PC 379 Sabah Conclusions

PC372 Sabah Trip

Sabah wasn't what I expected...
Borneo land of Jungle and ancient indigenous traditions fades to become a giant industrial farm with Malaysian muslim commercialist culture. Packaged Tourists - 250Rm for this trip, 450 Rm for that.

It was OK in particular the kind people like The HCers Chai, CKTan, Lini (Elizabeth, Peter and Leonard) and RoseJalani. I didn't get deeply into indigenous culture or jungle wildlife as I would have hoped. It would have been better to have had more time. Both KK and Sandakan are quite livable cities.

Did I leave too early ?
As soon as I booked the ticket I knew I would regret leaving Sabah too early. Ideally I would have hung out in Sabah until I was ready to leave, but with budget airlines you can't just turn up an hour before like boarding a bus. The problem was I had to juggle a few things my Malaysian visa expires on 6th of September, KL would be crazy 30th-3rd for Merdeka Day and now it was school holiday. I had covered the places I wanted to go and not found a cool place I wanted to hang around in, but perhaps if I had hung around for another week.. ( both Sandakan & KK are comfortable cities.. ) I might have found an interesting project or a way in to tribal culture.
comments
It wasn't as developed as Semana Jung, but it does look like a lot of money is being spent on infrastructure like railway, roads, hospitals (maybe an election is coming).

It was a pity to see so many poor emigrant people living in poverty and having to hide from the police Sabah is not crowded so quite a lot of them could be given legal papers as guest workers. If ASEAN worked like the EU then they could work legally.

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