “What the hell are they doing with those bags of rubbish” and tried to take pictures of us.

We had lunch and drank on Manukan island. As I said, it is heavily commercial so there isn’t much to see and everything there is expensive compared to other parts of Malaysia, $5-10 for a simple dish for 1 person. We couldn’t do much on the island because suddenly a the rain poured down. We were stranded! All of us were carrying digital stuffs like phones, cameras, notebooks so we didn’t want to risk going back on the small boat. At about 5pm, the boat owner told us that we couldn’t wait anymore since it was getting dark. We had no choice but to wrap our belongings with plastic bags and jumped on a boat. Surprisingly, right from the moment we saw the boat, our fear was gone! Everybody started shouting & cheering instead. If we replaced the motored canoe with a piragua, I’d think that I was on a hunting trip of an indigenous group somewhere in South America. The boat suddenly ran out of gasoline half way in the ocean which caused a short dead silence among us, but we managed to get back safe and sound, else I wouldn’t be able to entertain myself with this blog post now.

P/S:

1. My camera is not water proof so I couldn’t take picture of snorkeling & raining session.

2. Ever wonder what happened to the rubbish after we left it on Manukan’s jetty because of the sudden pouring rain? Great question ‘cos we have the same concern!! It was probably swept back to the sea or collected by a kind gentleman. Well, we are not really proud of it though.

Tags: Beach, dive, isolated island, Malaysia, Monkey fight, Sabah, snorkle

**For more pictures please visit my Facebook page here.

I haven’t blogged since forever. Part of the reason is that I’m lazy. Traveling is not an easy job, especially when you do it on a very tight budget and hold a passport which gives you a lot of challenges on getting visas to almost every single country in the world. However, the main reason is that I want to take a break to revise my writing and to learn how to make it more worth-reading. Old people ironically advise us to listen more and talk less. This time, I’m gonna read more and write less.

After 2 weeks in Kuching, I flew to Kota Kinabalu – the capital of the northernmost state of Malaysia. My first impression of Kota Kinabalu is that it’s so typical: a typical harbor city & a typical tourist site. But somehow, its typicalness is the thing that makes it special.

Kota Kinabalu is a typical harbor city. You can see it, you can smell it, you can even eat it. Seafood is for sale but not on sale everywhere (it’s expensive in KK). Open air structures:  parks, open air markets, open air restaurants can be found through out the city.

One of my happiest moments is when I sit on a bench in the park right next to Wisma Merdeka, face the blue water, reading “Eat, pray, love” and watching sunset. Or if you are in mood for a candle lit night, head over to Waterfront with your date or friends, enjoy freshly caught seafood, beers, refreshing breezes and feel like the whole ocean is singing under your feet. Dang I need a date here! [KK Waterfront – picture from the Internet]

Another thing that struck me here is that it seems like everybody is a professional diver. KK is one of the cheapest places to get a dive license. Even though I feel like an F-class humanbeing when hanging out with them b/c of my water phobia, it motivates me to learn to swim & get over this stupid phobia.

Compared to West Malaysia, Kota Kinabalu is much more multiracial with more than 30 ethnic groups, excluding many more tourist ethnic groups. Kota Kinabalu is a very typical tourist city which somehow reminds me of Kao San Road in Bangkok. Just stay at any cheap backpacker place (there are many in the city. I’m staying at North Borneo Cabin which is right on Sunday market road and costs me only RM23/night for a/c dorm), and it’s very likely that you’ll bump into a bunch of globe-trotters. There are so many markets in KK: central market, Philippines market, wet market, handicraft market, random market, etc.!

Most of them are for tourists b/c there is no reason for a city of only 600,000 people to need that many huge markets. However, since everything here is for tourists, the prices are freaking high too.

As we were roaming about the city, I told Marsha (a super cool American Korean girl I met here) that if I ever settled down, I’d love to settle in a city like KK: not too big but not too small, multiracial, friendly, easy-going and has everything: beaches, islands, rice fields, mountains, jungles, shopping malls, etc.

Even though I’ve just been here for 3 days, I’ve already found myself being extremely harassed by super fun & nice people. We went to an island trip together with loads of fun.

Some pictures I took during my first day here:

The European corner of KK

Tags: Beach, islands, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Sabah, tourism

For more pictures about the cultural village, please click here.

When I asked my friends where I should visit in Sarawak, they all gave me the same answer: ”Cultural Village”, “Cultural Village”, etc. So I made up my mind that I had to visit that place. However, the entrance fee is bloody expensive, RM60 for an adult. I procrastinated until this weekend when Barry, my new host in Kuching, told me about World Harvest Festival which was to be held inside Cultural Village on the 29th & 30th of May. The ticket is only RM25 including free entrance into the village. I thought that I was being smart, then I felt such a relief that I didn’t pay RM60 for this piece of artifact.

The cultural village is FAKE, SMALL and BORING! There are about 7 traditional houses of 7 different ethnic groups living in Sarawak: Iban longhouse, Bidayuh longhouse, Orang Ulu longhouse, Melanau tall-house, Chinese farmhouse… and well, that’s all.

Those longhouses there are not even long. Each house accommodates one family. I talked to a guy about my age who is living in a longhouse, he told me that the real longhouse is long, this one is just for showcase. It takes about half an hour to check out the entire village. And Jesus, I came during the festival so it was damn packed with people that I could hardly see over the sea of heads. Food, drinks and everything there are sold at tourist prices which is obviously not Chip-friendly. The festival is a 2 day one but we all got bored after about 1 hour, so we left before noon. Blame me for not knowing to appreciate cultural value. I appreciate the effort of the village’s management board to set up the village for the purpose of preserving and showcasing Sarawak’s cultural heritage. Yes, the village is definitely worth checking out, but it’s not worth the blooding money we have to pay to enter it.

Another thing that disturbed me at that village is a perverted 60-something man with very big ears. He was the supervisor of a small house inside the village. When I was there, he asked me a lot of questions and tried to show me around. I thought he was friendly, so I asked to take picture with him. He tried to hugged me really tight and then whispered to my ears: “Kiss me”. I was too shocked to react before he suddenly touched my boobs! People started to flock in. I don’t know if I was being nice, or I was shocked, or simply because he was old and I didn’t want to cause him trouble, I left without making any noise. I should have slapped his face!

The only experience worth noticing during my visit there is the “worm eating” show I did in the cheers of about 100 schoolboys which Ray was kind enough to call it “cheap entertainment”. I was walking through food festival at the Iban longhouse (they call it “festival”, but actually it was just a long table where they put some local food) when I saw this:

Seeing the STUPID TOURIST sign on my face, a lady came over to explain to me that it’s sago worm, a kind of food for some indigenous tribes in Sarawak. She told me that I could eat it raw, and showed me this:

Didn’t want to feel this soft slimy worm struggling in my mouth, I decided to have it cooked. I picked this one, a big fat one:

And the lady slaughtered it like this:

And I ate it: put it in my mouth, chewed then swallowed.

The lady told me that it should taste like chicken, but I felt like I just kissed the perverted old man mentioned above. Eww!

Tags: Bidayuh, Iban, Kuching, Longhouse, Malaysia, Sago Worm, Sarawak Cultural Village, Worm Eating

For more photos, please visit my Facebook page, or Jong’s blog for professional shooting.

I have been traveling for 2 weeks. During that time, I didn’t do any sport other than endless walking under the sun. I miss kickboxing like hell and my body was about to enter dormant mode. But as I mentioned earlier that I’m a lucky girl, right when I needed some exercise the most, I had a chance to approach one of the most exciting outdoor sports that I’d long heard of: rock climbing. All thank to my 2 lovely friends Jong Saw Kang and Hui Hui who Annie introduced to me and the group of rock climbers in Kuching who didn’t mind sharing gears with me.

Saw Kang & Hui Hui (from Hui Hui’s Facebook)

On Saturday, we went climbing at the Bukit Batu Tapang, widely known among local climbers as the Tooth, located in 17th mile, about 40 minutes driving from Kuching. When we arrived at 10am, there were already about 15 climbers.

As I expected, most of them are Westerners, as I didn’t expect, all of them are super friendly and very experienced. They asked me if I wanted to try and before I could notice anything, I found myself ready to climb up. No instruction, no safety notice! I was really scared! The one who belayed me was Malcolm, a very tough seasoned climber. He instructed me from the ground, and occasionally shouted at me when I didn’t follow. He wanted me to come down when I kept holding the rope, but somehow I kept climbing up, and I managed to get on top. Just a day after did I find out that he was really mad at me. But I like his style. He made me think of one of kickboxing instructors, Master Khoo Meng Yang. They are both very tough, but that’s when we can learn the most.

After that, I climbed several more times, and I also climbed at the Batman Wall on Sunday. I found out that rock climbing is actually very safe if we follow all safety instruction properly. Rock climbing is not only about physical condition, it’s also about mental strength. You need to overcome fear and procrastination. However, I still feel really bad about my body. On Sunday, it took me forever to complete a baby climb at the Batman Wall and my arms were tired like hell. I need to do more exercise!

Climbing at the Batman wall

Another thing that made my first rock climbing experience even more worthy is the news that the Tooth is going to be blasted out by a local company from Bau. A reporter from the Star was there to cover the story as the last attempt to save to rock. Most people there don’t have much hope in that, but they just did their best. They LOVE the rock! It’s one of few perfect spots for rock climbing in Kuching! I really hope that it can work, somehow. I like the place too, and I hate the idea that people keep using development as an excuse to destroy nature.

On the Star. I’m quite happy that they called me a travel writer, but not happy that they didn’t call me Chip. Plus my picture is a huge turn off

Tags: Batman Wall, Bukit Batu Tapang, Kuching, Malaysia, Rock Climbing, Sarawak, the Tooth