21 January 2020 Sandakan here we come!

It is a cold January afternoon when we leave home! Michael has been in Asia for over a week now. Ali and John are now in Kuala Lumpur, having flown via Dubai for a few days. Helen and Anna are on their way as we speak. That just leaves us and Alex to get to London where Alex meets up with David and Leo to fly from Gatwick in the morning, whilst Geoff and I head to Heathrow, also for a morning flight. There are none of our immediate family in Elmsett. When has that ever happened before? For those of you that may be concerned about Mum, she is being looked after at Waterfield House! We haven’t abandoned her!! Fortunately we still have friends at home so thank you Russell for the lift!

Our flight out on 22nd left at 9.00am and was in an A380. Such a comfortable plane, and quiet too. Qatar airlines looked after us well and we arrived in Doha on time and transferred to our next flight without a problem. This took us to KL where we met up with Ali and John to get the next flight to Sandakan. Here we met up with Anna whose flight had arrived a few minutes before ours. We managed some sleep on the Doha/KL leg of the flight, but by the time we arrived in Sandakan at about 2pm we had been up for 24 hours and had left London 21 hours previously.

There then started the first drama of the holiday! I couldn’t open my suitcase! It is a combination lock built into the suitcase and I hadn’t forgotten the code! When you are tired, dirty and in need of a shower and a set of clean clothes you don’t need this sort of problem! Utube had some videos for help and thanks to the WhatsApp group there were other suggestions, some less than helpful of course! Having resorted to asking the hotel if they could send someone to look at it, I finally managed to get in. Not with the code that should have opened it, but I didn’t care. It was open!

A shower and change, cup of tea and a sleep for an hour and we were both feeling refreshed. Our hotel for this one night is by the water. I have to say that I am not sure if it is river/sea/estuary, but Sandakan was a very successful port in the 19th century and is still bustling today with a variety of fishing boats, barges and ferries.

We took a wander around the immediate area in the late afternoon. It was still busy with cars and people everywhere. There is the feel of other Asian places that we have been too. Bustling, smelly, things looking run down yet seemingly people doing a lot of business, and of course it was still hot, about 26 degrees. We found a restaurant on the waterfront which had good reviews on trip advisor and spent the princely sum of £15.00 for a meal for 5. Albeit only a main course and some bottled water, but that is so cheap!

Then it was back to the hotel for an early night and we hoped a reasonable nights sleep.

The view from our hotel window!