Sunday Gaya Street Market

We woke up early the next morning, after the Wedding and we were off to the Sunday Market.

Gaya Street is the main drag in the old part of KK. The newer part focuses on malls and high rises. Gaya Street is old town. On Sundays the street is closed for blocks to make room for vendors that play music, sell clothes, food, plants, animals, and art.

We parked the car and set out to find a breakfast place. We wanted Dim Sum, but it was Chinese New Year and the Chinese restaurants were closed preparing for that night's festivities. We even saw the dragon dancers on one of the side streets preparing for their performance. We ended up in one of the classic open air restaurants that are very common here. We chose from fare available in steam trays from dim sum to fish balls, satays to curries, noodle and rice dishes as well as baked goods and steamed buns. You fill your plate and head to the cashier, who in this particular restaurant, also serves the beverages. She come up with a price, though I am not sure how. It does not really matter because it is so cheap. This massive meal including drinks was $6 for the two of us. Everyone eats slowly here and takes their time and we followed suit. We stuffed ourselves and went off to explore the market.

There are markets held in different areas of the city on other days but the Sunday market is the largest. It is well attended by both locals and tourists. The prices are quite similar to those in the shops but here prices are negotiable and people do it with a real flare. There are also unique things available here that are difficult to find in other places. I bought a pair of pants and a cover up. It was quite warm, sunny, humid and in the 90's.

After walking for a couple of hours I was losing it.  It was only my second day in Sabah. I was sweating, my feet were swelling and I was exhausted from walking. I really needed to sit down somewhere cool. We found a coconut bar. It was shady in the bar and there was a steady breeze from the ceiling fan. Relief.

Jasmah ordered a coconut juice. To make the coconut juice, they take young coconuts and process the juice and then return it to the coconut, leaving a layer of soft delicious fruit inside the coconut to scoop out with a spoon. I chose the watermelon juice and I was happy I did.  It was sweet and cold and refreshing. We sat there for 30 minutes, sipping, chatting and cooling off. I felt revived.

We headed back home for a shower and a nap.

Here is a selection of photos from the market to give you a feel for the place.

Plant Booth

View down the street.

Clothing and Beautiful Local Woman

The Kuala Lumpur Booth

Muslim Clothing

Kittens 

Ice Cream Truck

The Wedding

So it is 5:30 and the village is 45 minutes away. There is some traffic as we head to Tuaran and we arrive there around 6:30. The village is very dark, and remote. There are no street lights and Jasmah is not really sure where the wedding is. We are going to the wedding of one of her first cousin's once removed. Jasmah has about 60 to 70 first cousins on her mother's side. The wedding is at the home of one of these first cousins.

We stop at her mother's house to get directions to the wedding. The house is a very typical village house. The front porch is stone and has a stone fence enclosure as well as a high peaked roof. The fence is there presumably to keep the roaming farm animals off the porch and out of the house. Around the side of the house is the outdoor kitchen. Her mother has a metal gate and two dogs that guard the place. The dogs are thin, mangy and scrappy. She told us that they were wild dogs that showed up at her door one day and had stayed around. They have noise makers that they drag around to warn the chickens when they are coming. Before she came up with this technique they were decimating the chicken population in her area of the village. She opens the gate. The dogs calm down and we approach the house. She holds Jasmah close and strokes her hair lovingly. Jasmah introduces me to Rimah (reema) and she immediately hugs me and gives me what I have learned is a traditional greeting three cheek kisses. She welcomes me into her home and we sit at the table for a bit.

She gives us directions, which consist of "continue up this road and listen for the music." Rimah is a no nonsense lady.

Five minutes of weaving on narrow pavement and we see a line of cars parked on the side of the road, a long line of cars. Then we hear the music. We find a parking space that does not place on the precipice of the drainage ditch. Unfortunately I have to get out of the car onto a dark bit ground two feet from the jungle. I pray for no snakes or weird bugs. We go down into the outside patio and are greeted by the first of many very drunk male cousins. They are so happy to see Jasmah, who is one of the few cousins who moved to the States. She has not seen many of these relations for years and years. The men shake my hand and some of the women hug me immediately.  I meet the mother of the bride and congratulate her.

Mother of the bride in left in purple, Bride in blue, me in the center, Grandma of the bride on far right. This is the third cloth change for the wedding party.

The bride's family speaks English. Many of the guests I meet speak English but are to shy to speak to me initially.  As so many of the guests, the mother of the bride is very happy and honored that I would come to her daughter's wedding. I am relieved just not be considered a wedding crasher. Jasmah sort of surprised everyone by arriving.

The bride and the father of the bride come to greet us and under Jasmah's tutlage, I present the bride, using two hands, a red Chinese money envelope. She graciously accepts it and then we were offered food. It was a short distance to the buffet which is outside on folding tables next to the outdoor kitchen. Getting to the table took us a while as more and more cousins introduced themselves and greeted Jasmah. Everyone was fascinated by the US in their presence. They were welcoming, lovely and very interested in Trump.

So I need to tell you a little about the wedding traditions of this tribe in Borneo. The groom must sacrifice a water buffalo and it is served at the wedding feast.

This is the Domesticated Water Buffalo. They are raised like cattle and are still used as work animals on the farms.

So I ate water buffalo soup, water buffalo curry, and some other water buffalo dishes, there was also chicken and fish and lots of rice. They are very conscious of water purification and when their is no water purifier they serve bottled water or in this case individual cups of  hermetically sealed water. You poke a straw through the cover, like a juice box.

Many of the men drank beer. One of the cousins and the bride's sisters introduce me to the their local tribal hooch, which is the traditional drink at celebrations. One was a rice wine and the other was made from coconut flowers. The coconut flower wine, bahar is quite bitter. The rice wine was nice. I had a lighter colored and less alcoholic version of montoku, which as it ferments develops quite high in alcohol content. The rice wine was actually made by the family for the wedding.

The majority of the women were not drinking spirits, the men were all imbibing as well as many of the younger women, Unlike America, socializing does not go hand in hand with alcohol consumption.

We danced the tribal dance to music played by family members accompanied by groups of karaoke singers.

We drank sweet milky coffee grown on the island and discussed politics. 

Because we arrived so late we missed the actual ceremonies, which began in the morning. The first was a Catholic wedding, as the bride's family is Catholic. That was followed by the tribal ceremony. One of the cousin's graciously shared her photos in traditional garb.

Bride and Groom

Bridal Party with Bride's Mom

Bride, Groom, Maid of Honor, Best Man and Groom's Parents.

Right to Left: Groom, Bride, Maid of Honor and Best Man

KK Day 1

Today we began the task that brought us on this adventure.

We woke up early and headed out to get supplies for the remodel of Jasmah's condominium. Jasmah's brother, Jasni and Saudi the worker/handyman met us downstairs and we stopped first to get some breakfast. Not only is it common to go and pick up your workers and bring them to the site, you feed them as well. Her brother and the workmen live in the village in Tuaran which is about 45 minutes outside KK.

Plumbing Store for professionals as well as the public.

Our first stop after breakfast was to the industrial supply which sells plumbing supplies, tile, flooring and mirrors. I helped Jasmah pick out tile and then hung out while Jasmah and the guys got all the other supplies they needed. We then caravanned to the paint store and after Jasmah picked the paint color we walked across the alley to the futniture warehouse store.

The furniture is mostly Chinese manufactured. Other than the upolstered items, everything is modular. The pieces are put together on site, and they deliver to your home.

Furniture Store, also selling bicycles. After purchasing from them they give you fruit and a cold drink. Loads of negotations of price including all cash discount.

In the homes here the rooms are empty, there are no built ins and the kitchens are open or actually outside the house. The furniture stores sell, bedroom sets, kitchen sets, livingroom sets. The stoves in the kitchen are cooktops that just sit on the kitchen counter top of the kitchen set. They are either electric or propane. Jasmah always eats out or has take away, so there is not stove in the condo.

We bought a livingroom set, couch, love seat and easy chair for $300 US delivered!

We had to come back to the condo to meet the delivery guys. While we waited for the furniture delivery they called from the airline and said our luggage arrived in KK and that they would deliver it. It was about 3pm and I finally got my feet in the pool, cooling off after running all around in the heat and daydreamed about getting more of me into the pool. While I napped by the side of the pool, Jasmah had to go down the hill in the car to find our lost furniture delivery man. She and the delivery men finally arrive and we go go upstairs and get the stuff loaded into the apartment. The delivery guys leave by 4:30. Finally time to get ready to go the wedding!

The dress I bought for the wedding does not fit, so dressed in the clothes I flew in improved only slightly by the new shoes I bought. I am tired and feeling under dressed as well as disappointed that we will have missed so much of the wedding. Just as we are ready to head out the door our luggage arrives!

I get to wear my own clothes that fit. I put on the dress that I brought from home for the wedding. I am comfortable and somewhat refreshed by my cat nap by the pool.  It is now 5:30 and the wedding started at 10am. Not sure what we will find when we get there but here we go.

Finally KK

Sunset View Of KK from Condo

Our flight to KK was a refreshingly short 2 hours. They fed us some wonderful Malay style food and the attendants were lovely. Customs was easy. The airport was small. All was well except they LOST OUR FORKING LUGGAGE somewhere between Bainbridge and KK. We spent 40 minutes at the airport filling out forms, I hope it works. They will be contacting us when it appears.  The airline is giving us $150 ringits (37.50 US) each for our inconvience but we do have to go to there office in the city with our copy of the report to claim it. Hopefully we will have luggage sometime tomorrow.

We spent 2 hours dragging Jasmah's brother Jasni, and JahJah, his daughter around a shopping mall helping us find clothes to wear to the tribal wedding taking place the next day. If I was conscious of my weight before I left, oh my what a gene pool I fell into. After looking through 3 stores full of depressingly small clothing made of fabrics that neither of us wanted to were, we at least both managed to find shoes. It was almost 9pm and we were hungry.

We had some more amazing Malay style food at the food court. Fish soup, mixed veggies cooked with eggs, a fish that tasted like pork, no idea what it was, but I hope I get to eat it again. They serve Teh, (tea) panas (hot) hangat (warm) teh-O (nothing added) or teh (with milk and sugar). I had teh-O hangat.

After dinner we had about 20 minutes before the mall shut down, (the stores here stay open until 10pm on Friday night, apparently.) We tackled the ATM and headed back upstairs where there were two more stores where we might have a chance of finding something to wear. We split up, I went left she went right. After a quick pass through the store I knew that there was nothing in there that would fit anyone in my family except my thin 10 year old niece, and these were adult clothes. I left the store and joined Jasmah in the other shop. We ran through the store frantically looking for something to wear. Jasmah looking for the right thing while I looked for anything that my fit. I spotted the perfect dress for her and grabbed the biggest dress I could find that one might wear to a wedding and we ran to the cash register no time to try on the dresses. We were in the store for 10 minutes flat. And they pulled the metal gate down behind us.

We finally got to Jasmah's condo which definiately needs some work, to say the least, but that is the reason for the trip.  We chose the least gross bed which to put the sheet on the bed and covered the cloth head board with the top sheet. I hand washed our clothes so we are good for a couple of days, luckily the dryer works so we had dry clean clothes for the next couple of days and if our suitcases do not show up we will be shopping for a lot of stuff. Oh boy!

We are dead tired and heading into the one bed which we will share. Tomorrow morning we are going to buy at least one new bed on our way to the village for the wedding. God I hope this dress fits.

Our Day in Singapore

"Thanks be to Got," (a little Kittism for your reading pleasure.) we got a good night sleep at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

We got ourselves together and headed down to the breakfast buffet.

We are not talking make your own waffles and rubber scrambled eggs.

Here were my buffet choices:

Over Easy Egg 

Prepared to order the Egg Bar

Bean Paste Bow 

(which I used to soak up the yolk of 

previously mentioned egg.)

Chicken Shumai

Chinese noodle soup 

Prepared to order at the soup station.

 Salt Marlin 

(like lox but with Marlin. 

This I went back for, so fresh so unique.) 

Indian Eggplant Curry 

Maruku

A rice flour savory cracker.

These were thin, crispy, 

and just a little bit spicy. 

Perfect for scooping up the Eggplant Curry.

Melon

Kopa

Coffee with Cream and Sugar

So now it is 11:30 and we are off for our on the FunZee City tour. We head for the Singapore MRT station which is just a 5 minute walk. And then we take the train to Marina Center to get our business pass. The train is about 30 minutes ride so we will not have a lot of time to ride around. We need to get back to the hotel by 2pm to get our bags and head to the airport which is just a 5 minute ride on the train. The airport train runs directly from the hotel. I kind of wish we had more time in Singapore. 

Ok that is all well and good, but here is what really happened. We walked our 5 minutes to the train station and then another 5 minutes of escalators down to the platform where we found that the auto ticket machines which take credit cards do not actually accept credit cards and neither does the cashier. The cashier sends us back up the escalators to cash machines, having successfully purchased our tickets 

we were off on the MRT. 

The trains are very clean and well attended. Standing room only as we approach.

City Center, our transfer station for Marina Center. So far we have felt very safe everywhere we have gone. Everyone is friendly and helpful. 

The train does not actually stop at a station called Marina Center, but there was one called Marina Bay. We got off there and found we were only a 5 minute (weird right) cab ride to Marina Center. So before you think everything went bad, in this 3 square block Marina Center Mall, the cabby just landed us just outside the door of the City Tours office.  Apparently they would have picked us up in a limo at the hotel, a fact that they failed to mention during our long email correspondence.

The bus stop is just across the street and of course we have just missed a bus and have to wait for 10 minutes for the bus stop. The bus comes and we are on our way finally. The first stop is the Flyer, which is their ferris wheel.  The bus driver announces that we will have 20 minutes to get out and look around. We opt to stay on the air conditioned bus.

We were so involved in our task of getting on this bus that we had not noticed that it was 1:30pm. And if we were going to catch our plane at 3:00 we had to get a cab right then.

Marina Bay Sands Hotel
With it's Roof Top Pool

So our time in Singapore included a great meal, photos taken through taxi windows and an education of the transportation system.

Bainbridge to Singapore

Our transport odyssey began at 7:15 AM with a  bleary eyed coffee jonesing (I know I am a morning weenie.) ride to the ferry. 7: 55 boat. We were driven to the airport by Jasmah’s wonderful husband Paul. It was snowing and freezing when we got to the airport so enthusiasm for warmer climes grew. We managed to get our seats changed so we could sit together on a jammed packed plane. 

10 hours later ... a long flight to Tokyo Narita Airport and we have another 8 hour flight left after that. We were excited to land in Narita, to be able to get off the plane and walk around a bit. I was already feeling like I had been chewed up and spit out..

In the first hour I learned that Jasmah is a chill flying companion. During our first beverage service the plane started rocking and rolling then there was a big drop. Time seems to slow down as I watched liquid and ice fly out of my raised glass as I tried to stretch my arm into the aisle in a futile attempt to avoid an unwelcome shower. I was lucky I only ended up with ½ a cup of coke raining down on me.  Unfortunately Jasmah had chosen tomato juice and water and as a center seat occupant, had no means of escape.  I found out as we landed, that her clothes took about 6 hours to dry on the air conditioned plane.  On the bright side we only had to wear these sticky aromatic clothes another 25 hours!

Narita Airport is not that glamorous or big. They did have some interesting things on the McDonald's menu.

Check out the fish options.

Also squat toilets were available in the women’s room as well as 

bidet toilets with heated seats.

This second flight was much less crowded. There were people actually laying down in empty seat rows. I wish I was one of them. I am dead exhausted and having a lot of trouble getting comfortable.  I have slept some, but I need more. I am looking forward to this hotel room. I really could care less about seeing Singapore right now I just want to get some sleep! At this point I think we will not get to the hotel until 12:30 at the earliest. I am assuming that will be ok. I asked for late check in, but they may have rented the room, who knows. I have not been charged for it. I can call them when we land and let them know we are still coming. It will probably be fine, things usually are.

Hopefully customs will be short and sweet and we can get to the hotel quickly.

Tomorrow We Fly

Though I am still sitting at my home computer, the adventures of travel have already begun...

Originally we were scheduled to leave around Feb 14th. Then plans changed and preparations sped up as the travel date changed to Feb 7. Which is today, but then there was a wrong-name-on-the tickets-that-is-different-than-the-one-on-the-passport mistake and we had to re-book the entire trip. Oddly enough a travel service called Cheap-O-Air was wonderful about helping us untangle the mess we made.

Yes it was kind of annoying and a little discombobulating, not to mention it took us 90 minutes on a conference call with a lovely man in the Far East to get things squared away, but on the bright side now we get to see Tokyo airport.



I am going to try and get my passport stamped though, our lay over is too short to leave the airport. Supposedly it is a refueling stop.

From Tokyo we fly to Singapore, (which is supposedly an amazing airport, I will let you know,) where we have a 15 hour layover. They have hotels there at the airport that actually rent rooms by the hour for layovers. Genius! So we sleep from midnight until 8 am and then we go on a Fun Vee Hopper City Tour.


In the late afternoon we fly out and arrive in KK, (the cool name for Kota Kinabalu.) around dinner time.

We will be staying in Jasmah's condo which needs repair after tenants trashed it. Hopefully it will not be too gross and we will be able to stay there. If not, more adventures, where to stay.

I will keep you posted.