Food and Water

Our first step out of the cab and into the hostel gave me a very good feeling about the food here in Malaysia and it hasn't disappointed since. The restaurant right below our hostel has wonderful smelling and tasty food. Their is a certain ethnic diversity that coexists peacefully in Malaysia and makes it a little different than the other places we have visited. Islam is popular in this country bringing with it different food and culture. There is a large portion of restaurants that sell Indian food or a least foods that have been derived from Indian fare. I have yet to walk somewhere in Kota Kinabalu and not be enticed by the delicious smell of curries wafting from nearby restaurants or night markets. One night we went to the night market and got a grilled fresh tuna steak with a curry sauce, not something I would have thought of but very delicious. We have also happily wandered back into roti (fried flat bread) country. Instead of having banana and chocolate sauce roti that we had in Thailand there is a coconut jam called kaya that is very tasty. There are also savory roti here. We had a vegetable and egg roti that came with curry sauce and took roti to a whole new level. Next on the list we ate a nice Chinese meal of savory pork soup and a bowl of rice at the restaurant I was describing earlier that is below our hostel and always smells good as we walk by. Overall the food here is among the best we have had anywhere on our travels.

When we moved from the Philippines the weather was starting to get a little wet but somehow after a one hour flight we were to move into the dryer season of Malaysia. I'm still not sure how that works but it so far hasn't. After expressing concern about how wet it must get in the wet season to Marina she mentioned that the guide book refers to the fact that even though its the dry season. There is less of a wet/dry season here and it can pretty much rain anytime of the year. So far that has been the case with rain and sometimes heavy rain coming most afternoons. We have gotten used to carrying our rain gear with us most days when we head out for the day. Today we went to visit one of the near by Islands and have a beach day. We packed for trip the same as we do for most days. I brought my rain jacket and Marina brought her umbrella. We intended to get an early start which turned into a late morning start after a longer than normal breakfast talking with another hostel member who was debating climbing the summit of mount Kinabalu and then we took a stop at the market to pick up some food for the day. We ended up on the boat just before noon and planed to return around four. Around two o'clock it started to rain and we took shelter at a food restaurant and had a warm drink to wait out the rain. The rain slowed up for a while but didn't look like it was going away so when the boat company found us on the Island and offered us an earlier boat we decided to take it. We debated changing from our bathing suits but thought it could be a wet ride and why get more clothes than necessary wet. Wet was an understatement. I think the drier option may have been to swim back from the Island. As we waited for our boat the rain picked up began blowing under the shelter and getting us wet before our boat even arrived. By the time the boat arrived it was raining very hard and Marina said she had to put a towel over her face because the rain drops were hurting her face as the boat sped across the water. The rain continued as we crossed the ocean back to Kota Kinabalu driving under the canopy that was really only protecting a section of ocean next to the boat as the rain was coming down at a sharp angle. Just when we thought we couldn't get wetter the boat would spray up after a big wave then the wind would carry the boat's wave over us and the whole boat would yell out. There was a mixture of some people enjoying the wet ride while others were certainly not. When we arrived back at the harbor in Kota Kinabalu we climbed out of our boat as wet as I have possibly ever been but happy to have found our way back to land in the rain. We then walked back to our hostel in the rain deciding there is now way we could get any wetter that we already were. The nice thing about rain here is it can be a welcome change from the heat and when you are soaked to the bone and walking home you don't have to worry about freezing.