Month: July 2013

We had our last breakfast together as a group, before heading back to our respective rooms to pack bags. The two other families were both leaving Sabah that day, while we were simply taking a cab to our next hotel, the Shangri-La Tanjung Aru. We arrived mid-morning, knowing that check in wasn’t until 14:00, but…

This was our last day as a tour group, but to be honest, the tour might have well have finished the night before. This was a “free day”, for those (unlike us) who don’t have spare days “in-country”. Trouble was, we were about 20km outside of KK, so you couldn’t really go anywhere. That left…

We awoke to find that the winds had shifted back to northerly, which meant that we would be able to take our (also-missed activity from yesterday) boat ride across to Pulau Ular (colloquial name “Snake Island”). It’s a tiny island. You could walk around it in about 2 minutes. But it is home, as the…

Having finally got the hang of my 10 stop filter (I’d been struggling to get a decent shot with it for months… due to operator error!), I decided that this morning, I would walk across to the north side of the island in the pre-dawn darkness and get some sunrise shots. I’d checked the maps…

Today, we checked out of our hotel in KK, jumped in the minivans and headed south. Our destination was a small village on the ocean called Kuala Penyu. From here, we boarded a boat for the short island-hop across to Pulau Tiga (Pulau means Island). The locals more colloquially refer to this now as Survivor…

We had a free morning, which Cath and Max spent at the hotel pool, while I went off in search (sans-camera) of a new memory card, having just discovered that one of mine had died. The afternoon began with a 90 minute bus ride south from KK to a spot on a river (to be…

Day seven saw us heading off to the North Borneo Railway for a trip on a gorgeous old steam train into the rural areas south of KK. The train meandered through the low lying coastal areas, stopping at a couple of towns along the way to allow time for some sight-seeing on foot.

Today was a sad day on an otherwise awesome holiday. Today we learned about the Sandakan Death Marches. I don’t know if I wasn’t paying attention, or if we were just never taught about this horrific saga in Australia’s military history, but I don’t ever recall hearing about the death marches during my school days.…

The images of the long house that I posted yesterday were actually shot on this morning. I slept past sunrise but still managed to get out with the camera within the first half hour of daylight. I wandered around the long house, admiring the water lilies in the garden, and the impressive stature of Mount…

The first day of our tour began with us checking out of the not-quite-the-real-Shangri-la hotel, jumping into two minivans, and taking the 2 hour drive up to Mount Kinabalu. The mountain is the highest in all of south-east Asia, peaking just shy of 4100 metres.

A bit of a wasted day to be honest. We were to check out of the Horizon Hotel and relocate to the Shangri-La Hotel (not affiliated with the 5 star hotel chain!) where we were to meet our tour guide and fellow tour group members.

Breakfast in the hotel cafe reminded us that we are in a predominantly Muslim country. No bacon! Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhhh! Why didn’t somebody warn me about this? Ok, this two week trip is going to be more challenging than I originally thought. 🙂

Having had a nice, albeit short night of sleep in the transit hotel at Changi Airport, we wandered off in search of breakfast. Fed and watered, we boarded our 08:45 flight for Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. We touched down there around 11:00, bought a pre-paid SIM card with a couple of GB of…

Cath, Max and I have just spent a fantastic two week holiday in Sabah, the Malaysian province which takes up roughly 10% of the northern portion of the island of Borneo.