November 3rd, 2007
Hello, so day two in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. People call the city KK and Kula Lumpur KL for short reference. So I’m liking here quite a lot, the names of places like Kinabatangan and Sandakan are fun to say. So far in this city, more like a town compared to Seattle or Manila, nobody is begging for money which is nice, makes me feel as though people are taking care of themselves and society is taking care of them too around here. And I don’t feel obligated to give them money, which no doubt I will run short on towards the end of the trip.
We just found out by reading the Indian Visa that the tourist visa is not-extendable which is a bummer because then we’ll have to go home by February 7th when our visa is up. I hope to be able to get another one or extend it against the rules by getting an exception because we won’t have used four months of our visa by the time we get there. If you have advice from your travel agent to get a visa before you leave the US or where ever, I suggest you ignore them and get the visa at one of their embassies, or maybe at the border when you get there. Unless you think you may be rejected of it and require assurance that you’ll be awarded the visa. Ah well, we’ll work that out later.
It looks like the tickets are cheaper to Barcelona from India than Vietnam or Thailand so perhaps we’ll make our way to India by christmas and get a round trip ticket for visiting family.
So KK is nice, there are a few dozen inexpensive hotels and hostels around town for us to stay in, the town seems to be all malls and hotels and corner restaurants. From the airport we walked about twenty minutes to the bus stop to catch one to the city center where we were approached by two malaysian guys who were trying to help us but pretty much we knew where we were going from the map we got from the tourist info booth at the airport. Ate two plates of rice and some meat dishes with a bottle of water and a mango juice for 12 RM (ringgit, and right now it’s 3.3RM/1USD….the dollar is doing very poorly the world around and the value has been about 80% all over the place from where it was when our travel book was written a couple of years ago). So still very cheap, it was a 24 hour place and the food was mediocre. Today we had free breakfast like all the hostels offer, but it’s only coffee and toast with jam. Bought some peanut butter today and had a toasted PBJ for dinner and it was great.
Last night we stayed at the Borneo Adventure Lodge or something like that, and tonight we’re at Asia Adventure Lodge. There’s free internet here, but the computer is a pentium II from 1996.
We met some girls from Borneo at Friendly’s Backpacker Hostel in Manila who’ve recommended a place called Uncle Tan’s Jungle Lodge or something like that and we may meet up with one or both of them. One, Joannie is planting fig trees so the mature ones will provide food for orangutans, and the other, Sharon works in some capacity for an orangutan wildlife rehabilitation center. We’ll head off there first, tomorrow, to be able to meet with Joannie who’s leaving the 7th, and then spend a couple of days checking out the jungle and orangutangs and then go to Mt. Kinabalu (5100m) for a trek and hot springs after at the bottom to recoup my soon to be wrecked body 🙂
Oh, and people here drive on the left side of the road like in England, nearly got myself run over last night due to this and my inattention. There are also lots of KFC restaurants, they’re like starbucks in Seattle, one on every corner. Great sunset today…excited for tomorrow. Oh, and we walked up to a lookout place on the hill above KK, went past a HUGE banyan tree, got a pic.