Swordie Bloggie

Starting tomorrow, I will going around the state in my Journey Around Sabah… to do official works. I will start with the northern route first… starting from Kota Kinabalu to Tuaran to Kota Belud to Kota Marudu to Pitas to Kudat and to Simpang Mangayau… errr… the last one is not an official site to visit… 😛 But will be taking an opportunity to visit the place… again… 😀

It’s a lot of stations to visit in a short period… Tuesday to Thursday… so most probably I will not be visiting some of the stations… I will adjust my journey accordingly… accordingly at every station… it all depending on how long I will be at one station…

My journey this time is going to be a bit pack compared to my previous journey in 2008… coz during that year, I started my journey around September… but this time, it is at the end of October… and there are loads of work in the office right now waiting to be completed before the year end… 😛 The work load has show it sign… suddenly this morning I feel pain on my nose… you know, pain deep inside the nose skin… and a little reddish bulging… yeah… an acne products at work on my nose… 😛 This thing always appears every time after I eat roasted peanuts… I actually ate a packets of roasted peanuts provided by the Malaysia Airlines… yea, flew to KL two weeks ago… anyways, need to go sleep soon… need to be fit for my journey tomorrow, and to make sure no more ‘jerawat’ popping up… 😛

On our way back from Kudat on last Friday, 28 November 2008, we stopped at a few stalls along the way. Traveling around Sabah by road is a great experience. We can see great scenery… almost still in its original natural habitat.

There are stalls selling handicrafts, fish, crabs, vegetables, herbs, birds, fruits and many more by the local peoples staying along the roads. It’s great to see these people doing their business happily. I don’t think they care how much they make in a day. Imagine, they are able to survive without money because they can eat what they planted, what they catch at the river, what they hunt or collect from the jungle… and share or barter trade with their neighbors. For us, I don’t think we can… we need money to pay our bills, loans, buy foods… everything need money… money… but money. Without money, we can’t eat.

One of the stall we stopped by is the one selling corn (jagung)… they are selling two types of corns… jagung pulut (pulut corn?) and jagung manis (sweet corn). They sell the corn fresh, still with its stalk. They also sell ‘pangang’ or barbecued corn. I bought two bundles with 5 corns on each bundle… one bundle ‘manis’ and one bundle ‘pulut’. I also bought some of the barbecued corns and we ate some at the stalls. Imagine if they have popcorn machines, they might even sell pop corn right at their stall… and we will be enjoying eating popcorn in the middle of nowhere minus the cinema 😆 The barbecued corns taste very nice… sweet and hot… coz they are fresh from the oven 😆

Last week, 24 to 28 November 2008, I continued with my Journey Around Sabah… to Tuaran, Kota Belud, Kota Marudu, Pitas & Kudat. They are at the northern side of Sabah and Borneo. Kudat is where Tips of Borneo, Simpang Mangayau, located.

We stayed at Kudat Golf & Marina Resort for 3 nights. The room is RM158 per night with Sea View. If you are member of Kudat Golf Club, you can get voucher from the club and it will cost you RM115 per night only although both of them are not with the same management… they have some kind of internal arrangement.

The room is great… I’m satisfied with it. It has mini bar too. The bathroom has most of the standard bathroom fixtures minus the bath tub. TV is not very clear… it has the two terrestrial channels and four Astro (cable) channels.

WiFi is not available but only at the lobby and restaurant. My Celcom broadband is only able to receive WCDMA in the hotel. But according to a friend, he can get 3G… probably my receiver is lousy… I need to change it to a better one next time.

Travelling from KK is not bad. Only a few places with broken road… but there are parts where the roads are very bouncy… a lot of road depression. Petronas should give more money for infrastructure development here… you have been digging our oil for so long.