James Mok’s Soliloquy

Day Three 21/08/03 Thu

Alec Bowling

On day three, Alec finally got to play what he has been longing to play for quite some time - bowling. In Hong Kong, almost every time we went to a local recreation club, Alec would go the bowling alley and watch others play. Since Alec is not old enough to play there, all he could do was to watch. Here at the hotel, they even have kids lane, where they could flip over the “cutters” and turn them into two “wall”, so the bowling ball would be kept on the lane. Alec was able to hit a 87 point for his first game, which is not too bad, however, hitting the walls several times of course.

Fun Pool Over Looking the Sea

Fun Pool Over Looking Magellan Wing

Alec Playing Water Polo with New Friends

Alec at the Fun Pool

With Alec at the Fun Pool

After bowling, we went swimming at one of the pools in the Marina’s Club in the hotel. Private one-on-one swimming lesson was only RM34.50 for an hour, which worked out to be HKD$73.00 only. Comparing to the HKD$210 or more at our local recreation club, it was a steal. We had Alec on for an hour at the olympic pool before casual swimming at the fun pool right beside the olympic pool. The fun pool has a waterfall, a bridge, and a couple of water slides. We had great fun there.

Alec Enjoying Some Chicken Wings

Lunch by the pool was quite good. Melinda and I had burger and some satay, and as usual, Alec ordered chicken wings and he seemed to enjoy the day and the chicken wing very much.

At 3:30pm, the tour gathered together for a trip to the rain forest. I have forgotten the name of the rain forest, but it took us about an hour and 45 minutes of bus ride to reach it.

For some reasons unknown at the time, my GPS was having a tough time trekking the satellites to give a position both at the Sepi Island and here at the rain forest. As it turned out, the time on the GPS was about 12 hours off the correct time, which might not have matched the database on the GPS for the correct satellite positions to give a proper read out. After I have corrected the time on the GPS later on Day 4, I was able to trek our position quite easily at the Manukan Island.

When we arrived at the rain forest at a place resembled a house for a family with a restaurant business right by the river. They served us drinks and some dim sum, but over looking at the dirty river right by the restaurant, I passed. I had my own bottled water with me, so I had no problem there.

Sunset at the Rain Forest

More Sunset at the Rain Forest

We took a boat ride on the river to seek out some monkey and fireflies. The monkeys were not too populated, and we had to wait until dark before we could see the fireflies. These fireflies are of a very tiny variety as opposed to the much bigger ones that we have seen in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. They lit up the trees on both side of the river like Christmas trees. The boat ride took about 2 hours and we went back to the restaurant for dinner. Dinner again was nothing much worth mentioning. It is just that it would seem like almost every local meal, Malaysians would serve crabs.

By 8:30pm, we hopped back on the bus for the ride back to the hotel. On the way to the rain forest, I noticed our bus over took several cars and trucks. It would seem that our bus was the fastest vehicle on the road. When the tour guide asked us if we would want to go home earlier, I ask him if we could stay on our lane without over taking, as the highway was only a two lane two way one. But to no avail, the bus driver with his poor driving skills almost airborned the bus twice going over a couple of bridges without slowing down early enough, and he almost hit a slowing truck right in front of us while it was trying to slow down to let us overtake him, but there was head on traffic coming at the same time. What senseless drivers these Malaysians are.

We got back to the hotel by 10:15pm, took a quick shower and we went to the cafe for some late night munchies. I had a bowl of Laksa, which was curry seafood noodle, and that wasn’t bad at all. Alec had a “Little Superman” as printed on the menu, which was actually chicken noodle soup. And that ended day 3.

Continue on to Day 4.