Pulau Sepanggar and feeling a Fool

Hooray, this is my last night in the backpackers and tomorrow I will be installed in my house until I leave Sabah! It has been an interesting week visiting being based in KK amongst travellers and then going off to work during the day and attempting to use my bunk bed as my office when I returned. As always I have met some lovely people and thank you my various room mates for being so understanding and quiet when I was conducting phone interviews from my bed.

A mentor going to work

The unfinished computer lab.

 This week I visited a few schools around KK and one of highlights was to the lovely island of Sepanggar which is about 5 km from the coast and near the Naval Base. Strangely most of the pupils are boated out from a water village on the mainland to the island for schooling. The population on the island consists of a few houses on stilts on the beach and the only income to be gained is by fishing. The small school is built over sand and surrounded by virgin jungle. In the school grounds I saw goats, monkeys, chickens and a monitor lizard sauntering by oblivious to the surroundings. There are a few solar panels to give the island and school electricity but there appears to be no way of saving the electricity in batteries so when it is cloudy there is no electricity. There are 2 boats, one for the teachers and the other for the pupils and fortunately it was a beautiful calm day when I visited but it can be very rough sometimes and the result being that attendance depends very much on the weather. The pupils and staff were all very welcoming and it was so nice to be in a school again.

The teachers'boat

A farewell from the jetty

 The downside of my week was that I was ripped off on internet trying to buy my plane ticket back to France in May. CHEAP FlIGHTS AIR came up when I was comparing prices on the usual sites. They were slightly cheaper but they had the times that suited me better. So I went ahead and booked with them and received several emails and my flight itinerary etc. They said they only accepted danish credit cards which should have been a warning sign but I still went ahead and stupidly made a bank transfer and the result is I have no tickets and no more contact with the site. So be warned!! I have booked many flights over internet and this is the first time I've been stung but ouch does it hurt!!

Congratulations to Ireland and happy St. Patrick's Day!