Borneo!

A few days ago me and my dad got back from a soccer tour in Borneo. It was an amazing experience. We left on July 6, the last day of school for me, which I got to miss. From Dickson College we picked up a bus, and rode with the rest of the team to Sydney, which took about 2 and a half hours I think. For most of that bus ride my fellow team mates had music blasting out of their ipods, as we lounged across the 6 or 7 rows of seats in the back of the bus. I have no idea what the parents were doing. Probably sitting, possibly talking politely, in their little seats up the front of the bus. When we got to the Sydney airport, we got through security and customs and all of the other airport lines fairly quickly. Then we waited in a lounge thing for an hour or so, where I discovered that I had accidently left my ipad on in my backpack, and frantically plugged it in, hoping I could at least get it above 11% power for the next 8 hour flight. By the time we left, it was at 19%. woo hoo. Just for the record, I did not even take the ipad out of my bag for the next 8 hours (I think it might have actually been 10 hours…). That plane was AWESOME!!!! It was one of those planes with the little televisions in front of everyone’s seat, and it also had a little remote in the armrest for everyone. With this remote you could choose to watch movies, television shows, listen to music, and play games! I watched the Hunger Games, The Lorax, The Big Bang Theory (Awesome show), The Simpsons, and played games. It was very entertaining. It was made better by the fact that I was surrounded by 40 people I knew, most of which were my friends. Plane flights can be sooo entertaining if you’ve got 14 other friends your age to talk to. Once we got to Kuala Lumpur, we had another long wait, in a much less modern airport. We spent most of the time playing cards in the little gate on the side of a long hallway. The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu was 2 hours, and most of us slept for the whole time. I did. We did get very excited when we started descending, because it meant we were in Borneo, and that this long awaited holiday had finally begun. When we touched down, everything was a blur from getting out of the airport with our luggage, and going to the hotel. I for one, was very excited when we got our room keys, and were able to go up to see our rooms. We stayed in the Pacific Sutera Hotel, a part of the larger Sutera Harbour Resort (5 star). Unfortunately, most of our rooms were very far apart. We were room 752, and some of the other girls had rooms on floor 3. It was still very fun. Our room consisted of 2 single beds, and a small portable bed. There was a large bathroom, a small fridge, and a desk with a TV. I stayed with two of the other girls, Eilis and Grace. The next day, there was nothing that we had to do, so we spent almost the entire day at the pool. There were at least three pools that we discovered, although most of us only went in two of them. The first was a shallow pool, just next to our hotel. It was next to a pool bar, which had stools in the water where you could order drinks, which was very cool.

We spent ages in that pool, and no one seemed to care what we did, so we played around a lot in ways that would probably be against the rules in Australia. The other pool we went to had slides, although they were quite slow, and there were lots of rules preventing anything very fun from happening. There was also a little waterfall in the corner that you could swim under.





 The next day we had futsal, and it was very hot. We played in three different teams, just against each other, and it was pretty fun. Still, it was really hot.

After we finished we went into the changerooms, and the showers were disgusting. we all went in though, just to wash off. After that, we went to lunch at a restaurant called Little Italy, which everyone decided was their favourite restaurant.






We went to a wildlife reserve after lunch, which turned out to be more like a zoo. And the orangtan exhibit was closed, so we didn’t get to see any orangutans in Borneo. We did get to see lot’s of other interesting animals though, like the Proboscis Monkey.

When we finished with that, we went to the beach for a dinner party thing. We spent a few hours on the beach, which was very pretty, before we had dinner.

We stayed until 7:30 or so, before heading back to the hotel. When we got back, almost everyone changed into swimmers and jumped in the pool. We did that almost every night we could.

The next three days were basically the same, with leisure (pool) time in the morning, and a soccer game in the afternoon. We played two different Malaysian teams the first two days. It was interesting playing with them, and we did beat them. The first day it was really hot, and the girls change rooms at that place didn’t even have showers, so we had to use the boys change rooms. Apparently the parents had to stop quite a few men walking in while we were in there. 

The next day, we played in this huge stadium, which was really cool, and the change rooms were huge, and really nice. We played a team there, but we had to stop before the game was supposed to end because it had started to lightning. It was nice playing in the rain though. We all gathered in the tunnel, and ended up spending at least half an hour talking to the other team. It turns out they were actually 15-16s, not 13s. That was pretty cool, because they were shorter than us. They spoke quite good english, and they kept asking us what we ate. 


The third soccer day, we played the same team we played first, but we mixed up the teams. It was cool playing with Malaysian girls, although they had so many players, we had to spend a long time on the bench because there were so many subs. 

The next day was one of the best, when we went to an island resort and did a bunch of activities. Well, we were supposed to do a bunch, but most of us ended up only doing banana boating. I went with the first group, and it was really fun. The banana boat was a huge inflatable thing that got pulled around behind a speed boat. We asked to capsize, so he took us around so many turns where we could barely hold on, before the banana boat finally tipped. It was really fun! 

When we got back to the island we learned that it had got too windy for anyone else to go parasailing, which was another of the activities we were all very excited to do, and only one of us got to do it. Apparently there was another call to go banana boating, which I missed, and they went out again later that day. I really wish I could have gone, because most of them got to go another 3 or 4 times, and their driver was crazy, so he let them do all sorts of fun stuff on it. 

The next day we had to get up very early to go into the mountains. First we went to a war memorial, and then to a hike. The hike was really cool, because part of it was a canopy walk. The canopy walk was a plank of wood, supported by nets, way up high in the trees. You couldn’t even see the ground!

It was so fun. It was pretty short though. We were supposed to go to the hot springs after that, but they smelled gross, and we were all hot anyway, so we all decided not to.  We did go in the pool when we got back to the hotel though. 

My favourite day, was the next day when we went white water rafting. Unlike most of my team mates I had been before, but this trip was definitely my favourite. It was only grade two or something, so not very hard rapids, but the drivers were awesome. I was in one of the two ‘Extreme boats’, meaning we wanted to capsize in the river. It was soooo fun. We hit so many rocks.  We would be speeding down, and then realize that we were heading straight for the rock wall on the side of the stream, then BAM, we would hit it and all fall off of our seats into the middle of the boat. I’m sure the instructor did it on purpose, and it was really fun. (You could never do that anywhere else).  Once again though, I was on the wrong boat. The other extreme boat got a guy named Buster, and they did so much stuff. They hit all the rocks too, but their guy was actually successful at capsizing them… 3 times. Our instructor was only able to capsize us by getting us all to sit on the same side, and pulling the boat over. It was still really fun. And we saw a water buffalo on the bank at one point. When the water was calm, we all would jump out into the water and swim around. At the end, there was like 5 minutes of calm water, and we made the most of it. Our instructor took our oars, and we had a wrestling competition to throw each other off the boat. It was really fun. The other extreme boat capsized one last time, and they sat on the upside down boat until the end. It was reallly fun!!!!!!!!!!!

My dad’s boat was one of the boring ones, and they didn’t run into anything.That night, we went to a soccer game. It was Sabah FC vs another Malaysian team. They played in one of the stadiums we played at earlier in the week, and it was really cool seeing pro’s playing on the same field as us. Me and some of the other girls bought these horns for about $1.50, and they were really cool. I still have mine. The game was really good, and Sabah had their first win for ages, 3-0. 

The last day, we finally got to go parasailing, and it was AMAZING!!!! I went up with Rhian, another one of the girls. There were two other pairs on our boat and we went last. It costed $30. One thing I found funny, and kind of scary, is that when we went up to go, all they told us was to bend our legs when they started letting out the rope, and we took off. Zero safety instructions. It was cool, but scary. It felt like we were just sitting on the strap, and I’m not sure what would’ve happened if I leaned forward of backward. I didn’t want to test it. It was amazing. We got so high, and then we would drop down and skim the water. SOOOOOO FUN!!!! I want to do it again… 

After that adventure, we took the bus into the city, and went shopping. Most of the girls went to the mall, but I went to the markets. It was cool. I bought quite a few things, since my dad took out way too much money from the ATM. After that, we went for lunch at Little Italy again, went back to the hotel to get our things, and left. :(   It was very sad. I was awake for the first flight, but on the second one, the really cool one with all the movies, I felt sick, and slept most of the flight. When we got to Sydney, we had to wait ages in the foreign passport line. When we finally got through we saw a few of the other people. There were only 4 girls catching the bus back to Canberra, as all the others were either flying home, or had gone somewhere else from Borneo for a longer holiday. Us girls didn’t even get to sit together on the 2 hour bus ride, because we were among the last people to get on, so we had to find any spare seats we could. I was very sad. And cold. It was very warm in Borneo for the entire time. I’m still cold. 

It was the best trip ever!!!

For pictures, you can check out my facebook page. I got facebook :)