Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Borneo Files, Version 1.0

Ok, so the trip over was basically uneventful. I left Dothan around 6 a.m cst. Hit Atlanta around 10:30est. Our plane left Atlanta around 1:00 p.m. and flew directly to Seoul via the arctic. When we arrived in Seoul, our biological clocks were set on midnight but it was actually life 4:00 p.m. Because we traveled west, we had over 24 hours of daylight.
I liked seeing the arctic. We flew due north over Canada for about 7-8 hours until we couldn’t go any further. Then we headed due south over Russia, China, (around North Korea) and into South Korea. The northern part of Canada looks just like the northern part of Russia. I assume that what we flew over in Russia was called Siberia, but I haven’t checked a map yet to confirm. It was kinda wild to fly 600 MPH for at least 9 hours and all the ground we covered was frozen completely solid. Someone should figure out a way to thaw that out. Looked like there was enough land up there to maintain a couple billion more people.
We were only in Korea for a couple hours before we caught our plane for Kota Kinabalu, Borneo. After the 14 hour marathon from ATL to Seoul, I thought this flight would be a piece of cake. I was way off. By the time we landed, got through immigration, retrieved out luggage, and made it to the hotel. I barely unpacked before I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was sure that I’d slept for about 16 hours. My hotel room in Borneo is small, with no windows, and no clock. I’d stayed awake for 30+ hours before crawling into this cave so I knew I’d be down for the count. Wrong again. I slept about 2 hours and then couldn’t get back to sleep. It was probably around 3 or 4 p.m. back home and my body didn’t feel like sleeping. So I tossed and turned for a couple hours and hit the streets around 5 a.m.
My hotel has a nice breakfast and they offer coffee, but none of this is available until 7:00am. So Dad I roamed the streets looking for something to eat. We found a couple places that were open but they wouldn’t take US dollars and no money changers open before 8:30. Finally found a 24 hour ATM that dispensed ringgits.
We ate breakfast twice, and toured a little more of the city. It’s actually not a bad town. Has lots of modern stuff. There are malls everywhere. Although the mall’s kind of remind me of flea markets. They mostly sell designer clothes, purses, souvenirs, DVDs, &c. We ate lunch at a neat outdoor place. It offered almost every kind of Asian food you could imagine.
After lunch I slept for 2 hours. Ate supper at an Italian place and headed over to an outdoor street market. They set this market up every night. This was probably my favorite part of the trip so far. The market looked like something right off of the travel channel. Every vendor was selling crazy food: Dehydrated fish, sardines, shrimp, all types of fruit, &c.
I’m getting pretty sleepy again. Gonna head down to the lobby and try to upload this post and the slideshow and go back to sleep for a while. I’m sorry that this is so poorly written. I hope I adjust to the time zone soon, catch up on sleep, and actually blog something interesting. Until then, I offer this slideshow:

3 comments:

Michael Strowd said...

Possibly..... your best post yet. I think this one is my favorite! Have a blast over there my friend!

Anonymous said...

We are enjoying the blog. We can't wait to read about all of your adventures. Loved the pictures. Have really enjoyed spending time with Mike. Tell Cindy hi for me. Tell her I miss her.

Jim Davis said...

Enjoying the blog. Looking forward to hearing all about your adventures.

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