K K with Valerie

July 31, 2008
5:30 pm

Hi Everyone,

About 5 boats down from us is a sail boat. Brits, Stephen and Valerie are the owners. I don't know the boat's name or their last name. But I like Stephen and Valerie very much and their boat is quite nice too. They lived 5 years in Hong Kong, some of it in Sai Kung and they kept a boat in Hebe Haven where we stayed. Stephen is retired. Valerie works in an elementary school with children aged 7 to 11. When teachers need help or will be away from the classroom Valerie takes over. She works part time and loves it; especially teaching art and physical education. Valerie doesn't love cruising so much so Stephen recruits crew and goes off and Valerie joins him during summer and other school vacations.

Valerie and I went off one afternoon to the wet market and the next morning to the different local museums.

Valerie in the white hat buying a pineapple. Just after this photo we each went our separate ways and then spent most of the time trying to find each other again. We each tried staying put and then decided the other was doing the same thing. Her comment that the vendors were probably as anxious for us to find each other as we were to find each other was quite funny. I guess it was pretty obvious that the two of us were looking for each other.

Local fashion statements.

Islam is the state religion though other than the clothing women wear, and the price of beer and wine, you don't really feel its influence as a tourist especially here at the marina/ hotel complex where most of the guests are Asian.

I bought mangoes and lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber , avocado and cilantro.

The next morning Valerie and I went off to the local museums. They had exhibits, but no tours or explanatory literature, so it was too hard to take much in. The part we liked the most was the Sabah Museum Heritage Village which has replicas of traditional homes of different indigenous groups around Sabah. Again, there was little literature and no one there to tell you anything, so not so educational. http://www.mzm.sabah.gov.my/intro.htm is the website for the museum complex.

One day I'll have a photo of Valerie from the front. She was in pink and white and the lady in the distance was in pink and white and the water lilies were pink and white.

This "ethnic village" looks much like some of the villages that we saw cruising the islands in the Philippines and the small islands in Malaysia.

Inside one hut. I kept waiting to fall through the floor.

The big sign says no smoking. The small one in small print says, remove your shoes. I had spent so much time looking for a "do not enter" sign that I missed the one that said it was ok if you took off your shoes. But I only went into one and no one saw me but Valerie and she was quite diplomatic about it. I told her about going into a hut and she said she hadn't wanted to remove her shoes. I said, "huh?" It needed to be in big letters like the No Smoking sign you can't miss. I guess matches are far worse than shoes with grass huts.

While we were there they were filming some costumed dancers. We could have waited and taken photos with them, but it was too hot and we had more museum to see.

It was lovely and fluid. Music was provided by a cd and boombox.

We also went to The Sabah Islamic Civilization Museum since all of the museums are together. Again too much stuff and no overall explanation or introduction. But now I know the difference between Muslims who follow Islam and Hindus who don't. I guess if I had really thought about it, but since I hadn't, Valerie explained that to me. Helps to go around with an elementary school teacher. Helps to have a public library which there isn't. I would imagine as we travel around Malaysia and Indonesia I'll learn more about Muslims and the Islamic religion. It will be interesting. Valerie has been to Indonesia and found it hard to watch women appear to have much less freedom than men. We'll see come September when we start to tour Indonesia.

Got back to the boat about 2:30 and made myself a mango/avocado/strawberry yogurt shake. Tasted healthy and not bad, but the yogurt made it too tart and the mango wasn't quite ripe. But it was ok.