Last night we had a great meal in a restaurant called maribago grill, although they found it strange because we didn’t want meat, even the vegetarian section of the menu was with pork, chicken or shrimp. The restaurant was set like a garden with indivual bamboo huts within the garden. We sat in the normal restaurant because David didn’t want to get eaten by mosquitoes, but he did anyway. The meal we had was eggplant and broad beans cooked in coconut milk and green chillies. Really nice and huge portions, one dish did the both of us.
After dinner we wanted to go and play pool, we had spotted a billiard room the day before so we went to there but in walking in David noticed straight away that there were no pockets in the tables, one white, one yellow and 2 red balls.
It was Korean billiards! The staff attempted to tell us the rules but it just made no sense so we left. That was our nights plans down the pan. With not many more bars in the area we waked up to the hotel resort next to us for one drink. Wow the facilities were incredible, all Koreans again, looking up the price of a room informed us it was £264 a night! No wonder. The complex was huge, a waterpark as well as the hotel. We just stayed for one, and then headed back for the evening.
We didn’t have much planned for today, more of a lazy morning, picked up some fruit for breakfast from the supermarket, Becky had some banana and jackfruit pastry thing for breakfast. Was quite nice actually. We then went on a mission for a beach to lie on…. Not a hard task when staying on an island we thought, oh how we were wrong! It seems that all the decent beaches in the area have been bought by the big hotels, and although you can use them you have to pay a high entrance fee of over a tenner each-no thanks!we tried our best to act cool and sneak into the hotels thinking we would look like typical residents but again we were wrong as all the hotels are occupied by Koreans so we definitely stood out like a sore thumb. We stumbled upon a beach club, just 150pesos to get in.. Sorted! The beach wasn’t the best but we had somewhere to sit and lie for a few hours, it looked like the place most locals go, there were a few new years parties on also. The entertainment choice at these parties is interesting, they like to watch men dressed as women just act daft for a few hours, they found it hilarious!
2pm came and we decided to go back up to the laundry in the hope that our clothes were ready, we were a little bit nervous that the shop would be shut, or the clothes not ready given it was Chinese New year, and then we would both be without clothes for flying out tomorrow. The walk up to the laundry was hot, the sun was really strong today, all the kids playing in the street just stared at us and wanted to say hi. The clothes were ready and packed as promised! What a relief!
We went back to the room to put the clothes in. It was a reasonable half hour walk. Once back we got a soft drink and sat on a couple of sunloungers at the bar watching the people learn to dive and the boats coming in. I decided to go for a quick dip before we showered, the water was really nice and calm. As I sat drying off we saw a young phillipino boy in the water, he was picking all of the big, unusual starfish out of the water, some were green and purple even and bigger than my hand. He was giving them to his sister on the land…. Not a chance, I went over and told them to put them back before they died, the girl gave me a strange look and put them back in the water next to her, so in I went and moved each one to the deeper water, out of the way of the tourists by the rocks. In the process of doing this I snapped my flipflop. Another thing to go and buy tonight! 10 minutes later the same boy, couldn’t have been older than 6 was in search of the starfish on the deeper water and diving down for them, his dad was just across the water sat on a rock drinking beer. So frustrating but luckily I didn’t see him take any out of the water this time.
In the evening we went back to the same restaurant as last night, I got some cheap flip-flops on the way but I’m not convinced how comfortable they will be! They only had my size in white, they don’t do big feet out here.
This time we sat in a bamboo hut, we asked the waiter to help us with the menu, because it wasn’t very descriptive. Even all the vegetarian dishes included things like pig brain….. They just don’t do vegetarian out here, so we ended up with the same as last night. In the way back we thought we would go and have a laugh at the karaoke bar, we went up and security asked David if it was for karaoke, he said yes, only to find out it was individual booths you booked out. We made a swift exit and went over to the bar we went to the first night, we sat on the balcony and just watched, all the tricycles, the brightly painted buses, people interacting.
Then bed time, we fly to kota kinabalu, Borneo in the morning.
South East Asia 2019 