LoKeY: Sabah Trip

Sabah was fun! The usual impression from pple of this place (including myself initially) is that its ulu, rundown, and bascially not a very fun place that would top a tourist's list of destinations. Going there changed my impression of it...its actually quite a nice place! Sabah is what Singapore is not, and u can catch some kampong life in action. If you ever want to go to a regional beach resort, you can consider this place. It has nice clean beaches and seas for you to do watersports etc. And as Sabah isnt marketed much as a tourist destination here, I feel its not as commercialised as other places (eg: langkawi etc).

I was immediately reminded of one of the bio lectures, where the lecturer went on and on abt crabs etc (try to see if u can spot it)

Hotel Pool

Hotel Room

View frm Room

This trip was paid for by ourselves, with no funding taken from the church. We all stayed at Shangrila Tanjung Aru Resort, and its a fabulous place, part of the reason why the trip was good. (I went for my first ever massage there too!) We were also quite fortunate in having very good weather throughout our stay there, as the gloomy dark forecasts of 5 consecutive days of rain and storms failed to come true, with one or two nights affected by the weather.

Poolside Bar

The main purpose of the trip was to perform at Sabah's Sacred Heart Cathedral, which was a success as we managed to raise some funds for several charities there. It was a pity that we werent at full strength (abt 60plus pple went), but in the end the performance somehow or other turned out to be alright. This was my first overseas concert and frankly, it was very fulfilling to perform for a worthy cause. I was also quite surprised at the impact that we left behind on the Sabahans. It was a full-house at the cathedral there and somehow I felt we made a good impression of Singapore in general as well.

I was also quite amused and surprised to find that a video of us found its way to Youtube (not very good quality though) and after doing a blog search, I found several blogs blogging abt us (with our pictures in there too)!

Of course, we went for r&r as well. On Tue, we went on a river cruise to catch a glimpse of proboscis monkeys and fireflies. Too bad the weather turned bad towards the evening, and that sort of ruined our chances of seeing a lot of fireflies. And on Thursday, we went to Manukan and Sapi Islands, both part of Tunku Abdul Rahman Park! The sea and the beaches there are really clean and nice to swim in. Dont expect the water clarity to be of the standard of the Great Barrier Reef, but overall in general, its quite alright for snorkelling.