We got up early again and went on roof for breakfast. This is the first toaster we have come across which doesnt have that strange setting that burns toast to an inedible crisp? This one just warms up the bread and then pops!

After breakfast we decided to give the Sanakan National Forest Park another try, having failed to get there yesterday. We even went armed with a brochure and found out that we needed to get to Mile Five, all information kindly given to us by Polly The owner of the B & B. She had attended a seminar given by the Sabah Tourist Board who were trying to promote the park. Unfortunately I suspect that Polly was the only person who attended the seminar! When we got to Mile Five we found the drive way with a big banner hanging next to it , then we where stopped by security guards, we showed the brochure, but they denied all knowledge of the place and told us we should go to Sepilok and see the Orang Utans, Aparantly there were only offices at this location. By this time I was getting annoyed, (Not a good situation! J.) so we turned back yet again, the taxi driver took us (In deadly silence and an atmosphere you could cut with a knife! J) to the Agnes Keith Museum.

(The atmosphere significantly improved hereafter) Agnes Keith was the wife of Henry Keith who was the conservator of Forest in British North Borneo up untill the late 1950s. Agnes wrote some well known books about their life in Colonial Borneo. One of the most famous was "The Land Below The Wind" the literal translation of 'Sabah'. Newlands as it is called is an old colonial house. Originally built by the Keiths, then rebuilt after it was bombed during the war and now lovingly restored as a museum to The Keiths and colonial life. It was beautiful, positioned right on top of a hill overlooking Sandakan and the Sulu Sea. We walked around totally absorbed in the style of the 40s and 50s and imagining what it must have been like to have lived there at the time. We had the house entirely to ourselves and read and studied virtually every exhibit for about an hour (Please bear in mind Mandy doesn't do museums! J) Eventually we walked to the neighbouring English Tea House. Wow! What a place, still on the hill so the veiws were still as good, it had been the guest bungalow of the Keith houshold. We sat in the garden and had a sandwich, John had an Earl Grey Tea (Just to set the mood! J) while I opted for the Pimms No 1, very nice! We watched a couple playing croquet for a while and after soaking up the era and the Pimms, we decided to walk back to Sandakan town via the clearly signposted One Hundred Steps. It was a beautifull path, shaded by palm trees on each side with butterflies and lizards making frequent apearances. Unfortunatly when we got to about the seventieth step the next dozen or so had collapsed, so we were forced to carefully pick our way down the edges of the rubble. We made it though and it somehow added to the overall Borneo experience (We found out later the steps have been like this for eight months) After a wander through the town and a browse at the thousands of shops we went for a drink in a street cafe near the hostel on the waterfront, they do a very large (about two pints) fresh juice, made from freshly squeezed fruit, absolutely delicious. We then went back to the B & B to find out how to get to the water village, we had heard about and following Polly's directions, went and caught a bus. The villages are all ramshakled and run down, it's hard for us to believe that people actually live in thousands of wooden and corrugated iron shacks in worse condition than our garden shed. We watched local kids playing in the rubbish and decay, they love posing for pictures and never far away is the request "You got mone sir?" John took some photo's. Then we walked on along the coastline to the Ocean King Seafood Resturant. I found it very strange, and yet typical of Borbeo that theis huge chineese seafood establishment built on stilts over the water and attracting the richest diners in the area, is not half a mile from the hundreds of similarly fashioned slum hovels. All the signs were in Chineese and Malay with no English language anywhere except for on the main sign outside which had in large letters "NO PORK" We looked at all the tanks of live fish and sea creatures, some of which I had never seen befor. I did look for sea cucumber so that we could get Rick the photo he wanted but couldn't find any, Drat! In the end we had prawns cooked in butter and lemon, mixed vegetables, rice and a killogram lobster cooked in garlic, John said there was too much garlic, but I think we will be safe from the Vampires for at least a year, it was very nice washed down with a couple of Tigers. This was way and away the most expencive meal we have had on this trip and weighed in at a hefty 300 ringgits (about 45 Quid) It had to be done for the experience but the meal we had last night in the night market for 4 quid was much better. We left the resturant in time to catch a bus, but in the car park, a couple of blokes who had also been in the resturant offered us a lift in their airconditioned Land Cruiser, One was a hotels consultant for the Malaysian Tourist Board and could not understand why British people wanted to come to come to Borneo. Why did we want to walk past the dirty villages and not get a taxi directly to the restaurant? and why did we walk along the pavements that had broken paving stones? The other guy was an engineer in the palm oil industry and couldnt understand why I thought they should concentrate more on extracting higher yields of oil from the acerage they already had rather than felling more and more forest for more palm oil plantations. He actually said " I cant understand all this fuss over a few monkeys and elephants, there are only a few left anyway." Be that as it may we didn't get into to heavy an argument with our kind friends and their attitude was typical of all the friendly people here. They dopped us right by the b&b but we took a diversion to the bar for another bucket of Tiger before bed.