Miri to Labuan
Our flight to Labuan was on time. It’s a short flight, only 35 minutes. We feel it’s important to mention the flight cost $50 each. It’s approximately 175 km. That’s one tank of gas at home, or 1/2 a tank on our truck. Flights in Malaysia are so affordable.
Welcome to Labuan
The hotel shuttle picked us up at the airport. We have the same room as last year, room 2317 so it feels like home!
After we got settled we headed out for a walk. We walked 7.2 km, the temperature was 31 and felt like 39. Later by the pool it was 32 and felt like 42. While we have not actually been in the ocean, we overheard a couple say the pool is much cooler. The pool is NOT that cool. Plus the other thing about the ocean is they have posted there are stingrays, to shuffle your feet in the water. The hotel supplies water shoes for your use. In addition, it’s a long stretch of grass and sand to the ocean and as we have found the grass is full of sandflies that love to bite some of us, more about that later! We are content at the pool overlooking the ocean and life is good. It is the same pool attendants and they remembered us from last year and which room we are in! They are so friendly! We had supper at the hotel and called it a night.
Our days here are settling into a bit of a routine. We have breakfast, Gary has one or two bowls of Sarawak Laksa that he loves and Linda has scrambled eggs or one of the noodle dishes they have. We haven’t gone hungry yet, there is always something you can find on the buffet. We always have a big plate of fruit too. After breakfast, we’ve been heading down the local street that runs along the ocean. For most of the journey you get a nice breeze off the ocean which helps keep us going. It’s been very hot and humid, hotter than we remembered from last year! We’ve been averaging around 5-6 km each day.
All the locals wave and greet us, even those driving by wave like crazy! There is a little shop about 2.5 km from the hotel where we often stop for a cold water or drumstick ice cream treat. There’s also a little food stall on the beach named Warung Chailuk (Warung = shop, Chailuk is the area) where we stopped last year as she had fresh homemade donuts. We were disappointed to see it was closed but Friday when we walked by she was there cleaning. We asked her if she was opening and she said Monday she was reopening. We then asked if she still made donuts, she was shocked that we knew about them and we explained we had enjoyed them last year. So Monday, we made the hike. It was cloudy and overcast and the walk actually was pleasant. We arrived just in time as there was a rain shower. The donuts weren’t quite ready but we had an iced lemon tea and we soon had 6 hot mini donuts. It’s good thing it’s a bit of a walk as we can’t do that everyday! We spent RM 10 on our donuts and iced tea, an amazing $2.95 CAD.
The staff here at Palm Beach are very friendly. Our cleaning gal remembered us from last year and greeted us when she saw us. She is very accommodating and for the most part starts her cleaning day at our room! The day after we arrived she came to clean so we grabbed our Kindles and went to find somewhere to read for a bit while she cleaned. We finally decided to sit on some lounge chairs under a palapa towards the beach on the grass. At one point Linda thought she saw something on her leg and rubbed it only to find it was a tiny bug and there was some blood. Turns out Linda gotten eaten by sandflies – over 30 bites on her legs and ankles. Considering we are the same blood type, bugs seem to love Linda as Gary never got one bite. It’s now day 4 of the bug bites and they are still red, inflamed and itchy. We were chatting with the pool guys today and he took one look at the bites and said “sandflies!” Linda is very diligent with the bug spray now and we avoid the grass. Paradise in not perfect.
The hotel has a shuttle that is free and will take us in town and pick us up at a designated time. It’s been great to have that available. We’ve been into town a couple of nights. Picked up some beer, snacks and a few essentials. We also plan it so we are there for supper and head to our favourite Indian restaurant JJ Nazar. The food is great. We leave the hotel at 4:15pm and leave town for the hotel at 7pm. On our recent trip to town a couple of guys were catching a ride to the airport to fly home to Kuala Lumpur. We got to talking and asked them about Indian food in KL. They gave us a restaurant name that we will check out when we are back in KL. They were quite curious how we ended up here in Labuan, it’s a quiet place we told them. While we were in the mall that night a young guy about 16 asked to have a selfie with Gary. We had a good laugh and he got a selfie. We wouldn’t call it celebrity status but we do stick out!
On our trip to town, Gary got haircut as soon as we arrived. Just after 4:30pm. Wouldn’t you know he had the same your guy cut his hair as the last time were were here. After an excellent haircut for RM 10 about $3 CAD the barber needed a selfie with Gary. Of course every one in the shop had to be in the picture. Gary handed the kid his phone to take another selfie… Check out his celebrity status below.
November 10 we headed out early to town to buy Gary a shirt for remembrance day. In the end he bought very dark, almost black pants with a metallic dark blue thread in them along with a white short sleeved shirt. We are now set for Remembrance Day. We sorta planned on buying some light weight dress pants for him here, but not ones made from recycled bottles. Did we mention they still use plastic straws here? They are magnificent, and don’t collapse. Total price of dress pants, hemmed in 30 minutes and a white shirt, under $60 CAD.