26.10.10:

It was early afternoon before the ship pulled into Sandakan.  I’m now going to be backtracking over the exact route I took last week, so if you like you can just read those blogs again but backwards.

At the taxi rank outside the port a woman overheard me asking the cab drivers how much it would be to the bus station and, since she was going the same way, suggested that we share a taxi.  This unfortunately required a short fight with the drivers.  Not only do the taxis in Malaysia not have meters (SO annoying) these guys were insisting that we took separate cabs.  Seriously – what is this?  Saudi?

Eventually they relented.  It was about half three by the time I got to the bus station and I was left with two options:

I could get on the 4.30pm bus back to Kota Kinabalu and arrive at 11pm tonight, or I could head into Sandakan town, sit in a café for a few hours and get the overnight bus later on.  The lure of a hot shower and a cool bed in KK drew me to take the four thirty option.

Annoyingly The bus didn’t leave until about 6pm and the driver must have been a cousin of the one I had last week across Sarawak – he drove like an utter t—, gunning it around the winding jungle roads (dark, no streetlights) and overtaking trucks on blind turns.

Frazzled and weary, it wasn’t until 1am before I checked into the KK backpackers and it was 2am before I had updated the website and uploaded a blog or two.  Since I had to be up at half six, I thought it best that this point to hit the hay.  You’ll just have to wait.