En route to Manila, Philippines. Arrive on 21-Feb.
Let’s get this right out front – Sandakan, Malaysia, is not a town you visit for the wonderful architecture. I compare it to east Berlin after the wall fell: the buildings are left over from the 1950s. Sandakan used to be a huge boom town, but WW2 treated it poorly. Everything has the black soot-colored mold/fungus simply due to the humidity and rain. You’ll notice in the below pictures
Seems the reason to stop in Sandakan was to visit orangutan and proboscis monkeys in a near-by reserve, but I signed up for the Sandakan Town tour. We started at the oldest granite church, St. Michael’s. It showed the strange transplanting of European culture within the rain forest.
The parish supported a near-by school. Today was the first day back to classes after lunar new year, and the kids were playing team handball. The buildings and grounds were well kept, as opposed to all the surrounding buildings within sight. And I do mean all of them.
We then visited the home of Harry and Agnes Keith. She wrote novels of their time in Sandakan – Land Below the Wind and Three Came Home, the latter about their family while within POW camps during WW2.
Across from the home we stopped in the English Tea House. I am not a hot drink fan (I despise coffee), but their local tea was not bad. They made especially good scones, but the surprise of the day was roti jala and curry. Seems it’s a type of pancake made kind of like funnel cakes, but cooked on a griddle rather than in oil.
We were well guarded by a trio of black puppies.
Other things:
- With this lunar new year it is Year of the Pig. but Malaysia is primarily a Muslim country. Makes it kind of awkward.
- Sandakan is on the island of Borneo. Seems there is a large number of “tiny” versions of animals- pygmy elephants, smallest rhinoceros and the smallest raptor.
Bonus Cruise Boy Pictures
Norman Rafelson is the Silver Whisper‘s Hotel Director, and we started photo-bombing each other while on board. Yesterday he caught me a couple of times.
Here I use my Jedi powers while playing water volleyball to guide the other team’s serve into the net.
And here I am taking picture of yesterday’s “Crossing the Equator” skit. The pool area is on deck 8 and deck 9 is above and surrounds the pool; it is used for more deck chair space and jogging. You can tell I was serious as I turned my ball cap around (the cap peak bumps into the camera lens).
