It’s Sunday the 15th; the day after Valentines day and I’m sitting in the hostel in Saladan, Malaysia. I arrived here from Tawau yesterday. This is my second time to the city and the second time at this hostel. My visit to Tawau wasn’t very productive and if you were to have viewed my time there, it was a waste of two days. I didn’t really do too much exploring, I didn’t go hiking like I had planned, and most of all I didn’t have any fun. Pretty much my time was spent in my room doing seemingly nothing but wasting time.
Tawau really doesn’t have any tourist spots, and its one attraction, the national park is about twenty kilometers away. My idea was to go for two days and nights, the first full day I’d go hiking and then head back to Saladan. What actually happened is that I waited too long to leave and about 9am decided that it was too hot to go. I pretty much just stayed in my hotel all day.
One of the things that I had difficulty with was that I didn’t see any other European-looking people, not one in the time I was there. That in of itself is usually a good thing, but the locals also weren’t very friendly. I started to get the feeling that they didn’t want me there. Of course that’s probably not the case, but I’d walk around and very few people would look at me, and even fewer would actually acknowledge that I was there. Maybe I have been spoiled the last few weeks, but I started to feel a little uncomfortable walking around.
So now, as I’ve mentioned, I’m back in Saladan and to be honest it’s just slightly better than Tawau. I’m more used to it, but I’m not really happy to be here. Tomorrow I’ll catch a bus for the 8-hour ride back to Kota Kinabalu for a couple of days before I head to Brunei.
