Recently I was on holidays to Malaysia for a few weeks visiting my friends, family and my girlfriend’s family too. Thought I’d share some pictures from my trip but I probably won’t upload everything because there’s a lot of photos (see bottom for gallery)!
My girlfriend also recently got a Nikon D90 which her dad secretly told me that she was meant to contribute half for it but her mum, Terri snuck her out to go shopping before poor uncle Wedge had a say in it hehe. So ever since that, she’s been taking photos of everything non-stop!
I’ll start off with my trip to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah where my girlfriend originally came from.
This is the view from the apartment I was living in. It is pretty much opposite Tanjung Aru beach. Hong Yi’s parents kindly and generously offered their apartment for me to live all by myself. Very nice and spacious 2 storey-apartment with three large bedrooms and as I can remember, 4 toilets and 2 bathrooms (toilet joined). Pretty cool ay?
I was even provided toothpaste, towels, soap, snacks, juice & water, a pen and even hotel slippers by auntie Terri! Wow, she really did impress me hehe.
This is Hong Yi’s cool outdoor table where they sometimes have meals because according to uncle Wedge, the temperature is around 2-3 degrees cooler outside. Also this is auntie Terri’s outdoor kitchen where she rules with an iron fist. Haha, just kidding. But she’s seriously good at cooking and I hope one day Hong Yi will surpass her mum’s cooking skills! You can check out auntie Terri’s food blog at hungerhunger.
Unfortunately, every single day of my 11 day stay there was raining. I must’ve visited Sabah at the wrong time, the monsoon season. It was a real pity as Sabah is known to be an outdoor getaway with lots of beaches, islands and watersports. However, it was good in a way as I got to spend a lot of time with Hong Yi and her family.
I had the privilege to attend Hong Yi’s grandad’s 80th birthday held at a restaurant called Shikai (auntie Terri has blogged on it). All her auntie’s and uncle’s (on her mum’s side) was there to celebrate kong kong’s birthday. Auntie Fan Tou was especially friendly and subtly interviewed me, asking me a lot of questions as you would if your only niece brought along her boyfriend who happened to travel thousands of kilometers to come and visit.
Noodles
Prawns
Duck
The food was absolutely amazing. We simply ate till our bellies rolled over itself. There was duck, fish, prawns and lots more! I really enjoyed spending time and getting to know her extended family. Her grandma tried to make conversation with me and unfortunately I can’t speak chinese very well and she only knows chinese. So she said to me “Xia yu hen da”, noting that it was raining heavily outside. Usually with my chinese, I would normally understand about 20% of it and would use logic to figure out what the sentence meant. I’m usually 20% correct.
So I heard yu and da which meant fish and big, so I thought she made a comment about the big gropper fish we were devouring. In response, I nodded to her saying how big the fish was, pointing to it. She looked back at me in confusion, and then proceeded to point to the heavy rain outside. I was still confused. Auntie Terri laughed when she realised what happened and then explained to me what happened. Hehe, oh well I guess I should brush up on my chinese.
Hong Yi looking pretty as always :)
There was one day where it didn’t rain but wasn’t especially hot. So Hong Yi and I decided to take a trip to the islands. We ended up at the Manukan Island because one of my friends from KL recommended it to me.
Hong Yi and I all geared up for the boat ride to the island. What’s the guy doing behind us?
Fishies :)
I must say Manukan wasn’t as great as I thought it would be. Probably it’s because I’m comparing to the islands I visited when I was in Phuket a couple of years ago.
Manukan’s water was somewhat clear but not the clearest I’ve seen. Unfortunately, you would see the occasional rubbish floating around when I was snorkeling with Hong Yi. After snorkeling, Hong Yi spent her time digging for pipi’s while I was climbing trees.
The sand also wasn’t especially great. I reckon the sand near my house in Sydney is probably 10x better. Nice white soft sand. We even saw a cat going onto the beach, doing a poo and carefully covering it up with sand. I wonder how many poo graves there are on the beach. Hong Yi agreed that Manukan wasn’t that great and we should’ve visited Sapi instead. Oh well, till next time.
Me feeding the fishes over the jetty.
Hong Yi feeding the fishes with her feet, hehe. Daring girl.
One day Hong Yi decided to bring me to the kadazan markets where you can buy lots of fruits, vegetables and other weird stuff. Let me show you some of the weird stuff I encountered.
Eel in bags?
Some kind of worm/grub that you fry and eat. Yum!
Oh I could go on forever posting pictures and blogging about them but I think I’ll leave it as it is. Feel free to go through the photo gallery below and have a look at more photos. I only uploaded a fraction of what I have but I think they should be suffice.
To sum it up, I had a great time in Kota Kinabalu visiting Hong Yi’s family, friends, church and her local tree houses. Would definitely visit there again and hopefully with good weather! Oh if only the Australian would return to it’s former glory.
Looks like an amazing trip!
Did you try some of the local hawker cuisine?
Like Char Kway Teow :
http://sigmatestudio.com/2009/01/char-kway-teow/
Yeah of course I did try all the local food! That’s the only thing I go for. Always try to avoid western food there. It’s just sooooo horrible western food made by Malaysians.
It was a big surprise to find that food in KK was more expensive than KL.
Nice girlfriend you got there bro…