Back to The City Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It’s time to say goodbye to the Philippines!

I left the hostel at 7.30am and eventually found a tricycle driver who understood that I wanted to go to the ferry terminal (ferry, boat, port, water, oceanjet, to cebu, picture of a boat – no one understood. It’s only 5 minutes away!!). I checked into the ferry and had an hour and a half to kill.

Today is going to be a long travel day, 19 hours of travel. Oh dear.

Well, off to a good start anyway, the ferry left on time. After being pushed around in a very long queue, I found my seat – right at the front, with meters and meters of leg room – amazing!!!

After two hours of ferry time, we pulled up to the chaos of Cebu ferry port. After running the gauntlet of taxi drivers, I finally found one with a decent price and we headed off.

Keeping with tradition, I was at the airport far too early, but after waiting nearly 4 hours, the plane was delayed. Typical.

I landed in Manila about an hour late. Ok, I still have 3 hours until my flight to KL. I didn’t realise that check in, passport stamping and paying a ridiculous 550p (over £8!) terminal fee would take nearly 2 hours!! So only arrived at the gate with about 20 minutes to wait before we were boarding and off to KL!

Cebu Pacific flights are funny, they have an annoying recorded voice woman that talks the WHOLE flight, which is annoying. But they also run little competitions every single flight, for example who can hold up a pair of sunglasses, or a book, or a phone etc.

We landed in KL around 12.30am, got on a bus into town, a taxi to the hostel and collapsed into bed at 2.30am!

Today has been 19 hours of travelling by tricycle, ferry, taxi, plane, plane, bus, taxi. And I was shattered!!

Tuesday 22 May 2012

I had a lovely leisurely morning in KL, heading off to the KLCC shopping centre for a spot of shopping.

If I was in ‘Westernisation’ shock through being in the Philippines, this was just beyond! It was like being back in England again! Gucci, prada, chanel all the way through to topshop, gap and nandos! A few hours in shopping heaven! I stocked up on all the essentials for the next few months of island life and settled down for an amazing sushi lunch!

Around 3pm I left my shopping heaven and headed back to the airport for my flight back to Borneo. During these short 2 weeks of being away I had already bumped into 3 people that I know. So I was pretty surprised to hear my name being called across the waiting lounge. I ignored it at first, couldn’t possibly be for me, who do I know in KL?! But yes, they were shouting for me and were on the same flight! What are the chances.

After a short delay (can’t expect anything else from Air Asia!) we were flying across the ocean towards Borneo, landing around 10pm. My taxi pick up knew exactly who I was before I had even collected my bags – check that out for service! Just after 11pm, we were pulling back into Semporna, home again for a while.