Of Being Myself

At Kota Kinabalu, Sabah – Part I April 23, 2007

I’m sitting on the lounge area at one of the backpackers place called “Backpacker global” or something like that. Didn’t really get the full name. Kinda long.

Anyway, now waiting for my friends to come online. Hehe.. Homesick I must say. In another 6 hours time I have to get up and go to Padas River. My friend already booked the guy to pick us up from our hostel. I must say hospitality in Sabah as of now impressed me. They really cover from transport, food, entertainment..almost anything I could say.

When we first arrived, the hostel welcomes us by arranging a transportation from the airport. Then we discovered that nearby(around 5-1omins walk) the main city area, there is an arranged place to pick us up from 8-11pm (every hour) for our convenience to bring us back to the hostel. That really saves alot of taxi fare day in and out.

They do have the service to bring us to the mall, but that only starts at 7pm and my friend and I think it’s kinda late to start our sight seeing and all.So we took a bus down that costs us 50cents each. Cheap right??

Anyway yesterday after training, we take the chance to go for the shopping mall. Wow! They have really three branded coffee cafe just about in the same block. I go “Wow” because back in home town, we only got Coffee Bean. Here, they have Coffee Bean, Starbucks Coffee and San Francisco Coffee. Plus, they have two combined shopping malls which makes the city centre, well, more alive.

One of the stores I visited in CentrePoint Mall is Padini Concept Store. They didn’t allow me to take pictures! I don’t get it. Were they afraid that I take their concept and use it? What policy is that? I don’t understand. Someone please give me a logic reasoning behind it. Instead I’m actually trying to popularize your store to my friends. Geez…

On a different matter, I had an awful salty fried noodle in some coffeeshop for dinner. Yuck.Too salty it is not humanly possible for someone to eat that. At least that is how I feel about it. My friend and I didn’t finish it. The shop owner saw it and asked us why we didn’t finish it. My friend, being polite told him that we are rushing to get to our van.Partially true. However, I was thinking that I think the truth should be told so that he can improve his fried noodle. It is just too yucky. Come back home feeling so worn out.

Today after our last day of training, we go down to the city area again because we didn’t manage to get to see the Filipino market, as what I heard from my friend is a famous place selling pearls and crystals. We walked around the KK waterfront before that, and we managed to take some photos of the sunset going down. Nice! We had some fried BBQ fish, and some local Malay style food. Taste quite alright, but probably not a taste for city people. Unless you are the adventurous kind.

We kinda get bored so we went to this new mall called “Kompleks Asia City.” I saw an advert in the Kota Kinabalu Map stating that there have a good food cafe. Turnd out to be a new mall, grand opening is on 15th May. There are a few shops opened already, but 85% still empty. Funny enough, we ended up in an entertainment store and started playing shooting..haha! Spent about RM20 just buying the tokens and waste it away. In a fun way though. Had a crazy and great time. Hand hurt a little. Holding the gun. Playing the police shooting the bad guy. Haha! It was my friend’s first time to play this kind of thing, that is what she said. Poor thing, she is asleep now. I’m so afraid I will feel very tired later as we need good rest for rowing..

Part II comes later…If I come back unhurt..