Crying into my cornflakes - selamat tinggal Yvonne!

Yvonne's "shark"

Yvonne left at 5:30 this morning to go to Johor Bahru, so of course I am missing her! It was so good to have such a great travel buddy. Not that I can't travel on my own of course but so many times today I wanted to say "oh look!" or something and she wasn't there.

I woke up (again) and had breakfast very quickly due to the revolting manners of one of my fellow dining patrons at the hotel. I had 2 hours before checkout so I went walking to the tourist info centre and along to the Filipino handcrafts market, which was about ten thousand degrees inside. And most of the stuff is rubbish. But I ran into a lovely couple from New Zealand who are living in Miri, working for a few years before they retire. They gave me their number to call them when I go there, which was very nice.

Went back to the hotel to stay another night but they wanted to raise the price so I checked out and went to the backpackers 5 doors down. It's called Masada Backpackers and it's actually really nice, they're the ones who helped us get to Kinabalu Park yesterday. There are only a few rooms (sleeps around 30 people?) and I am in a six-share with one other girl. The mattresses are comfy and it's airconditioned so I'm happy, and it's a quarter of the price of the other hotel - 35 ringgit ($11). Expensive laundry service though so once again I am doing a reasonable impression of a backpacker. I do have a new t-shirt though which is pretty exciting! Trust me to wear it on a day when there's nobody to take photos of me anymore. From the photos so far it looks like I did Borneo in a day.

No pencils in the toilet, thanks. 

I took the shuttle bus to 1Borneo shopping mall, which was a bit of a strange experience actually. I'm not sure whether it's just because I can't read any of the signs, or whether I just didn't feel like shopping. The website is grossly misleading, there is no Seaworld there (yet... looks like it's still "on its way") and the food is limited to overpriced fast-food. I went back to town and visited the seafood market... wow. There were more mantis shrimp than I could count (and I get SO excited when I see one :( ) and one tank had four sad moray eels in it. I can't imagine moray tasting very nice. They were very insistent that I sit down and eat but even though I was hungry, I couldn't do justice to a fish tonight. So I went to a restoran cafe instead and had mee goreng ayam (chicken fried noodles).