Basking on Bornean Beaches

Two years and counting!

Finally time to write about our beautiful anniversary trip to Malaysia! The school calendar luckily placed a long 6 day holiday right in the middle of our anniversary :) So of course we excitedly booked our tickets way back in March and began planning our trip to the island of Borneo.  For those of you who don't know, Borneo is the third largest island in the world, (after Greenland and New Guinea), and is divided among three countries: Brunei (which is only located on Borneo), Indonesia , and Malaysia- both of which contain a number of other islands.  So we decided to go to the Malaysia part of Borneo, to a city called Kota Kinabalu (KK). 


We began to get a little nervous about the security of our plans when everyone began talking about a very serious typhoon headed our way.  Things began to be even more worrisome when we heard reports that flights were already being cancelled and school would be closed for the day across the country.  However, we had to try.  So the trip began.  It doesn't look that far away on a map, but surprisingly, Borneo is a fair distance from Seoul. 

On the way to the monkeys

Our trip was divided into approximately 5 hour segments.  First, we finished school on a Monday and took the midnight bus from Suncheon to the Incheon airport near Seoul for about 5 hours.  Then, we waited in the airport for about five hours  until 5:00AM and tried to sleep a bit in uncomfortable airport chairs.  Finally, we checked in and headed to our gate around 10:00AM.  We even boarded the plane and had high hopes for an on-time take off.  Unfortunately, it was not to be.  The pilot kept getting our hopes up- we taxied down the runway a bit, the pilot told us we were 5th in line to take off, and just as it was looking like we were about ready they told us the winds had reached speeds that were too high to safely take off :(  So we waited five hours on the plane until about 3:00PM, and finally took off after the storm died down enough.  Flew for 5-6 hours, and finally landed in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur (KL) around 8:00PM where we were supposed to have caught our connecting flight to KK at 5:00PM.  Yes, we quite obviously missed our flight.  We thought surely there would be another one we could take, but sadly we had just missed the last one and would have to catch the first one out in the morning.  So, after a bit of tired and only slightly grumpy meandering around and pondering, we caught a taxi and told them "Hotel. Any cheap hotel. Close to the airport".  (No, the airlines refused to pay, despite my tired and pleading insistence that they should have).  After all that we got in around midnight, got about 5-6 hours of sleep and got up in time to finally arrive in KK around 10:30 AM the next morning. Whew. What a trip. But totally worth it. 


We got to our cozy hotel and quickly found some lunch next door.  Two Adventist ladies had just started serving vegetarian lunches there the day before and they quickly dished us up some tasty Malaysian veggies and rice for about $1 a piece.  Not a bad start :)  We wandered down to the pier for a brief look around before heading out for our first excursion.  On that day, our actual 2 year anniversary, we had signed up with a company to go on a river cruise spotting monkeys, have a meal, then go on another cruise spotting fireflies.  It was awesome! The food was delicious, we probably spotted 25 monkeys or more, and the fireflies were beautiful!  One even landed on my foot and stayed there for quite a while :)  The probiscus monkeys (native to Borneo) were quite numerous and fun to watch, even if they were kinda ugly.  My favorite were the macaques though, much cuter.  All in all it turned out to be a very nice anniversary, even if it did have a rough start. 

Macqaque family

Buddies!

Meet Mr.Crab

The next day was relaxation time!  We slept in until about 10:30AM, which I don't think we've done in over a year, and completely skipped breakfast since by the time we got cleaned up it was time for lunch :)  We had more tasty vegetarian food from the Adventists next door before heading out to the beach.  We  got there and couldn't believe how deserted it was, especially once we realized how warm the water was!  Neither of us had ever been in ocean water that warm before (it must have been like 75 degrees), and so we couldn't understand why there wasn't anyone swimming, tourists or local.  We asked some locals if there was anything wrong with the water, like sharks or something, and they laughed and said no that it was fine, so in we went.  We swam around for a couple of hours, unknowingly got thoroughly sunburned despite our best application of sunscreen, and finally picked out a cafe to read our books and have some fruity beach beverages.  Oh! I almost forgot about the crabs! They were everywhere on the beach! Tiny little guys that blended in so much with the sand we almost stepped on them.  They dug out the sand and gathered it into little balls to make a home for themselves, and you never knew when a crab would pop out of a hole and scurry across the sand.  I loved watching them and tried to capture how cool they were in a short video (sorry for some random boring sand shots, it was really bright so I couldn't really see what I was filming). 

After beaching it up, we did a little browsing for a souvenir or two in the markets.  Oddly enough, we were basically the only tourists in sight.  It was a bit strange, and we were stared at more than once.  I guess most foreigners who come to Borneo are usually off doing treks in the jungle looking at monkeys and stuff, so you really don't get a lot of tourists in the city of KK itself.  We wandered the markets stands for a while and finally found a wooden vase we liked and a wall plaque to add to our various exotic decorations.  After our shopping and swimming, (such hard work haha) we were quite beat and ready to have a nice meal.  We found a super Italian restaurant and decided this would be our meal to splurge on.  We were soon happily reminded that splurging means something different in Western first world countries compared to somewhere like Borneo.  We ordered an appetizer (delicious different kinds of bread with cheeses and an herbed butter), two main dishes (Jon: a spinach and ricotta filled manicotti in a creamy cheese sauce (so rich!) Me: A spicy olive oiled pasta dish with various vegetables), plus a delicious chocolate cake with ice cream for dessert (such a treat after Korea's attempts at Western desserts), and it only came to like $30 total.  Not a bad day in Borneo. 

Ahhh paradise