Borneo: Part 5

I awoke refreshed, stiff and sore and then remembering my massage managed to drag myself out of bed. After a quick breakfast I marched over the little hut by the beach collapsed onto the massage table and let the masseuse work her magic. It was potentially the best 45 minutes of my life. She massaged nearly every square inch of my body from my pinky toes to eyebrows; when she was done I nearly said just do it again.

Reluctantly I departed and went to tell Ian all about it. After my ravings he decided that perhaps he would have a go after all, but upon finding out that he could only have a male masseuse he chickened out, saying that was too weird. I said he was ridiculous and missing out and spent a great deal of the rest of the day reminding him how amazing my massage was.

We logged a few more hours on the beach and had fun splashing in the waves. We sadly made our final trip to Buntal and enjoyed an absolutely divine meal of salt & pepper prawns, butter crab and steamed rice. We went back to the first restaurant we had tried in Buntal as it was quite easily the best.

We noticed that the girl who seated us spoke remarkably good English, we asked her if she had spent anytime in the UK and she told us that she had been living there for the past 11 years and just returned home two days ago.

We found this pretty remarkable; here was this young girl from a tiny fishing village in North Borneo whose parents own a tiny local restaurant and don’t speak so much as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in English and managed to send their daughter off to the UK to study of all things, ballet.

It was pretty clear that her parents were beyond delighted to have her home and as we were backing out of the parking lot she was doling out gifts from the UK to what I assume were her younger cousins, nieces and nephews.