Posts Tagged ‘Sabah’

Jun

Monkey fight on the isolated island

Every kid has his/her own imagination of a dream holiday. Since I was young (wait, I’m still young now ), 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

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Jun

Kota Kinabalu at a glance

Posted by: Chip in Sabah

**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