la v and jak travel the world

July 9: Goodbye to our new friend Rives, and a long day of travel...

Well, our incredible time in Sarawak has finally come to an end, and we're off to new adventures in the state of Sabah. It was time also to bid farewell to Rives, our trusty local guide, who we'd grown to really enjoy and appreciate. We'll miss his knowledge, his genuine friendliness, and the corny but endearing jokes he used to tell to start off the days... Example: When I asked him what he thought of Singapore, he replied, "We call Singapore a very fine city... whatever you do, you get a fine." He really was a great guide. Rives, if you're reading this, you are AWESOME!

To be totally honest, the rest of the day was really a blur. Our morning wakeup call was at 5:30 am, so we were lacking in sleep a bit. The flight from Kuching to Kota Kinabalu (or, KK) was about 90 minutes. From there, we hopped onto a bus for a day trip through KK before our flight to Sandakan, which was scheduled to leave at 5 pm. We cruised through the city and visited the local university, a couple of mosques, and a buddhist temple... this was pretty helpful to get us oriented with the city, but most folks (ourselves included) started getting a bit tired. The mosques were pretty impressive, but unfortunately, we couldn't take a look inside. Here are some photos from the sites we visited today.
The second mosque is the city mosque, which is second in size only to the state mosque in another part of town. It was pretty impressive... a gleaming white building surrounded by water. From the roadside, we could hear chanting, which we were told was a reading of the Koran. KK is primarily Christian, but the mosques were built by the government (Malaysia is a Muslim country) to serve the local Muslim population. We headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Sandakan, but unfortunately the flight was delayed. Perhaps even more unfortunately, the air conditioning at the airport wasn't working, so we were treated to a free "sauna" while we waited for our plane to arrive. At last, we boarded and took a short 45 minute flight to our final destination. We were rewarded for our wait with this beautiful view of Mount Kinabalu from the airplane and a fantastic hotel at the other end. Time to rest for a day of orangutans tomorrow!