The year 2011 is coming to an end. I usually feel all sentimental and emotional when it is the end of the year. I have no idea why because the next year is just another year and everything remains the same, runs on the same timing belt and even feels the same.
Top 10 happy stuff that happened this year worth mentioning:
1) I made friends in the office.
2) I took on more responsibilities, and I am happy that I did.
3) I started running. I can now do 3km without stopping – although that is still a far cry from my intended 10km.
4) I drove to KK from Miri. It is a good experience but safe to say, I won’t be making that road trip again. The next time I intend to go to Sabah, I shall fly.
5) Coring got married and is having a dragon baby!
6) Allie grew and is now a beautiful and quite well behaved mongrel!
7) My doctor friends started working. =)
8) Gan proposed to his girlfriend and is now getting married next year!
9) I bought a house (albeit it is my parents’ house).
10) We saw a small little house in Miri we both liked.
Aside from that, the trip to KK. That is worth a post, but I’ll blog it together with this post.
We started from Miri at about 1pm and headed to Brunei, hoping to reach Limbang by nightfall. That we successfully did. We reached Limbang, which is in Sarawakian territory at about 6pm, checked into the Purnama Hotel (the only not too bad hotel in Limbang), headed out for dinner and slept the night away.
The next morning, we were at the Pandaruan ferry at 7.50am and waited for 2 and a half hours to cross a river which is less than 30 metres wide. The ferry services that link to Temburong, which is in Brunei territory, from 6am to 10pm (I assume it stops at 10 because the border checkpoint closes at 10pm). For years politicians have ranted about the difficulty of a non existant bridge but not one have actually sealed the deal of putting a bridge in place. News reports say that a bridge will be up and about by 2013 but when we were crossing, there was no sign of anyone putting any construction material or equipment to good use. In fact, there were none lying around.
After Temburong, the journey was actually quite smooth. We passed various towns which were really interesting. Dad and mom were so excited seeing all the small little towns on the way. We passed Lawas (Lawas airport was so small that I actually drove past it without noticing), Sipitang, Sindumin, Beaufort, Menumbok, Papar and Putatan. There were so many Catholic churches and chapels on the way that we were reeducated with the various saints I didn’t know the Vatican had beatified like a St. Monica.
We finally reached KK at about 4pm and went straight to our hotel, Likas Square Condotel. I was pissed to no end when the front desk told us that we could not check into the room because it was not ready. Hotels have a check out time of 12pm and a check in time of 2pm to cater for housekeeping. We came at 4pm which means housekeeping had 4 hours to do whatever necessary to make the room ready. We were told they needed an extra two and a half hours after pressing for a time to come back to the hotel if we had to go out.
So in the end, we were forced to go out to find someplace to have coffee and relax. We finally got a call from the hotel at past 6pm telling us the condo was ready. The place was alright actually. The condo had three rooms, a double bed, four single beds, a sofa and a TV, a dining table and a stove. The problem with the place is that housekeeping is never doing their job. We had to call for everything the next day, change of towels, extra coffee sachets, extra sugar, teaspoons and extra shampoo.
The worse thing about the hotel was that they were not service oriented at all. We checked out at 7 in the morning and headed to Gaya street. Mom realized she left her cardigan in the condo at about 9.20am. I called the hotel and asked the housekeeping to call me back to tell me if they found any. The call never came. We decided to drive back to the hotel. Mom went up to the front desk, explained everything and they called housekeeping. Housekeeping called back 5 minutes later and told the front desk they didn’t find anything in the condo. Mom insisted they let her up to the room because she was dead certain that she left her cardigan there.
The front desk reluctantly let her up and when they opened the door, lo and behold, the cardigan was there. Did housekeeping even bothered going to the room to check when they were asked? The horror of it all was that at close to 10am, the room was not even cleaned when we had already checked out at 7am. No wonder when we checked in we had to wait until past 6 to check into the room. That is one place I am never going to go back to.
Anyways, the drive back from KK was much smoother. We started at about 10.30am from KK, reached the small little tiny river to take the ferry across at about 1pm, drove to Bandar and hung out there for an hour and we were back in Miri for ikan bakar and lalapan by 7pm.
Mom and Dad and Baby really travelled a lot in the car this holiday. Pity I didn’t have a bigger car to ferry them around so they were stuck in the back seats for hours and hours at a go. =) But they were such good sports, never complaining about the bumpy ride and the small space. Hugs!