My blog is back, I am back

If you have tried visiting this blog sometime last week, I believe the URL opened to a blank page. Emailed to the admin staffs in Blogger about this problem, and am glad that they solved it. Mike'Station is now back online.

I was away over the last weekend.

Flew over to Tawau on Friday 5th June with my loupo and her dad. Irene's brother, Ian who is working as an Assistant Oilpalm Estate Manager near Semporna, will be transferred to Tawau soon. A company vehicle will be provided. So he wanted to send his car back to Tenom for the parents to use... and we wanted to go somewhere for a short holiday. So that's how the trip came about.

Landed in Tawau airport after 45-minute flight. The airport wasn't actually in Tawau, but about half an hour away. Ian received us there. We did some brief shopping for stuffs, then went to his estate, which is 90 km away from Tawau, and 40 km before Semporna.

Ian, a bachelor, was occupying a huge wooden stilt-house provided by the company. His place is about a kilometer away from the main road, reached via a stretch of gravel estate tracks. Atop a little hill overseeing the oil palm estate, the house had pretty nice and peaceful surroundings. We bought stuffs enough for a week, coz the nearest place for supplies is half an hour away. Ah, spent the rest of the day watching preliminary World Cup matches.


Woke up the next morning to chirping birds and chuckling hens. It was drizzling. Took my camera to spot interesting subjects from the verandah. They watched football while waiting for the rain to stop. It didn't. After lunch, we drove to Semporna to check out the little town. Semporna is where tourist come to head for the diving sites in Mabul, Kapalai and Sipadan; and where Philippine immigrants and Abu Sayyaf members enter to visit Malaysia. Found the little town dirty and disorganised, and the roads muddy after it rained all day. Had some drinks at a nice restaurant on the jetty, bought some seafood, and went back. In the evening, we went for jogging and motobike ride around the estate. Had seafood tom-yum-goong for dinner. Football, again, at night. I occupied myself with another book by Dan Brown entitled Deception Point. Pretty interesting read.

On Monday morning, we left early to Tawau. Ian sent his car to Proton for its regular maintenance service. Loupo and I walked around Tawau town. I revisited the Belmont Marco Polo Hotel, one of the more posh hotels in Tawau. Stayed there in 1993 during my first trip to Sabah, when I was still a fresh Form Four student. I was an exchange student then, and my foster family had brought me on a trans-Sabah trip during the brief two-week exchange programme, and we stayed in this hotel. The grand wood-carving of Marco Polo having tea with Kublai Khan (I think) is still there at the reception, leaving an impression to all who pass it doors. Ah, enjoyed that moment of nostalgia. Never thought back then, that a decade later I will be back to serve in Sabah, and getting stuck for a couple more years. By noon it got horribly hot. We had a quick lunch and left Tawau.

We left Ian's place on Tuesday morning. Had a long long looooong drive that day... a journey across Sabah. From Ian's place we went to Kunak then Lahad Datu, the road was pretty fine, with vast oilpalm estates all the way. From Lahad Datu to Ranau, the drive was nightmare: lots of potholes, bumpy stretches, winding roads... a sedan car won't survive long. Reached Ranau around 2.30 pm for lunch. Had a stopover in Kundasang Perkasa Hotel (were we took wedding photos last time) for some cool breeze and fresh air before descending down to Kota Kinabalu. It was dusk when we arrived. Had a simple dinner, found a hotel, and zzzzz...

Spent time around Kota Kinabalu on Wednesday. Walked around the fish market in the morning... wow there was such a wonderful variety of seafood, and those large tiger prawns looked really tempting. Too bad we didn't have an ice box to buy some for home. Had laksa and ngauchap in Gaya Street for breakfast. Watched Da Vinci Code and X-men 3 in a row (hahaha...). Frankly speaking, the DVC book is much better than the movie. The movie is only good to visualise the scenes in the story; other than that, many interesting twists were omitted, the story altered, and Tom Hanks was wood. Drove back to Keningau after dinner.

All in all, it was a pretty nice trip we had.