We boarded a Milaysian airways jet and flew to the northern shore of Borneo near the eastern most end and got to Kota Kinabalu. The driver that brought us to the airport this morning didn't have a lot of good things to say about the city - or the area. In general, he all but said, "Thar be pirates thar - beware me hearties". What he could have said was - more touristy. Charlie and I aren't big fans of resorts, but other travelers seem to love them. We are now staying at a place called Shangri La's Tanjung Aru Resort and Spa. The place is filled to the brim with people from all over Asia, Australia, and, (we finally found a few), Americans. Why??? Again, the main hall is lovely. The resort sits on a spit of land that is surrounded on three sides by water. But the town is quite a distance away, and really doesn't have any charm at all.
Here are a few photos.
The poor guy in the photo below was dressed up like one of the local indigenous people and sat in the main lobby banging on a native-style gong set for hours.
Our guide showed up at two and took us on a city tour. His name was Rejoice (Our driver he was calling Dr. Iman - his son was a real doctor). There really wasn't too much to see. The photos below are of a local market with souvenirs - of a sort. I really haven't seen much I wanted to buy - and I'm the world's greatest souvenir collector. This stuff is too junky even for me. The only store I saw that had anything that looked cool was the hotel shop in Kuching - and I never saw it open - EVER.
The lady in the first photo is looking at dried fish.
The men in the photos below sat at sewing machines. If you needed something mended, they were there to help.
Junk for sale below. They had dozens and dozens of counters filled with "fresh water pearls" that really looked like pop beads. They couldn't be cheap enough - OK - maybe if they came from Cracker Jacks as a prize. We were told later that a lot of the sales people here were illegal immigrants from the Philippines. The local Malay folks wouldn't sell cigarettes on the street because it was illegal to do so, but the illegal immigrants would.
Below are a couple of photos of the University of Malaysia in Sabah. Their mascot appeared to be a proboscis Monkey - native to Borneo.
We got some photos of the town from Signal Hill. The yellow building below and the tower in the distance were from the British when the area was established.
The houses below are on stilts along the shores of an island. They are for illegal immigrants who will work for cheap AND know how to speak English - making them very useful.
We went to a museum that had a number of long house versions recreated outside. There are dozens of indigenous people and each group had a variation on the longhouse theme. The set up below was a type of shrub and enemy's heads hung above a rice container that was supposed to help to ward off evil rice spirits. The museum was excellent.
We really didn't want to walk several kilometers for dinner - so we ate in the resorts main cafe. The meal they were pushing was a buffet - we opted not to do that. But everybody else in this joint did. It was like an incredibly noisy herd of cattle after a drought. Tomorrow night I think we'll do bar snacks. I can't take the noise.
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