Sunday 5th July
Today, we left Gunung Mulu National Park, flying to Kota Kinabalu (Kota is the Malay word for ‘town’) where we picked up a hire car. After a brief stop at a shopping centre for some lunch, we hit the road for Sandakan. The trip is about 400km, which in Australia would be about a 3.5 hour drive. Unfortunately though, the roads here are only good for 80km/hr at best. We quickly realised that we didn’t have a hope of reaching Sandakan tonight, so we decided to aim for Sabah Tea Gardens, a commercial tea plantation we visited when we were here two years ago. We were able to book into a room in one of the longhouses. These bamboo-constructed houses are about 30 metres long, and consist of one long corridor down one side, and 10 small bedrooms down the other which all open onto the corridor. It’s a very rustic, primitive experience. We enjoyed it immensely last time. However this time, someone forgot to turn the corridor lights off, which made sleeping very difficult. Also, the mosquito nets over the beds seemed to have holes the size of Borneo in them, rendering them rather useless.
Tomorrow, we continue our journey to Sandakan.
No images today. 🙁
