Brunei/Sabah Trip 2004

So (finally), here's my run-down of the trip I went on with my family to Sabah a couple of weeks ago.

Day 0

I flew out from Sydney on the 16/12/2004 with Katherine (my step-2nd-niece), and we arrived at the capital of Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, in the evening. Our families were at the airport waiting, and following our arrival we went to a riverside market to have dinner. A couple of others joined us there, and we feasted on satay and rice wrapped in attap leaves (the name escapes me now kutupakt ketupat… Thanks Mum). I don't remember the exact count, but there were well over 100 sticks of satay at the end of it all! If I remember correctly, it cost us something like B$1 for 4 sticks, which is insanely cheap – at a restaurant in Australia, you're likely to pay A$10+ for 4 sticks!!!

Here's a photo of the family sitting by the river:

There's also an extremely cute photo of Lelani (my 2nd-niece) eating satay:

Day 1

Early the next day, we left BSB and started the drive into Sabah. We got stuck in a queue going into the border crossing from Brunei into Sarawak and had to wait for about an hour or so before we got across. In total, that day we went through 8 checkpoints (2 per border) to get into Sabah.

We did hit a couple of snags, however. We arrived at one of the checkpoints to find that the officers had gone to a special Friday prayer, which lasted for 1 1/2 hours. We weren't expecting this, and had to wait for the officers to come back, which meant we missed the train we were scheduled to catch once we were in Sabah! Consequently, we spent 13 hours driving that day, and didn't arrive at the hotel (Hotel Perkasa Tenom) until quite late in the night.