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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.

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It feels surreal going back to work and normal life after a fun filled 4 week adventure. No more staying up in the blackness of night with the bats and waking up hungering for breakfast but the time for it seems to have passed into lunch.

Yes, I will need to sleep and wake up early now to catch my daily 1 hour trip to work via bus and train. Not to mention back again.

Today it took me about 5 hours to go through 600+ emails. Yes, 600+ emails. Really shows how dependent we are on email as a form of communication, internally and externally.

I’m starting my new role now as a consulting team leader. A new year, a new role and fresh challenges lying ahead. Let’s hope it all goes well :)

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Arrived 6am this morning to find my baggage damaged through the flight with Air Asia. Another fail point about Air Asia.

It feels weird to pay A$25 (RM60) for a taxi fare to my friend’s place after visiting Malaysia where everything is so cheap and the same taxi fare would’ve costed around A$5 there.

Guess my holidays is going to last for another couple of days before I head off to Sydney tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully I’ll snap some shots of my visit here and post it up later.

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For those that don’t know where Sabah is, it is located in East Malaysia, above Kalimantan. Yes, I didn’t know where it was as well. Haha, just kidding :P

Notice how the map of Sabah looks like a dog’s head?

Unfortunately for the 11 days that I stayed at Kota Kinabalu, it was raining every single day which limited the amount of outdoor activities I could do there since Sabah is famed for its islands, Mount Kinabalu climb, fishing and whitewater rafting. I’m sure there’s more stuff to do there.

But I guess it was sort of a good thing because I had the opportunity and time to get to know Hong Yi’s immediate and extended family a bit better and they were very hospitable to me which was great! I’ll post up more about it once I get back to Sydney and also pictures once I’ve used photoshop to adjust the colours and contrast. Unfortunately my Olympus camera isn’t very good :(

So next stop tomorrow would be Perth to visit my thambi friend for a couple of days before I head back to Sydney!

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The night before my flight, I received an sms from Air Asia, the carrier I was flying with, stating that my flight was delayed by 8 hours due to aircraft technical issues.

Great. Flight delayed by 8 hours, and I have a flight from Sydney to Melbourne at 7.15am with the new take off time at 8.50pm now. What on earth am I going to do for like 11 hours in Melbourne?

I was contemplating on meeting up with people in Melbourne but unfortunately I ran out of phone credit and also I couldn’t be half-arsed going out to the city lugging my big luggage around.

So yes, I actually spent 11 hours in Melbourne Tullamarine terminal, sitting around wondering what on earth should I do to kill time. I started by going to the nearest news agent to read some magazines. Some 8 magazines later, I discovered my neck was starting to hurt so I gave that up.

I then decided perhaps I should buy a book to read. Unfortunately, the news agent didn’t have the book I wanted so I gave that up too. So I had lunch and took really slow bites, extending the time I needed to chow down a chicken parmigiana sandwich.

Then I walked around to all the shops, looking at every single item on sale, reading product descriptions and played around with electronic gadgets. After that, I went to get coffee at Hudsons which tasted a bit funny and took my time between sips.

Crap. 3 hours have passed. I still have 8 more to go. Repeat from step 1. Misery.

Come boarding time at 8.30pm, I then discovered that Air Asia’s plane was late and thus, the flight was delayed by another hour. OH MY GOODNESS! You must understand that I’ve been awake since 5am to hop onto my flight to Melbourne.

Air Asia’s plane is pretty budget. Very crammed seats which does not decline backwards. Whenever I tried to watch videos or listen to their music, the screen kept prompting me to enter my credit card. They wouldn’t even upgrade my seat to a larger one, but this Malay guy did get his seat upgraded with a big smile from the air steward.

I would’ve thought that after all the issues, they would’ve given everyone free movies/tvs to watch. I guess not. Truly budget airline. I wonder whether the oxygen masks are free if they come down due to the lack of oxygen. Perhaps it’ll prompt you for your credit card before allowing oxygen to flow through.

I then spent about a couple of hours chit chatting with an Aussie girl in front of me and an Aussie guy across the aisle from me. It’s interesting to note how their travel plans are to places like Bali, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand but none of them intended on visiting Malaysia.

Then I spent the next 5-6 hours tossing and turning trying to get some rest where I could with the super uncomfortable seats. Also, lucky I met a nice lady sitting on the same row as me next to the windows. Turns out that she lives near me and offered to take me back to my place.

How awesome is that? I didn’t have to spend like RM70 on a taxi. So yes, when I finally arrived back at my place it was like 5.30am. Once I got back, we immediately went to Taman Megah to grab some dim sum.

Ahhh…cheap and nice food in your tummy. What a treat. Ate there till 7.30am and went to bed at 8am local time. That meant that I was awake for like almost 30 hours.

I think unless Air Asia flies from Sydney, I’ll just fly with Jetstar to Singapore and catch a local flight to KL. Even then, that would require much consideration. No way am I going to fly Air Asia from Melbourne again.

With the super crammed seats, I wouldn’t recommend getting on flights more than 4 hours. It is simply outrageous how the seats don’t decline but slide outwards a little bit, giving you like a 10 degree decline. Try getting sleep with that.

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Prospects so far? 1-1.5 week in KL, 1.5-2 weeks in Sabah, and 1 week in Bali/Thailand/Vietnam/Cambodia, depending where my other mates want to go.

I’m hoping that the Australian dollar will spring back up again and make me a rich dude once I go to south-eastern countries.

Although I’m really keen on visiting a few places within the next few years: China, Africa and Alaska. Why China? Well coming from a Chinese heritage, I’ve always been fascinated by ancient Chinese history and culture. It really intrigues me on how rich Chinese history and culture is, providing many insights from early civilisation and wars to modern day revolution of China. There’s just so many things to see and discover!

Why Africa? I’d like to see and experience the third world countries in a way that will open up my eyes from my comfort of transportation, education, health, democracy and all other basic things in life that I take for granted. It would definitely put our (including myself) day to day complaints to shame and to realise how pathetic they are compared to the rest of the world whom 90% are probably living below poverty line.

Oh yes, I’d like to get some safari action too! I’m a big national geographic fan :)

Why Alaska? I don’t know. The fact that a 2-3 week cruise around the Alaskan glaciers and enjoying the beautiful untarnished environment of Alaska would probably be a big factor. Also the fact that I’ve never seen nor experienced snow in real life as well.

So many things to do while you’re still young. Better make the most of it ay?

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Hong Yi and I were playing Mario Brothers as it was one of our favourite childhood games. Here’s a screenshot if you don’t remember what it is.

Boy do I have to say that both of us don’t have teamwork! She especially tries to kill and sabotage me by getting all the coins and kicking all the bumped monsters, while not helping me at all! We definitely don’t do well during team events, hehe.

Hong Yi is also involved in a ministry called Soul Kidz where they help teach, play and mentor kids from housing communities. I had the privilege to join her with her Christian friends to help minister and have an impact on the kids.

She’s very beautiful when she plays with kids. I can see her passion for them :)

This William kid (on the far right) likes to act cute, but really he’s a  bit of a player. Look at how he’s hugging that girl! That girl is usually very shy. Ladies, beware of him in 10 years time.

There was also this cool sorta carousel like ride that the building had.

Oh, did I tell you about our passion for food? Well if you didn’t know, Hong Yi entered an art competition with Koko Black and she won $1000 worth of Koko Black products! If you don’t know what Koko Black is, it is a shop that is famous for their chocolates. I guess something similar to Max Brennar and Lindt Chocolate in Sydney.

Out of her $1000, I think she’s already used up $550! Oh oohhhh…I think I’ll have to alert Terri Hong soon.

I’ve also got a girlfriend who can and loves to cook! I get treated well whenever I head down to visit her. There’s always a yummy home cooked meal waiting for me :D

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Thinking of getting a DSLR once I get my tax return in. But can I justify spending $1000+ for it?

Anyways, here’s some pictures taken from my trip. Unfortunately it’s not much and most of it is still on Hong Yi’s camera.

Dinner with some other friends: Denise, Joel, Jonathan, Adrianne.

Hong Yi and I having dinner with some friends at some Thai restaurant I can’t remember.

My lunch at Yu-u with Nicole. Some famous and randomly hard to find Japanese restaurant. $16 for a lunch menu. Quite good!

There’s this nice little place near Chapel Street where Hong Yi works at that sells excellent seafood. Apparently the place has won awards or something. Not too expensive as our lunches were about $10. The place is called Hooked.

During the week, I usually visit Hong Yi for lunch when I get the chance since she’s working and I’m bumming at home.

Me reading through Hong Yi’s exchange program letter.

Hong Yi acting cute.

Hong Yi’s lunch. Baby octopus salad.

My lunch. Fish and chips!

On my last day before I flew back to Sydney, we had breakfast at a placed called Sweethearts Cafe, famous for their brekkie’s!

Sweethearts Cafe.

My yummy pancake breakfast.

Me eyeing my food with hunger!

Lastly I’ll finish off with Nicole’s furry friends. I went there to plunder Sean’s clothes hehe. What a pirate.

Haha. Thought I’d put this in. It’s the cat sleeping on the warm router on a cold winter day!

The cat is pretty funny. I think it slept on the window sill too, only to fall 1 meter to the floor. But no worries, up he goes again and takes his comfy position on the window sill.

As you can see, my trips to Melbourne revolves a lot around food. It probably comes from our passion of food eating being Malaysians. Hong Yi’s mum keeps an excellent food blog called Hunger Hunger that has attracted many fellow food lovers to it.

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Flight was smooth and had no issues at all. I bought a book at the airport which I was planning to read on the plane, but ended up just watching movies and sleeping.

So what have I done so far ever since I touched down? Eat eat eat. :S

Food here is soooo cheap that it’s hard to say no to seconds. I’ve been having mamak & chinese food mainly.

Also I’ve been fishing with my highschool friends at some man made pond in Sri Petaling. Costs around RM23 for 4 hours on Mondays. We ended up fishing for 8 hours hehe. I didn’t catch anything though, so unlucky. My friend caught a 3kg pachu fish and we traded it for two 2kg patin fish.

I’ve also been doing a little bit of shopping. Not as much as I want though. Only bought a pair of boxers so far. Will be going to Lowyat today to buy a bunch of electronic goodies.

Not sure if you’ve been to a pub called Wabisabi here. Had beers with friends there last night. Gosh, it is soooo expensive! RM42 + 10% surcharge for a jug of beer. I’ve always hated having alcoholic beverages in Malaysia because it is so expensive compared to Australia.

Well my reasoning was I’d rather eat 40 roti banjir instead, hehe :P

Anyways, if any of you want my Malaysian number, just send me an email and I’ll get back to you.

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