Kota Kinabalu9 Nov 2006
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I was up bright and early hoping to get to Kota Kinabalu (known as KK) by mid afternoon, giving me the chance to take in a bit of the town before my early morning to flight out to Mulu the next day. However things conspired against me from the get go. I was all packed and sitting on the roadside waiting for my purple chariot (local bus) to take me to the central bus station from there I could get another bus out to the Ferry port, some 25km outside town. However the the bus didn't materialise, well not at first. I sat waiting for 40 minutes for a bus that theoretically runs every 15 before I gave up waiting and started the 30 minute walk in to town (not so nice in hot, humid conditions carrying 20 kilos of packs). 5 minutes walking and the bus turned up, I flagged it and jumped on. Arriving at the bus station i found the only bus going to the ferry port involved another 40 minute wait. By this time I was way behind schedule, i was aiming for the 10:45 ferry. My bus didn't turn up until 10:40.
Sitting around I made a few interesting observations about the locals (the same observations are true in Malaysians). Despite being some of the friendliest people I have come across in Asia; always willing to give you directions and constantly waiving and shouting hello and very rarely trying to scam you. They are also some of the rudest (by English standards). The idea of the queue is completely foreign to them, first to push to the front is first served, they even go so far as to push their way on to buses without letting the people on the busses get off. In the streets the market vendors will literally grab you by the arm and try and force you to buy something from their stall; forcing me on a number of occasoins to refrain from slapping them away. All very odd from my perspective...
I made the ferry port around 11:15 to find the next ferry to Palau Lambah wasn't due until 1. - Palau Lambah is a Malaysian island not too far from Brunei and is used as a staging post, from there i could get another ferry that would take me to KK. - Not having had any breakfast I asked around to see if there was somewhere i could get a bite to eat and a drink; no such luck. I resolved to sit out in the sun and wait the 1 3/4 hours out. The ferry itself was a small covered fast boat, seating perhaps 80 people. The journey took about 1.5 hours, throughout the journey they played the Evil Dead, part 2 (sweet) at full volume on 2 small screens situated at the front of the boat. On most occasions this would have been great, but I was sat right at the back and couldn't see a thing. The journey went smoothly enough though. I made my way through customs and inquired in the direction of the ticket office for boats to KK. Turns out I was out of luck, the information I had been given about boats running as late as 4:30 to KK was wildly incorrect. The last boat to KK left at 1pm and I had missed it. This sent me into a panic as I had to be on a plain out of KK at 11 the next morning. Seeing my predicament, the nice lady at the ticket office pointed me in the direction of a speedboat that could take me to the nearest town on the mainland and from their I was assured I could get a bus to KK. Taking this to heart, I nipped over to the speedboat terminal and procured myself a ticket for the 20 minute boat rid to the mainland. 30 minutes later I was in Saban Malaysia. From there I easily found a bus to take me to KK.
The bus pulled into KK around 7, considerably later than I had hoped, yet I was happy to be there at all. It wasn't all plain sailing yet, the bus had dropped me at some remote bus station nowhere near where I was expecting to be. This was combined with locals whose grasp of English wasn't as good as I was used to in the rest of Malaysia (still way better than my Malay), after a lot of map pointing I eventually found myself on a bus into town. The locals went out of their way to help me try and find my destination. Even so far as the bus driver taking a slight detour to drop me closer to where he thought i wanted to be!!
I eventually checked myself into the Borneo Backpackers hostel around 7:30 and went off to grab some food and have a brief wander around town.
