Hi All,

  Last week Randal and I traveled overland to eastern Sabah to Sandakan to see Agnes Keith’s home.  Having read her books, we both wanted to visit her home in north Borneo before we left Sabah.  We spent a few days, saw a few sights and came home.  Sandakan is the kind of place that grows on you.  Not so much there; but the people are very friendly as we’ve found all through Malaysia.  Most cruisers go there as a jumping off point for the river and island destinations nearby. Randal and I visited the town of Sandakan  I took lots of photos so it will take a few emails to tell the whole story.  . 

Ru

Sandakan: Part one

Randal and I had one main reason to visit Sandakan: Agnes Newton Keith. I have mentioned her lots of times. She wrote a series of books about Sabah and Borneo spanning the years from 1934 to 1952. Both Land Below the Wind (1939) and White Man Returns (1951) were written in their house in Sandakan. Three Came Home, written on bit s and scraps hidden in the Japanese internment camps during the war, was published in 1946. All of the books are illustrated with wonderful line drawings done mostly by the author. They are wonderful books. Don’t be put off by the fact they were written so long ago. Agnes Keith trained as a journalist in college and writes directly and with much humor.

I had it in my head that I wanted to take the bus to Sandakan. I really don’t ever choose to fly if I can help it. The bus would take 6 hours; but we’re retired and have time. (While in the Philippines we’d never minded the 3 hour bus trip from Subic Bay to Manila; even with people crammed on boards wedged in the aisle.) And we would see the Sabah country side and maybe catch a view of Mt Kinabalu. It takes 40 minutes to fly from Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan but you have to be at the airport and hour early so I figured that we were really only saving 4 hours…..The punch line is that we flew back to Kota Kinabalu. But that’s the end of the story.

We left the marina at KK Thursday, the 20^th, at 7 am taking a taxi to the main bus terminal in Inanam 20 minutes north of KK. As soon as you get off the bus you are besieged by men “in your face” trying to get you to take their bus line to Sandakan. I don’t like this sales pressure but Randal absolutely hates it. It drives up the cost of anything because these middlemen get some kind of pay from someone. Basically there were two choices and you pick one. One bus had horses painted on it and one dolphin: inside they looked about the same. Randal picked the one with horses.

The bus ride was, well, cheap and not terrible. No one was sitting in the isle. But the road was mountainous and curvy and some of the passengers had a hard time with it. The lady across the aisle one row back kept gagging into a black plastic bag they hand out when you get onto the bus. Luckily our stomachs have been hardened by ocean waves so Randal and I were okay. But I had to suck on candy every now and then to keep the queasiness away. And then there was the trio of violent action films they showed along the way. Read the review for See No Evil and think about the fact there were young kind on board. The other two were just as awful; but it made the time pass. It was too hard to look out the window at the views and not get motion sick. We’ll just chock it up as an experience. Actually I’d have taken the bus back to KK; but Randal refused; so we had a fairly cheap, easy, quick, pleasant flight home. The walk back from the airport is another story….

We stayed in a small, cheap tourist hotel in Sandakan not far from Agnes Keith’s home. It was 55 ringgits per night, about $15 U.S. You get what you pay for; but it was clean, had a bathroom with a toilet and hot water in the shower, AC that sort of worked and a TV that got the movie channel when the desk clerk remembered to flip the switch that made it available. The lobby had cheap, very fast Internet. There was a simple toast, butter, jam and coffee breakfast. It was fine. It had lots of stairs.

We were on the 3^rd floor; two above street level. The lobby and internet access was one below us. Breakfast was available on the roof which was two floors above our room. We walked lots of stairs.

Randal helping himself to coffee.

Actually it was quite nice and you could have as much toast and tea as you wanted. We ate about 7 am when it was cool, breezy, and pleasant.

On one side was a small fountain with turtles swimming around, more places to sit and lots of plants.

Two views from the roof top.

Library and Internet Access. Many small hotels have book swap areas because there are no English language book shops.

We’d arrived in Sandakan about 2pm and had taken a taxi from the bus terminal to the London Hotel. After checking in and dumping our stuff we went out to look around. We decided to leave the real sight-seeing for Friday so we could have an early start when it would be cool. We did walk to the Tourism Office where we were given a Sandakan Heritage Trail map. We also visited the small Sandakan Museum next door. We were surprised that there were few photos showing the time of Agnes Keith. Turns out they were hanging in the Agnes Keith House.

Next email we’ll start the tour. Our hotel is just near # 1, the Jamek Mosque on the far left.