Kota Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu, capital city of Sabah, the Land below the Wind. It has seen tremendous changes over the years. When I set foot here forty years ago, it was just a small town with narrow trunk roads. Today it can boast of flyovers and dual carriage ways.

Where previously shops were located in double storey shophouses along the streets, today there are several large modern shopping malls, with more in the pipeline. There is the UMS, the university which has an enrollment of more than 10 thousand students, both local and foreign and many colleges have sprouted to cater for the demand for higher education.

The standard of food has also improved. I remember when I first came to Kota Kinabalu or by its moniker KK, there was only satay kerbau, no satay ayam. I found the food hardly palatable then but today, there are a few commendable restaurants that serve delicious fare and also offer fresh seafood. Some hotel restaurants have fare to titillate your tastebuds.

There are also many hotels to cater to those who have different

budgets, from 5 star to 1 or no star. Many tourists come to KK

because it is a beautiful small city with lovely beaches and closeby offshore islands where they can

indulge in water sports or even walk underwater, holding onto a rope to watch the denizens of the sea and the beautiful corals.

The proximity ( about one and a half hours' drive ) of the highest mountain in South East Asia, Mt. Kinabalu, a world heritage site, offers a different kind of experience altogether. Those who are fit can climb the mountain and view spectacular sunsets from the peak. In fact, there is a mountain race each year where participants come from different countries. I believe the record is less than 4 hours to run up and down the mountain. The ordinary person will require 2 days to climb up to about 12 thousand feet and spend the night in the resthouse before ascending the summit in the early hours of the morning. After watching the sunrise, he will then descend the mountain with a certificate that vouches for his conquest of the mountain. There is also a golf course on its slopes for golf enthusiasts. Tight fairways and hilly terrain make for challenging play. Make sure you have plenty of balls before you begin your game!

Within Kota Kinabalu itself, there are 3 golf courses where tourists can play, the Sabah Golf & Country Club, the Kinabalu Golf Club and the Sutera Harbour Resort. In fact the Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese have said that it is much cheaper to fly to Sabah to have a holiday and play golf than playing in their respective countries, so prohibitive are the costs of the sport. No wonder we see so many Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists.

They come for the golf, the food and the beaches. Travelling by air is very affordable now with the advent of low cost carriers that compete for the tourist dollar. Some offer free seats while others offer very low fares. It is the customer's market as he can pick and choose the airline with which he wants to fly.

Every Sunday, the main street, Gaya Street, is turned into a pedestrian mall (from 6:00 am to midday) where one can choose from a plethora of goods to buy. There are a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, flowers, clothing and bags, plants, herbs, puppies, kittens, birds, aquarium fish, local cakes and pastries, gardening tools and fertilisers, top soil, different types of rice grains ( hill rice, brown rice, etc ), trinkets, antiques, seashells and pretty white corals, handicraft, music cassettes, cds, etc., etc.....

There is even a station along the five foot way where nurses will check your blood pressure for a nominal sum that goes towards some fund. Coffee shops along the street do a brisk business as people go for their favourite local breakfast of noodles, cooked in different ways.

For those who have not been to KK, this is a lovely place to visit and to relax. It will be a holiday you will not forget for a long time.

Goodbyes

Goodbye! Bye! See you again! Voices ring out at leave taking, confident of meeting up again. What if there is no more meeting up? What if your number has been called and out of the blue at that? Friends look at the obituary, shocked into silence at the unexpected departure of someone they had met a short time ago.

If there's an illness, there is time to prepare for the imminent goodbye. There is time to rally round the invalid, a time of sharing and bonding albeit a sad experience, knowing that with each day, the time available reduces by the hour. Sometimes the loved one is able to communicate, sometimes communication is impossible as she lapses in and out of consciousness, a drug-induced stupor.

Watching a loved one waste away into skin and bones is painful. We can never know the extent of her suffering or pain. How can we ever presume to know what she is feeling? Sometimes a light touch is agony, as in the case of bone cancer.

It is no surprise then that family members often shield the invalid from visitors as privacy is jealously guarded. We do not want outsiders to see the extent of our loved one's suffering and debilitated appearance. It can be a brutal shock to see the difference between a robust healthy person and the skeletal frame that she has been reduced to.

Yet we should allow friends to say their goodbyes. It is presumptious of us to prevent our loved one from seeing the friends who have come to visit. How can we tell whether or not she wishes to see them? At least her friends can see her for the last time and if there is a need, to make their peace. Goodbyes have to be said. There should be a closure.

I was not given a chance to bid my dearest friend goodbye. All contact was forbidden and it was a most painful experience, not knowing how my friend was faring although the last time we spoke, he said he was feeling much better. However the reedy sound of his voice told me otherwise. My strong and healthy friend had been sapped dry by the disease in his body. I knew it was only a matter of time but I could not reach him again after that brief telephone conversation.

I only heard of his passing from another friend and the shock was so great it literally floored me. The beautiful timbre of his voice had been stilled. My heart bled for the loss of my classmate. Memories of our youthful days flew before me like a slideshow...... I could not believe he had passed on. It was hard, very hard to hide my grief but I had to for ours was a very special relationship. All along we never said goodbye because we knew there was always another time. Even this final goodbye where he shed his earthly form is not goodbye as he still lives within my memories. We will meet again for there are unresolved issues between us. It is a matter of time.

A time to love,

A time to live,

A time to say goodbye,

A time to die.

A time to meet again

In the great beyond,

There you wait,

There will I come.

Back at last!!

My good friend and golf kaki (golf buddy) has come back at last!! She had returned to Taiwan last December and is now back in Kota Kinabalu.


She is most happy and relieved to be back as she missed the open spaces and good air quality here. We couldn't wait to return to the golf course where we usually have our morning round of 9 holes.

She says the atmosphere in the area where she lives in Taiwan is not conducive to restful sleep at night and by day the noise of the traffic and the crowds make her realise how beautiful Sabah is by comparision. The open spaces, the quality of life always make her want to return to Sabah whenever she is in Taiwan.

This morning we had our round of golf but not the full 9 holes as we wanted to take it easy on our first day's game after a long layoff of three months. It was a beautifully cool morning, the ideal weather for golf. The fairways were quite wet and the grass quite long as there had been heavy showers every afternoon lasting for a few hours. It's quite difficult to pull a trolley with a bag full of woods and irons plus balls, on wet ground. It was a very, very enjoyable morning although my ball did not go very far for the first few holes. The grip, the stance, addressing the ball etc..... these were rusty already.

However Tina got her game in place very quickly and had a decent score.

Me?????? Don't ask!! I played more like a newbie to the game. Anyway it's more for the exercise.

The doctor said that brisk walking builds bone density and this is why we complete our 9 holes in less than one and a half hours!! Our balls are always on the fairway so we don't waste time looking for them and we walk very fast, pulling our trolleys. This lets us build up strength and I believe it also helps our cardiovascular system.

Our home course, the Sabah Golf & Country Club, is very beautiful and it is a walking course although a buggy track has been built to accomodate those who wish to use buggies. When the weather is hot, and the fairways dry, we are able to take the buggy on course. This makes playing 18 holes a pleasure as the course can be very taxing if you walk all the 18 holes as it has very undulating fairways.

Walking uphill is no joke when you are pulling a trolley

with a bag filled with 14 clubs and at least 6 balls.

On certain holes, it is quite easy to go OB ( out of bounds) or lose the balls in the ponds. When the ground is wet, the ball can get plugged and can't be seen if the grass is long.

After a round of golf, we usually feel very fresh, despite being tired. We usually go our different ways after cleaning our equipment and rinsing the mud from our shoes, cheerily looking forward to another round the next morning. We tee off as soon as there is enough light to see where the ball lands, the only two early birds of the fairer sex. The rest are the male of the species, most of whom also pull their own trolleys. There are less than a handful of caddies at our club but that's no problem as buggies are available.