Sabah Trip. Day 1: 27th May, Kota Kinabalu

A long-anticipated family holiday to Sabah had finally arrived. We flew to KK courtesy of Air Asia and checked into the Kinabalu Daya Hotel. An hour later we met up with Brisbane friend and ex Asian Wetland Bureau colleague Roger Jaensch, who had been persuaded by his wife to come and spend some time birding with me at Danum Valley - ahh such sacrifice!

We spent the afternoon and evening shopping for essential supplies - an umbrella, dustbin bags, and leech socks. We were unsuccessful in finding the latter, so ended up buying some cloth and elastic, and taking it to a roadside tailor.






















Caution: leech sock expert at work

He indicated that this was not the first time he'd been asked to make such things, so we confidently handed him the cloth and asked him to make four pairs - two for kids and two for adults. Many hours later I triumphantly walked back to the hotel clutching the socks, to try them on. The kids' ones fitted quite ok, but mine were way to narrow to allow my feet to get into them. The result was a long upcurled section at the end, so that they looked the kind of boots pixies wear! All that was lacking was some golden bells for the ends!























My leech socks, which also handily doubled as pixie boots!






















The craft market along the seafront was chock-full of treasures.