Bus ride from Miri (Sarawak) to Kota Kinabalu (Sabah) in 10 hours?

There is a report in the Kota Kinabalu papers that a direct bus service twice a day is being planned for September between Sabah and Sarawak - a first. This journey means passing through two separate parts of Brunei, so have your passports at the ready.

More Fishy Landings at Bridge No. 8

Reference yesterday's blog entry, here are some more photos of the fish being landed. The sharks were all from one boat and all the same size and looked to be the same species.

Hawker Stall at Sim Sim Bridge No.8

The first of our Hidden Gems of Sabah is on the outskirts of Sandakan - a very simple place to eat in a water village a good 100m from the shore. It is a hawkers stall (simple restaurant). When BBooks was there the only item on the menu was mee (noodles) but.....mee with anything that was being landed by small fishing boats pulling in all the time with everything from flatfish to garoupa to snakefish to prawns to belligerent mantis shrimps. We watched one bucketful of prawns come in and were eating them a few minutes later. Seafood doesn't get any fresher than this! In a screened off section tuna or something similar were hung in silent serried ranks, drying in the wind.
To find the place ask to be dropped off at Sim Sim Bridge no. 8. There is a statue of a prawn as a landmark. There is no signpost but head off into the water village straight out to the seaward side, and ask if necessary.

Hidden Gems of Sabah

BBooks intends to use this blog from time to time to highlight visitor attractions and activities in Sabah which don’t appear in the guide books because they are too new, or have simply been overlooked. At the same time we will correct mistakes which we find in the guides.

We will index these ‘Hidden Gems’ in one entry of the blog and cross refer in this index to the date of entry for each item so it can be easily located.

Since charity begins at home let us begin by pointing out that our big bookshop BB2 is itself indeed a hidden gem, in that the location is given wrongly in the hot-selling Lonely Planet guide ‘Borneo’, published in Jan08.

BB2 is not on the ground floor but the 2nd floor of the Wisma Merdeka shopping mall, directly above BB1 on the ground floor, but up 2 escalators. The confusion has arisen precisely because it is directly above. They show up on the town plan in ‘Borneo’ therefore as one dot, since it isn’t in 3Dm and the text entry has been edited to follow the map!

The list of Hidden Gems will include the following:

• Kundasang War Memorial
• ‘Taman Poket’ sea front outside the Hyatt in KK
• Tune Hotel, KK
• ‘Last Borneo Paradise’ homestay, Crocker Range
• The Butterfly Garden, Crocker Range
• Fish Landing & hawker stall at Sim-Sim Bridge no.8
• @Ease Hotel & Sandakan Harbour Square

.....and a steady stream of others. This will enable visitors to keep up to date with what is available and hopefully tempt even more visitors to come to Sabah. Mind you, keeping up with tourism development in Sabah is a challenge.

Harbour Square

Sandakan Kampong Sim Sim fish landing and eatery

Rainforest Discovery Centre, Sepilok

Motor bike trail riding from KK

Adywow’s music at the Kinabalu Daya Hotel, KK

‘Magic Mountain’ B&B, Mesilau, Mt Kinabalu

Mt Silam, Lahad Datu

Langkayan Island NE of Sandakan

Nearly all of these have been sampled by BBooks. Where not, we will say so. All will be based on recommendations.

Sabah is changing rapidly, usually to the visitor’s advantage. Sadly, in a few cases we will have to mention ‘Disappearing Gems’. Where appropriate, we will advise where you can write to make authorities aware of the loss.

Coffee, anyone?

BBooks’ meeting and coffee area has shrunk as part of it is now an office into which BBooks can retreat when anybody comes in to buy anything. However, customers are still welcome to sit down and have a good look at a book they want to buy, or to browse things like the London Review of Books, Sarawak Museum Journal or National Geographic. Tea, coffee and Milo are available free from the pantry. Please help yourself and wash up as the staff are here to sell books.

Only Bookshop in Wisma Merdeka now

BBooks is now the only bookshop business in the Wisma Merdeka shopping mall in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, our big rivals (Iwase Bookshop) having closed down. Mr Iwase has a successful Japanese restaurant and it looks like he wants to concentrate on that. Also closed down is the 2^nd hand book exchange operation on the ground floor.

BBooks currently has 1 store on the ground floor selling books, handicrafts and other presents to take home (like delicious local made chocolates and Sabah Tea). Upstairs on the 2nd floor we have the main bookshop and the 2nd hand shop. We also have a craft shop on the ground floor - Borneo Craft.

Our own 2^nd hand shop is trading steadily, and we welcome good quality paperbacks if you want to sell them to us, for RM2 or 3 each. We had to shut down the backpackers book exchange scheme cos the staff were too soft hearted and took in more books than they sold! Anyone want a novel in Romanian??

Because we are now the only bookshop in the Wisma Merdeka we are planning on opening another branch in the same mall concentrating on popular fiction.

Lonely Planet publishes new title ‘BORNEO’

This new guide brings Lonely Planet up to speed with Footprint publishers who have had a Borneo title for some time. So now you have a choice. This edition has 50 more pages on Sabah and Sarawak than were to be had in the ‘Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei’ volume and having the East Malaysian states within the same covers as details of Kalimantan is very convenient. It would be even more convenient if you could actually get from Sabah or Sarawak directly by air, but such is the limited traffic of tourists and trade between East Malaysia and Kalimantan, you have to fly via Jakarta – an enormous dog leg. To travel directly, for the present, one has to join the huddled masses of migrant workers and take a bus (eg Kuching to Pontianak) or a ferry (Tawau to Tarakan). Only this week is a timetabled bus service being introduced between Sarawak and Kalimantan – before it was exploitative private hire.

BBoooks was able to offer LP advice about good things to do in Sabah, but was unable to prevent a typo which puts our main shop on the ground floor of the Wisma Merdeka shopping mall rather than where it should be – on the 2^nd floor. ‘Tida apa’ (‘Never mind’) as they say here we are sure those of you who really want to find us will do so.

BBooks would say that this guide is detailed, accurate and up to date, so you can be happy using it (apart from finding us, of course!)