Something less familiar…
Our time in Austalia ended with a party night that lasted well into the morning. We then headed to the airport for a flight to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in Borneo. If you are not completely familar with Borneo, it is an island that houses three countries, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. The ‘fun’ began when upon entry to Kuala Lumpor (our connection) the ATM choked and wouldn’t give us any money leaving us with zero ringlets. Fortunately we were able to pay for a few things at the airport in US dollars and was given enough change in ringlets to pay for our hostel. It turns out that Bank of America shut our ATM cards down because we didn’t get our pin number right the first time in Melbourne. Since then they have been tracking our account and it was automatically shut down when they saw that we were trying to make a transaction in Malaysia.
This morning we met a group from Sweden at our hostel and we have decided to split the cost of a van and driver to Kinabalu Park. We spent the day walking around the small city and looking about. It is a fairly typical small asian city and more of a pass-through point than a destination I would recommend. Since I have a very bad track record with getting sick in second/third-world countries, we decided to play it safe and dine at Pizza Hut for lunch. We will dive in to Malaysian cuisine once we have climbed Mt Kinabalu – but for now, it’s better not to be sick while hiking – i have already been there and done that in Peru.
It’s very warm here… probably close to 100. The Malaysian people are mainly Muslim, Chinese Buddist/Taoist or Indian/Hindu and are very friendly. We stick out like sore thumbs here but they smile nicely at us when we walk past and sometimes say hello. A lot of the people here speak English, moreso then we experienced in Thailand.
dan and paula
Tags: kota kinabalu, Malaysia
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January 6th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I hope you’ll soon be sending more pictures. How long will it take you to hike the mountain? I read that it could be a couple of days. No snow here…8 : ( Love, Maxoxoxoxo