Thursday, June 24, 2010

Meet the warm and kind Sabahan people

It started all with the plan to go to the local Lok Kowi Zoo in Kota Kinabalu. The zoo is located about half an hour from the city centre. There is no bus going there, so we would have to take a taxi. We = me and my new roommate here in Borneo Backpackers, Verena. We were thinking that it was actually very expensive to go to a zoo, pay 20 RM for the entrance and then 60 RM for the taxi.


So on twitter I came into contact with a great couple who are working for Borneo Ultimate and we shared our thoughts by going to the zoo. You know what their reaction was? “Do you want a ride? We are heading to Beaufort and it is on the way there.” On that moment we only knew each other from twitter, nót from face, nót from name and nót from gender. They didn’t know who they were dealing with and we did neither. So… how unbelievably friendly is that?

We were willing to take ‘the chance’ and hoping they were just as nice as we thought. We went to their office to take a ride with them. And that was the best choice! We met Linah and Ally and they were just great! 2 nice young girls and they gave us a perfect ride to the Lok Kawi Zoo. We started talking in the car, like we knew each other already some time. It was so cool! Good times with them still continue as we have a lot of contact and we just had dinner with them this week.



The Lok Kawi Zoo was a big laugh. It is probably very nice for local families, but when you have seen the animals living in wildlife, you feel so sorry and sad for them. So we were walking around there with a face that spoke our mind. Still, we had paid for the entrance, so we visited everything.


Finally around 5 o’clock we left and we actually expected that there was a cap, but there were none. A man from the park offered us a ride back to KK for 60 RM. We said he was crazy (not exactly using this words hihi =)) and that we would find another way. So our plan was to go to the main street, which still was quite a quiet street with rural surroundings. On the way over there was a Malaysian family who asked us to take a picture with them. We were laughing being a bit shy, because normally we are not the attraction in a foreign country, right? After they took like 5 pictures, they were satisfied and we walked on. Suddenly one of the girls asked us in Malay where we were going. And then you are so happy you speak a bit of Malay =D. We said we were going to Kota Kinabalu centre and we didn’t have a car. Then the unexpected became real! They offered us a ride back to KK (Kota Kinabalu). The family consisted of a married couple, the sister, a niece and 3 small children, 1 boy and 2 girls. We had soooo much fun on the way home. I could practice my Malay and they found it really funny to hear me talk Malay of course. The ‘problem’ was that nobody spoke English, so the only language we could speak was Malay =). The small boy was a bit of a show off, in a funny way though! You know a 6 year old wants to prove himself in front of his sisters ;-). After said that he was a crazy little boy and very naughty we started to teach the kids a bit of English. We teached them how to count and translated all kind of animals in English. Seriously, it was such a blast!!



We arrived at the night market in KK and after we said goodbye and thanked them big time, there wasn’t a better ending for this day then to eat Fried Dumplings at Kuja’s place (at the waterfront), walking on the waterfront (surrounded by crazy kids ;-)), enjoying the sunset and eating a big prawn for our dinner!!



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