Adventure Time with Keri!

This is not for anyone's real edification: Surprisingly, I didn’t get eaten up by the mosquitoes here in the first 48 hours of my arrival since they love me no matter where I go. Usually the first 10 mins I enter my amah’s house I get eaten alive by those buggers and by the first week I have like 20 bites. Thankfully I only have 3 right now. Yay!

YuBee made white chocolate macadamia nut pancakes for her parents before we ran off for more breakfast...we're such fatties. You are allowed to judge. So breakfast was a fail at Mile 4 Pasar b/c I think they were cleaning it?…so we went to eat at Dua-puluh dua-puluh…or something like that. Kway teow with eggs on top/sauce/fish….idk!… it was almost like wat dan ho but better. 

Hung out at the house for a while and then went to eat with Auntie Mei Mei’s friend. She doesn’t know English but she sang us a whole love song in the car in English! Hahaha. Later that afternoon we went for an hr full body massage which was soooooooo amazing. When she got to my stomach area I was trying so hard not to laugh since I’m super ticklish there. I thought about when Ashlee tried to do a liver assessment on me and totally failed b/c I was laughing so hard. Afterwards we got our eyebrows did so now it doesn’t look like a jungle up there. 

Bee made me get ready super early for dinner which included dressing me up in her dress and curling my hair. Her excuse? “I secretly wanted a sister so I could do her hair and dress her up.” =.= Well your wish is my command. Hahaha. I must admit, it was fun. (When our other cousin, Yien, saw us she asked, “Are you guys going partying?” Hahaha.) Uncle John came in and tried to take a picture yelling, “Facebook, facebook!!!” Hahahaha. We stopped by the yacht club and discussed how we’re all going to work for their resort that the uncles are planning to build. I won’t believe it till I see it. It was still raining like crazy still and Uncle James picked us up in order to save parking. We went to the new Sheraton Four Point for dinner and the wait staff was kinda bad at first but we had fun nonetheless. Towards the end Andy and I started talking about diving and we got Yien to tell us her diving stories, which were really cool. She’s like a diving legend in the area. I’m not even kidding. Afterward we went back to yacht club and had more stories. It was still raining like crazy we all decided that we were getting part of a typhoon. It finally let up and we made our way home telling stories about our grandma and how much of a G she was. She’s a legend too. Everyone and their mother knew her. No lie.  All in all, it was a great night for storytelling.  My family is so cool. 

All of this day was spent visiting ppl, talking to ppl, and me pretending to be listening to everyone talking when I could only understand half of what was being said. Curses on not knowing another language fluently. Anyway, we ate breakfast at Mile 4 pasar finally! I love this one food stand that we always go to that gives you noodles wrapped up in newspaper and plastic. So yummy. 

We walk around Four Point again…mainly to visit the infinity pool and take pictures since it was raining so hard the other night. We walked around the mall inside and ended up eating McDonald’s. Haha! Don’t judge. MickeyD’s is always better in foreign countries. 

Went to visit more ppl…I think Bee’s classmate and then later on we ate yummy chicken satay. 

Auntie Eliza and her parents came to visit us before we went out to eat with Auntie Mei Mei’s friends. There was so much food! When we got home we ate more food, of course. =.= Auntie Mei Mei made bird’s nest soup. For those of you that are about to gag, I’ll have you know that it’s a delicacy in Asia and it’s super expensive. Lol. Fortunately for us, this one comes from our own bird “house” that my uncles set up in town. Usually they harvest the swallow’s nest up in the mountains, but my uncles had an empty building in town that they weren’t using, so they somehow convinced the swallows make their nests in there…not sure how that happened. Lol.  

We had breakfast early at Sim Sim again, and I say early b/c I had a flight to catch. I love fishball soup! I got dropped off at airport…ok, actually we all got down at the airport b/c we were early and Bee and I ran around it, which is not saying much b/c it’s an extremely small airport. When I arrived at my destination I almost got left behind by Auntie Belinda b/c she couldn’t find me b/c she was late. We ran around town running errands and we ended up eating awesome soto. Have I ever told you how much I love soto? Cuz I do. We dropped by my Aunt’s for a while…and I ended up finishing two books there. I got to talk to my cousin, Siao Wan, on the phone! Except she definitely thought I was Bee when I first got on the phone. Cousin problems. 

Before heading home we went to the pasar to get veggies and then to the bakery. When I exited I opened the car and started trying to put our groceries in the back, except the back seats were up and the other groceries were nowhere to be found…I got super confused until my Aunt started laughing, hitting me, and apologizing to the driver…who was NOT my uncle. LOL. What? The car looked exactly alike!!! Auntie Belinda was mortified and I was dying of laughter. I moved back to amah’s house b/c Auntie Beth isn’t home yet. That evening I sat outside talking to Auntie Belinda and playing with the stinky dogs. She has SO many dogs.

In the morning I got to Skype with Niki!! Sometime during the day we went out for a drive to get some things in town. Later we went back out for tea time at my favorite kedai kopi. Roti canai, kaya and butter on toast, and milo FTW!! We decided to drive around the surrounding areas more. This area is so pretty, not even kidding. I love just driving around just for the heck of it. We looked at new houses that were being built in the area and the architecture, mainly b/c my uncle has a building project underway and he needs ideas.At one point we saw monkeys on the road and then they ran away when they saw us approaching. Later that evening Auntie Belinda coerced me into doing jump rope with her…I almost died, I’m so out of shape. Before the sun went down we went with the dogs to go look at new building project behind house. The dogs absolutely love going back there to play and run up the dirt mounds.

In the morning we went to go fetch my uncle James from the airport. We decided to go visit the kebun afterward (their palm oil plantation) and in the midst of a very bumpy ride we found out that there was an exchange of fire with the Malaysians and the Suluk invaders that have been occupying a nearby town. (You can read the story at http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/shooting-deaths-reported-at-lahad-datu-siege and http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/pm-no-more-negotiations-with-filipino-intruders/) So it’s been very tense around these areas. Lots of checkpoints during road travels and when we got back to town, all the shops were closed. Only a handful of restaurants were open and thankfully our favorite one was. But we’re now under tight security and no one is really supposed to go out.

Ok, so here’s my spiel on the whole thing.  I’ve grown up with the presence of tons of southern Filipinos over here. Most of them just want to find work and better pay than their country of origin. Unfortunately there is a terrorist/pirate group from the same area, the Abu Sayaaf, that love to terrorize the area, raiding not only the town, but also the surrounding islands for decades. So this is not new for us. It's quite laughable that this self-declared Sultan and his "royal army" are trying to "take back" their land. The Sultan isn't even here b/c he has diabetes and is lying in a hospital on dialysis. His brother, the "crown-prince", is in charge of the men that have invaded the territory.The fact that they think they have claims on Sabah is ridiculous. According to FMT, “The sultanate’s grounds for the claim is Sulu’s historical links to Sabah, once known as North Borneo.

Sabah was given to the sultanate of Sulu by the sultanate of Brunei due to the former’s help in quelling a rebellion during the 17th century.

In 1878, the sultanate of Sulu leased Sabah to the British North Borneo Company. Britain eventually annexed Sabah in 1946. The disputed territory was then turned over by Britain to the Federation of Malaysia in 1963.

Manila on its part reportedly said the sultanate’s condition is unacceptable.”

(- See more at: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/03/01/we-cannot-go-back-says-prince/#sthash.82ruBkt8.dpuf)

Everyone wants Sabah b/c we are so rich in resources here. We’ve had to defend this territory for decades and will probably still be defending it till the end of times. Just the facts of life, unfortunately.

So anyway, my aunt was bemoaning the fact that she hadn’t had lunch yet and then she was like, “Keri, we love you.” And then proceeded to tell me I was going to be the first to go if they demanded anything. Lol. Basically I am going to be offered as tribute if anything happens. =.= So if you don’t hear from me ever again, just know that’s the reason. Lol. Meanwhile, we’re still careening down the side of the mountain under rocky conditions. I swear we were going to die a few times. After my uncles were satisfied with whatever they were looking at…rocks, I believe, we headed back to town and saw that the shops were, indeed, all closed. Since then, we’ve basically be staying at home and chilling out. The fam bam has come around the table a few times, all on our electronic devices, trying to look up what we can find about the situation. 

 Today has been another long day of waiting, researching, and waiting some more. Life in these parts have resumed back to semi-normal, although there was a ban on the tourism and the islands today until this afternoon. No one was allowed to go to the islands today. We've been hearing conflicting things and the news isn't helpful either. I'm not too worried but please pray for us and everyone in this situation as things are a bit tense around here. Thanks! =)