Our arrival was....how do I put it? Not quite a nightmare, but close. First of all, I knew that I was low on phone credit, but I figured I would deal with it later. Big mistake: Duh, you cannot get Indonesian phone credit in Malaysia, and yes, it may matter. Why, do you ask? BECAUSE KOTA KINABALU HAS TWO AIRPORTS NAMED THE SAME THING. Okay, technically, hey are terminal 1 and 2, but it is impossible to figure out before you get there which one you will land at, and there is no transportation between the two.
Needless to say, Kari and I didn't know this. I flew in Air Asia and was waiting at the opposite side of immigration for her. I texted her that I would text her my location, then when I tried to text my location, I realized I had no more credit. I figured I would wait for her to text me that she had arrived then call her and really quickly tell her my location before my credits expired.
No can do. I barely said hello and that my credits were about to run out when they,predictably, ran out. However, she had said she had arrived...and the airport was empty. So empty, in fact, that the staff wer leaving, an this was the arrivals screen:
Yes, those are AM times. It was now midnight.
As my panic grew and I wandered in circles, a couple of men in regular clothes approached me, and telling me that they worked for the airport (customs and security) asked me what I was still doing there. "Waiting for my friend's flight," I answered. "She just arrived." They looked at each other, probably thinking they had a homeless crazy bule on their hands, and gently tried to explain to me that there were no more flights arriving that night, and perhaps she is in a different city?
I ran to the pay phone, which didn't take the Malaysian currency I conveniently had, as my panic continued to grow. One of the men offered me his phone, and I tried calling Kari on it, but the calls wouldn't go through. He explained to me that Firefly goes to the other airport, maybe she flew Firefly.
"The other airport?" Well, she certainly wasn't at this one, so I guess its the other airport or bust.
Now I did something that one should never do--the customs officer offered me a ride to the other airport. Their were to problems--this was a strange man at night in a different country, however nice he had been so far. Other problem, I had already bought a taxi ticket to our hotel, and it was only valid from THIS airport to the hotel. However, the drivers gathered outside offered to take me to the other airport first for an additional 30 RM ($10). $10, or strange man for free? This is SE Asia budget travel--the latter, of course!
As you can see, I am still alive. This man was actually incredibly nice--so nice that he has friended me on facebook and sent me messages--too nice or typical Asia? I'll let you decide. But the story isn't over.
So I walked into a dark parking lot, got into his car, and tried his phone one more time--SUCCESS! I go through to Kari, confirmed she had taken Firefly and therefore must be at the other airport, and we started on our merry way. But not before having the car surrounded by angry taxi drivers determined that this nice customs agent was stealing their customer from them. They argued for about five minutes before he agreed to drive me to the other terminal, get Kari, and return us to this terminal for one of them to take us to the hotel. We drove over, and I saw Kari--I can't explain the relief that washed over me at that point (at least if we were kidnapped together, we would have a better chance of escaping?) Saiful kept up his end of the promise, and took us back to the other terminal, where we switched over to a super-decked out cab (curtains, beads, velvet, McDonald's sticker--all signs of a cool car in Kota Kinabalu).
We made it to the hotel in one piece, where we walked into our room, saw a GIGANTIC cockroach on one of the beds, and walked out. The staff graciously moved us to a better room, and the hotel was great for the rest of our trip. The street was a little quiet at night and the music from a secret club somewhere pounded at night, but other than that, cheap and nice.
The next morning, we got up to meet our guides for our (private) whitewater rafting trip. Our guide (I can't remember his name!) gave us a briefing where he told us what to do WHEN we fall out, WHEN we capsized, and WHEN we hit major rapids. I kept trying to correct him and say "You mean if, right," and he kept saying, "no, WHEN."
Pre-whitewater:
It turns out that he was right on the WHEN, only because HE threw us out of the boat and tipped it over. Apparently class I-II rapids aren't exciting enough for him and he assumed not for us, either. I guess two blond American girls who scream every time there is a splash (okay, slight exaggeration) are an easy target. BUT, we survived:
We then had a few minutes back at our hotel to change before heading out on our monkey-spotting cruise:
We actually were taken to the Shangri-La hotel (with a stop for Kopi Peng!) where we waited for the rest of the group. The hotel was gorgeous, but when I looked up the price (800 USD a night and up for a hotel without a real beach, but a private waterpark), I was still surprised--Sabah is beautiful, but I'm not sure if any view is worth that price (please refrain from trying to insert a dirt joke here).
We did see quite a few monkeys, including proboscis monkeys with their huge noses and protruding bellies, as well as some gibbons and long-tailed macaques, but mostly we saw other people acting like monkeys. Check out the other members of our Rainforest boat tour (30 Japanese tourists):
The problem was that we had to wear lifejackets, the life jackets had whistles, young children with short attention spans love whistles, and parents were too bored/lazy/inconsiderate to stop the children. Add that to every time we say a monkey everyone on the boat started yelling--not the ooh, ahhh you would expect, but akin to your favorites sports team winning the championship. No one put two and two together that maybe the monkeys moved away from the boat after we spotted them because everyone was so loud!
The best part of the trip for me was after dinner, where we went back out on the water to see the fireflies. Kari and I were skeptical--we both caught fireflies over the summer as kids, and perhaps they are rare in Asia.
I don't have a camera that could capture these things. Basically, we would go down the river in pitch black, stop near a copse of trees, and the driver would flash the boat's light on and off a couple of times. Then, these trees would light up like Christmas. Seriously, thousands of fireflies would flash on and off, a whiter color of light than we see in the US. It was unbelievably beautiful. We still would have preferred getting some hiking and activity in, but this was pretty cool.
On the way home, we received a flurry of texts from our friend from the night before (he had Kari's number from when I called her frantically) inviting us to his favorite spot for a sunset dinner where he might be able to film us answering his questions about separation of powers in the US government for one of his classes (he was finishing a degree in public administration). Perhaps the weirdest proposition/date I've ever been asked on. Kari and I politely declined, although I told him he could e-mail me (I had given him my card) any questions he might have and I would answer them. He never followed up--more likely he just wanted to show off to his classmates that he knew two American girls--it would fit the pattern of everyone asking for our pictures on every trip!
Big thanks to Amazing Borneo Tours for helping us out! Though no thanks to them trying to understand that we wanted activity (aka, hiking, walking, seating) along with the scenery. Next time!
I will get around to describing our final day of touring the islands in Sabah soon!
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