We have two full days in Sandakan with no plans, and no real desire to tackle anything too involved. We did want to get some homework done - the girls have not done a whole lot since Vietnam and its more about keeping them in touch with some notion of schoolwork than worrying too much about progress. The carrot for progress is that they can get rid of pages in their textbook once they've reached a good level of proficiency.
Breakfast was the usual mix of foods for Malaysia - a mix of Malay foods like beef rendang and fried noodles and rice, to Abby's favourite - the ever present coco flakes!
In the morning, we just walked and walked. We got the occasional "where are we going" questions piping up from the peanut gallery, but in general the place is an interesting walk. We found the central market which as really big, and again, just like Kuching, amazingly organized and surprisingly clean. We saw the same kind of prepackaged (or unpackaged), exact portions of spices, fruits, meats and vegetables.
We picked up a bunch of spices that are usually hard to find at home and that were ridiculously cheap here.
The fees food section of the market is separated from the rest of the market and is the biggest we'd seen since probably Tsukiji in Japan (though obviously not even close to the same size, usually the seafood sections we'd seen to date have been a few dozen stalls).
Upstairs, above the central market, was a huge food court with dozens of different "restaurants". Even though we came here around 10:00am, the smells were triggering our stomachs.... Nope, too early! We continued to the third floor where we encountered some tourist trinkets and many stalls selling all kinds of clothes - it looked more geared to locals. To be honest, we haven't found much appeal in most things for sale in Borneo to date. Whereas you could spend hours looking through markets in Hoi An, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Luang Prabang, Hong Kong, Singapore and Siem Reap (and we did.... Hours upon hours..... Upon hours...), the shops and small markets here have been..... As the kids would say, "meh". Maybe Kota Kinabalu will be different.
We had to get some laundry done, and we eventually tracked down to place called Dobi (which actually meant "laundry"). It felt a little sketchy. We walked up a really dirty set of stairs to an outdoor second floor, past a bunch of men with sewing machines (?)'and found this little window in the wall. A sign next to it, hand written on a piece of lined paper said "it is ugly and small, but we provide good service at a fair price". Lol. Mi looked in and saw an elderly Indian couple sleeping on mats on the floor. With an "ahem" they noticed us and jumped up - "yes sir!?". Too funny. Sometimes you just get a good feel for someone despite all other signs saying "noooooo!". We weighed our laundry bag (almost 7 kilos!) and promised to be back tomorrow to pick it up. Nice people!
The people. They are super nice everywhere we've been in Borneo so far. Lots of smiles, lots of "hello, hello", lots of people engaging us in conversation. Whenever we've gone to stores and the people obviously can't speak English (which is actually pretty rare), they laugh in embarrassment (we should be embarrassed did not speaking Malay to be honest) and still do their best to help. We get plenty of stares, and rightly or wrongly, Beth tends to feel a little uncomfortable with the stares, particularly from the big groups of male teens, which seem to be everywhere. That being said, we have felt very safe... But I like to stay close to the three girls to make sure the groups of "men" know there's a Gaiginzilla attached to them :-).
Some of the city blocks in Sandakan appear quite modern, but then there are steam punk like blocks that look like they've been uprooted from Kowloon and dropped in the middle of the city. Very cool.
In the afternoon, the girls went down the street for manicures and pedicures. They are in their element when they're in the spa...
Robin has been giggling every time we go to the grocery store. We'd be looking for some essentials or snacks, and you'd here "Abby come here....... Tee hee hee". I swear she has a gift for finding inappropriate humour in almost any setting.... I'm not sure where she gets it.
We left the girls in McDonalds (a good, safe base with great wifi and comfortable seating!) to do some math, and Beth and I went to find a seamstress to add to the girls patches. We found a really nice Chinese family right near our laundry dude who was nice enough to help us out. The girls are going to need bigger bags soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment