Five Island Cruise

We went on a '5 Island Cruise' - the islands are small ones off the coast of Kota Kinabalu. The first one was Gaya, but we couldn't land, because it's the home of a settlement of fishermen, who live in houses on stilts over the water. They only use the land to bury their dead. As the guide pointed out, they may be poor, but they still have satellite TV.

Sapi was the next one. The beach was crowded, but did have a group of monitor lizards, which were interesting to watch.

Manukan was possibly the nicest. Good white beach and we tried snorkelling. Lots of stripy fishes in the sea.

Sulug we couldn't land on because the jetty had been washed away.

Mamutik was the last. We had lunch there, and went on a ten minute nature trail, but it wasn't up to much.

Travel between the islands is by speedboat, typically powered by twin 85 hp 4-stroke outboards, so they go quite fast. The sea has quite a bit of plastic in it, and our boat had to stop to pick some out of one of the propellors.

Energy Crisis I

The complimentary newspapers on the aeroplane headlined on the 40% increase in petrol price. It's now RM 2.7 /litre. (There are about 6 Ringgets to the pound.)

Travelling

Well, we got here ok, despite a 4 Weddings moment on the morning of our departure. I know I set the alarm clock for 5am, but it unaccountably turned itself off during the night. I woke up, felt something was wrong, and discovered it was 5:30. The taxi was due at 6am, so it was a bit of a rush.

But we got away ok, and caught the train, then the tube to Heathrow. The flight was only slightly delayed and took about 12 hours to get us to Kuala Lumpur. Then there was a connecting flight to Borneo and a taxi waiting to take us to the hotel. Almost exactly 24 hours in transit. And our luggage arrived ok, despite the fact that we'd forgotten to padlock it in the rush to get away.

The hotel is very fine, and I've taken some photos of birds, but I think they're probably the local equivalent of sparrows. We're thinking about trips into the forest etc to see more exotic things in the next few days.

Preliminaries

Just in case you were fooled by its title, this blog is about our forthcoming holiday in Borneo. We'll let you know how we get on, unless we're having a really good time, in which case we'll probably be too busy to post.

We've bought our tickets, had our innoculations, and swallowed the first of our Lariam anti-malarial tablets. Lariam is a bit dodgy - it can cause psychotic side-effects, but I think we're ok so far...