Sandakan 2011 - #01 The Journey

Before I continue my stagnant trip report to Chiang Mai, I’ll write instead about my current ongoing trip in Sandakan, Sabah. Hopefully this way I wouldn’t have so many backlogged reports to do! And this post has nothing to do about birds and I doubt there’re any suitable pictures to accompany this post, but I feel my report would be more complete if I did write about it.

My parents and I took the Seri Maju bus from Penang to Ipoh in the evening. This was the first time I got to see Ipoh town at night. The heritage style Ipoh Railway Station still looks so picturesque. After reaching Medan Gopeng bus terminal, we had about an hour and a half to midnight for our Star Shuttle bus to LCCT. Having my laptop and portable broadband definitely did help kill some time.

At a quarter to midnight the bus arrived and there are a few good points I must mention about this bus:

1. It’s an elevated bus in the sense that the luggage cabin is much larger and the seats are almost at the height of a double-decker bus
2. 1 + 2 arrangement of seats – comfort taken care of!
3. There are seat belts! First time I’ve seen them in a bus.
4. No direct overhead air-cond – not so freezing cold as some buses can be
5. Free mineral water bottle
6. Punctual – it left on the dot

I had a good rest in this bus which first dropped off passengers at KLIA before proceeding to the smaller terminal.

We were contemplating whether it would have been a better idea to fly directly from Penang to LCCT (which reaches at midnight) instead of changing buses this way. If by flight, we would have to camp it out at LCCT for about 6-7hours compared to the 3-4 hours with the bus. Somehow I have a feeling that a 6-7 hour wait would be far more tiring!

In LCCT I saw many people sleeping on newspapers spread out on the floor. Doesn’t really feel like an airport anymore actually. The seats provided for waiting aren’t comfortable enough (for sleeping at least) as they only reach up to half your back.

Surprisingly, I had a good appetite in the middle of the night. We had a very early breakfast at McDonald’s but even that wasn’t enough so we had a piece of fried chicken each from Marrybrown (which I honestly feel was more worth it) and packed some for the trip. There is free WiFi provided in LCCT which is a plus point especially for people who have to wait the whole night.

This really isn't a value meal.

I'm not trying to promote Marrybrown but this was much more filling.

By 6am we were in the domestic departure lounge. The check-in went smoothly and even the meal worms which we brought from home made it through security! Good thing water is allowed on domestic flights, but I still forgot to grab a bottle for myself in the airplane. By the time we boarded, I was feeling extremely tired and knocked out even before the plane took off. What woke me up later was an infant screaming his/her lungs out, poor thing. My whole body was feeling horribly stiff by then! Oh and one thing I’ve always wondered about was why the window shutters of the airplane have to be open during take-off and landing. What difference does it actually make?

It looks clear over Kota Kinabalu!

At around 10 am, the captain of the flight announced that we would be descending shortly. Ground temperature was reportedly 26°C and it’s raining over the airfield in Sandakan! I sighed in disappointment when I heard this. From the moment the plane descended through the thick cloud cover until its wheels touched the tarmac, the skies were grey, gloomy and weeping. Oh boy.

A real dampener.

Sandakan airport is so cute and small that the airplane had to make a U-turn at the end of the runway after landing to head for the terminal building. That’s right, pretty much just a lone strip! I could only see two main chutes, but coming from an Air Asia flight, we had to brave the unrelenting weather. At least the low-cost carrier provided quite a good number of umbrellas for us to use.

An interesting line of red brollies.

I guess it's still more economic to stock up on umbrellas than to rent a chute.

Once passing through immigration and claiming our luggage, we met our van driver for the day outside. According to him, the weather has been this miserable recently, every day. I sneezed about 5 times after exiting the airport!

The rest of the journey by land to Bilit was rather unremarkable. I only remember the muddy skies and the pitter-patter of the raindrops on the van windows. I also remember three roundabouts we passed by, each having a rather unique work of art. First was a sculpture of three Brahminy Kites, second was a crocodile standing up on its hind legs and pointing in one direction with its right foreleg (supposedly to a crocodile farm in that direction) and thirdly was a pair of Orang Utans sitting back to back to each other.

Oh and I remember seeing a very wet Lesser Coucal Centropus bengalensis javanensis sitting glumly in the rain by the roadside. I too sat glumly in my seat. The next part of my report will begin from the moment I woke up to find us almost at our first destination.