April 8
We had our last breakfast at Kinabatangan Riverside Lodge and departed for Sim Sim Jetty by speedboat to Sandakan.
We stopped at the Abai Lodge for refreshments and bathroom break, so that broke up the ride. I left to throw away a wrapper and I looked up to see everyone running and I figured we were boarding.
I went to the boat and found it empty, and I tried to follow the pack, but when I got to a fork i didn’t know which way they went so I turned back. Greg said there was an orangutan you could see from the boardwalk, but it wasn’t easy to see even though it was close due to the dense trees. I included the shots.
Back on the boat we finally were back at Sim Sim Jetty and were loaded into a van for the trip to the airport. Originally, lunch was scheduled to be at My Nature Lodge which would have meant a 10:30 in the morning lunch. However, SI Tours has a new property 5 minutes from the airport and appropriately was named Airport Garden. The food was quite tasty as well.
Another group in our van had a much later flight that day and the guide arranged a day room for them and they could use the amenities. SI Tours had many different lengths and combinations of tours you can choose from. We wished we would have spent a second night at Abai. It didn’t have a pool but was more secluded amongst nature.
We got to the airport and there was only 1 counter for all flights. We first went through security that was checking to make sure you had not smuggled out any animals.
There were very few gift shops, so I bought a magnet I wasn’t crazy about but once we went through security there was a nicer gift shop with some better magnets so got a second one. There really weren’t any souvenirs at any of the lodges.
Our flight left Borneo at 2:10 for the 3-hour flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Most on the flight were Muslim and couldn’t eat until after sundown so they were saving their meals for after the flight. Since we had just had lunch I just ate the dessert and the nuts and the date in the Ramadan greeting package.
We dreaded going back to the Tune Hotel KLIA-KLIA2. We
had hoped the hotel would be the luxury experience between the eco lodges but
the eco lodges were all much nicer than this armpit of a hotel.
We made the long trek to the “convenient” airport hotel. Lo and behold we got the same crappy “premium room” as before. Half a roll of TP and 2 towels made into a swan. Ha ha, no that didn’t change our impression of the room. Just a gross room that still smelled strongly of mildew with yucky carpeting around the bed.
It again was just one night before leaving tomorrow for Medan, Sumatra which is the Capital of North Sumatra province.
We made the trek back to the terminal for dinner and checked out our options. We saw a noodle place that looked good and then saw a sign for a Thai place, but the whole food court area there didn’t smell good, so decided to go back to the noodle place which had closed. Then, we saw a sign for a sit-down Chinese restaurant upstairs and went there. We filled out our dim sum card and the waiter said they were out of our main choice and suddenly only 1 of our choices was available. Found 2 other options and guess what, they were out of that too. We got up and left. Tired of walking at this point we headed to Kentucky Fried Chicken and the first kiosk took our order but wouldn’t let us pay. Choose a different pay option and said there was a malfunction with the machine and to go to the counter to order. The annoyed young lady at the counter said to try another kiosk. Thanks. The next one worked, and we finally got our chicken sandwiches.
Next up was looking for ice cream. We ran into Tom and Cathy, and they said there was a Cold Stone 2 floors up. That made our night, thanks for letting us know.
Back to the dungeon for some sleep before leaving for the 1-hour flight to Medan.
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