Leaving Day

After a hesitant start for this solo trip of a lifetime, the last day came round far too quickly.
All packed and ready for off I went down to the Coffee Terrace for my breakfast, like I did every day.
Breakfasts are magnificent at Rasa Ria and there is everything to choose from - Chinese, Thai, Malay, salad, danish, Japanese, English, fresh fruit, toast, a man making fruit juice, a man cooking eggs any way you wanted them, sweets, chocolate fountain...
I loved that the sweets were displayed over the fruit....

My usual breakfast was juice, fruit, danish and toast - and buckets of coffee...although I did try the chocolate fountain on pancakes...

yep chocolate fountain...

But the sweet display was magnificent - and entire wall of marshmallows and jelly beans...

On arrival in the restaurant, my regular server Izza guided me to my usual table - but it didn't look usual that morning...I was touched to find the most beautiful flowers on my table. I loved them so much that I still have the picture as my wallpaper on my phone.

I couldn't eat much for nerves and was ready in plenty of time for my car to the airport.
While we were driving to Kota Kinabalu, I took photos of everything I could bemoaning that I had not made it into the city..so many interesting things to see...but first, a magnificent view of Mount Kinabalu from the Mengkabong River bridge - I spent many happy hours on that river :-)

Trying to take photos from a zippy car was not easy, but I wanted to get an image of home life in Borneo, from blocks of flats, each with their own blue water butt...

...to the more spacious traditional homes - usually over shops and businesses.

and the stunning architecture of the City Mosque, second main mosque in KK, bordered on one side by roads and the other side by water, absolutely stunning.

And finally, the anachronism I saw on my arrival in the city, which bothered me the whole two weeks...Borneo has seen an influx of fast food, an irony itself in a country of fast cooking. McDonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC are all fighting for trade with more traditional noodle and coffee houses.
This KFC is a gleaming glass and chrome building, brightly lit and popular...

...sat cheek by jowl with a traditional Malay street market, virtually empty and the coffee house with a couple of die-hard customers.

And so were sown the first seeds of my decision to return to see everything I missed this time round.