Borneo Bound: Chinese market and the museum (7th March 2010)

My reason for staying this long in KK was to visit the Post Office for Mick on Monday, now of course if I had of been organised I would have done it before now but it’s me we’re talking about so in the meantime my plan for today was to visit the Chinese Sunday market and then perhaps head to the Sabah museum which has some good reports.

Chinese market

The Chinese market was interesting and more just for locals rather than tourists, this was evident in all the cats and dogs in cages for sale, in addition to cages of baby chick and ducks oh and in addition to tiny bags of fish with just enough water to cover their fins, so unless I was planning on buying all of them and releasing them into the wild it was more a local market!

Markets like this are always a tough one for me, I mean I totally appreciate that my way is not necessarily the right way and that we all have an idea of what is right, but it’s still hard seeing kittens and puppies in this crazy heat with no or very little water, anyway enough.

So after a wander around the market I thought I would head off in search of the museum. The Lonely Planet I’m using is 2 years out of date but gives directions on what bus to get and from where but as it’s not that recent I thought I would just double check with the hostel. Now these people live here and have done for many years if not all their lives, so why or why did I decide not to take any notice of their advice and believe a 2 year old LP guide instead!! Who knows but it goes like this......

I head off to where the LP said the bus goes from and waited for about 15 mins before a bus came along which of course wasn’t then my bus, fortunately another person waiting for the bus helped me out and told me that, despite the sign saying so, the bus I wanted didn’t stop there and the only way to get to the museum was to go to the bus terminal, in exactly the way the hostel said. So off I went in search of the bus terminal which as I had decided to take my own route in the first place was then a 20 min walk away. I found the terminal but again because I had decided to make my own way had not actually listen to the hostel when they told me which bus I needed to get! Eventually I found the right bus (don’t ask me how) and finally made it to the museum an hour after I had set off!

The cultural village

The museum was actually very good with some great photos on show of the way things were 100 years ago. The museum also had a cultural village set around a lily pad lake which was interesting to see, although by the time I had got there all the houses were shut up for the night. Now all I had to do was make my way back to town somehow. On the way though I decided to make a short detour to see the state mosque, which was not the mosque I had seen pictures of but nice all the same.

Classic cars at the museum! :-)

Getting back to town proved to be much easier than getting out to the museum and I jumped in a little mini-van taking me back to the terminal for 50 sen and then another bus along the seafront for another 50 sen. Fantastic a hassle free trip on two buses for a total of 19p.

State Mosque

This evening I made my last trip down to the market for dinner and to get some pics. I’ve been a bit reluctant up until now to take pictures of the market area cause I kinda feel it’s a bit intrusive into their way of life, the thing is there is just some great stalls in the market and some great things to take pictures of. Everyone else does it as well, taking pictures of everything and everyone and some of the cameras and lenses I’ve seen wouldn’t be out of place in the hands of the paparazzi. So eventually I plucked up the courage and decided to just go for it and see if anyone got upset. I think actually they enjoyed having pictures taken of their stalls and their food although at one point I did have a little giggle to myself cause really it’s not that dissimilar to someone coming to England and taking pictures of our supermarkets, although of course in our supermarkets the food isn’t anywhere near as fresh!