Borneo 2015 – day 15

Monday 13th July

Monday dawned, and the SMS messages to and fro with the rental car company began.
We explained that we were booked into a hotel in Kinabalu tomorrow (Tuesday) night, so come hell or high water, we had to have transport of one description or another. They advised that they would be sending a colleague to Kudat on Tuesday and if we wanted to, they could send another vehicle for us to drive ourselves back to Kinabalu, or we could catch a taxi and they would reimburse us (it’s a 250km trip!). After finding that the replacement vehicle would not reach us until mid-afternoon, we said we’d catch a taxi…
We had already booked in to do a boat trip today, which would take us to a nearby island for snorkelling over a coral reef, and lunch on an uninhabited island. We took that trip and it was great. The snorkelling at Pulau Malawali Kecil was much nicer than snorkelling off the beach at the Biostation. Lunch was simple fried rice from a styrofoam container, with bottled mango juice, but the location made it seem special nonetheless.
Upon our arrival back at the resort, we booked a taxi to take us to the Tip of Borneo for the evening. For RM100, he would drive us there, wait for 2-3 hours and drive us home again. Not a bad deal!
We got up to the Tip around 18:00 with sunset due at 18:35. We took a couple of family portraits, and then I set about shooting a panorama. The sunset was lovely as it was setting, shining through a layer of low cloud off in the distance, turning the sun into a glowing orange ball. What surprised me though was that after it had disappeared, the ‘blue hour’ was rather disappointing. I shot a 5 minute exposure looking toward the west using my Breakthrough Photography 10 stop filter, but as Max pointed out, I really should have been looking south to where a huge bank of cloud had lit up beautifully.
Our taxi driver recommended a restaurant called Tampat do Aman, which he dropped us at, promising to return after an hour or so. We had a lovely dinner overlooking the beach, and reading up about the proprietor, an Englishman named Howard who has done a lot of philanthropic work in the village nearby.
As promised, our taxi driver returned, picked us up, and took us back to our resort.
We were starting to realise that our holiday was coming to an end. Tomorrow, we head for Kinabalu for 3 nights prior to flying out on Friday night. It’s all going to be over way too soon.