The Trip To Labuan

The view from my room in Sabah


I lose count on how many weeks it has been since I left Penang. I think it has been four weeks. That would make it my third week in Labuan. I'm still adjusting but I don't think I can ever understand what the people here are saying. It's not just their accent, but I never got the hang of spoken Malay.

After my orientation week in Kota Kinabalu, we were to leave for Labuan International Campus by ferry. The Internationls (a.k.a those from China) and a few other girls left in the morning, which would probrably mean they would have caught the mid-day ferry to Labuan.

We left for a place called Menumbuk at about 11am. 'This should be a short trip', I thought to myself. 'Menumbuk's probrably some place near the city, everything is'




UMS Stadium... hope I got the right picture.

Four Hours Later...
Turns out we're actually heading for the port that is closer to Labuan.



This is either the DBP or their 'Putrajaya' of Sabah as they call it.





Sabah is surrounded by islands like this. I thought every one of them was Labuan.


We arrived at Menumbuk only to learn that there has been a delay. 'The ship better not have ran out of fuel', I thought. Well whatever the reason for the delay, we had three hours for ourselves. Menumbuk is full of trees as is most of the state. There were only a few shops - two tiny food shops and a place where u can play console games(only PS2 games I'm afraid). There wasn't much to do so we headed inside the customs office



Inside the customs


There's nothing much to show you guys about the pier. Just another island in front of me. And this




Yeap, the water is BLACK.

Well the ferry finally arrived at 6. Problem was it took 1 hour to port. After porting in the wrong place, it spent 45 minutes back at sea completely stationary.

After the ship ported and the vechicles drove out, we quickly occupied the top deck. I couldn't take anymore pictures because it was too dark(7 o'clock here is 8 o'clock back home, despite the fact that it's only a half hour difference between here and the Peninsular). For the next two hours, it was nothing but islands and the wind blowing in my face. Don't know if the water was still black.

Destination : Labuan
Time Arrived : around 10.

The first thing that greeted us at Labuan was two duty free shops(this is what kept me from fighting to go Queensland in the first place... other than the course that I'm doing of course). I learnt that the shops here close at 9pm. I couldn't carry any more bags, so I had to wait a little while before I could blow my cash on chocolates...

Anyway, I went to the campus, ate, checked it, yadda yadda fell asleep.


That's pretty much it. Here are a few more pictures I took along the way