Miss Maddie trotted into her Junior Suite at the Cat House Hotel and we took off for LAX at 9:30 AM. We made good time, turned in our rental car and arrived at the Tom Bradley Terminal at noon. The Tom Bradley is in the process of completing a total remodel and it is gorgeous! We walked through Security and entered a very glamorous retail area with beautiful lounge areas and great restaurants. The walls are covered with digital projections of ever-changing geometric forms, waterfalls, street scenes - all very inventive and attractive. We stopped at Vino Volo and split a really delicious prosciutto, brie and fig jam sandwich and got a flight each of three red and white wines…and all for the same price that we would have spent at Chili’s in the American Airlines terminal!
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The new Tom Bradley |
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| Lunch at Vino Velo |
We proceeded on to Gate 130 and met Joe and Bill who are also on our tour and at 2:40 PM got onto our Malaysia Airlines flight which thankfully has two seats next to the window in coach instead of three and ample leg room so we had a pretty good chance of comfort. We were served seafood pasta, great cold noodle salad and wine and then watched several movies, followed by dinner of seafood noodles and more wine before landing 10 hours later in Tokyo at 6 PM, Friday, Feb 28. We were continuing on the same plane to Kuala Lumpur, but had to disembark for two hours which gave us some much-needed exercise! Also, the toilets in the restrooms had heated seats (!) and a bunch of buttons for various bidet targets, plus a button that gave off a flushing sound for, I guess, shy occupants!
We returned to our plane and took off for seven more hours. After another dinner and movies, and a try for some sleep, the cabin was suddenly illuminated at TWO AM - for a breakfast of a rice cake with a dab of fish (although Bill and Joe managed to get an egg salad sandwich!) - I would have preferred more sleep, but.., we landed at 4 AM to a pretty empty airport. We got through immigration but couldn’t find our luggage. The four of us wandered around for a while, leaving Customs and finally figured out that our bags have been checked though to Sandakan (we hope), and we settled down for the six hours layover until our flight to Borneo. The toilets here have a Purell dispenser so one can sanitize the square seat. Pretty neat! We changed some money and bought some snacks in order to break our 50 Ringgit notes, dozed, found our gate and six hours later, we boarded a Malaysia Air 737.
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| Mt. Kinabalu |
We took off south of Kuala Lumpur towards the coast, over largely cutover forest and eventually reached the turquoise waters of he South China Sea. We flew over beautiful sandy reefs and wild islands until we reached the island of Borneo and passed over the small coastal city of Kota Kinabalu and had a great view of Mt. Kinabalu emerging from the clouds. We crossed Sabah, the northern Malaysian part of Borneo to get to Sandakan, a small spread-out town surrounded by oil palm plantations. Malaysian Borneo consists of Sabah to the north and Sarawak to the west, separated by the tiny country of Brunei. Kalimantan, the large southeastern section of the country belongs to Indonesia.
We were thrilled to find that our luggage had arrived along with us and that Bill, Joe, Bob and I were met by a very nice man who transported us 30 minutes away to a lovely jungle lodge of Sepilok Nature Resort. We were greeted with cool fruit drinks and shown our rooms, which for us consisted of a two story chalet with views over a small jungle lake. The walls are covered with colorful woven mats and the polished wooden floors are slick!
We had 1.5 hours to relax and unpack a bit. I took a cold shower and changed and we walked over to the open air lodge restaurant and followed Bill’s example by ordering a tall cool watermelon smoothie! We were soon joined by the others and I gave Pepper (John Rowlett) a big hug and met his sister, Rose Ann Rowlett, an equally famous birding leader. We took off at 3:30 and walked down the hotel road for a mile birding all the way. We saw some spectacular birds like the Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker. I’m afraid I was pretty brain dead by that time and my knees were rebelling, but I managed to last until we returned at 6:00. I grabbed a cold beer and we headed to our room to clean up a bit and returned for dinner on the veranda at 7. As the tour doesn’t officially begin until Sunday dinner, we all ordered a la carte which took a while, but spent the time by “doing the List”, a daily review of all the possible birds we saw during the day.
After several more beers my corn and chicken soup arrived as did Bob’s grilled herb fish with garlic butter. Rose Ann decided to cancel the evening’s owling (thank God!!) and I dashed back to the room for another shower (this time with warm water!) and collapsed into bed with the cooling A/C making sleep possible.
