I miss Sabah

Have you ever missed a place so much...you think of the place periodically? When did I become attach to this place? Certainly not the first month. Directly after one year of work, I found myself posted to the great Malaysian outback. I arrived at the airport bitter and scared at the unknown. Sabah was an alien country to me. Despite it being part of Malaysia I've never viewed it with much thought. In geography lessons we were thought facts ...to be regurgitated out during exams and Sabah remained merely a state in my mind. I was certainly ill prepared for the poverty....the illegal immigrants and their squatter shelter dotted the horizons on KK. It felt like being in a foreign land. Same country but oh how very different we were to each other. I felt like a foreigner visiting.

I spent one night in KK and flew to Tawau the following morning to report to my new establishment. Once again, the heavily indonesian-laced accent was hard to understand. The faces were so different....( much more interesting) you couldn't place their race.I worked in the outpatient unit for the first 6 months.....and learnt that the people of Sabah are very warm. They're helpful and chatty and they unlike the people in Semenanjung, don't think twice before they welcome you into their house and into their hearts. I miss Sabah.