Buddhas and buddleias

Day 9 Friday

Today we are to travel further inland to Sabah Agricultural Park.  We are not particularly fancying this, sounds too technical.  When we go down for breakfast, everything is laid out on the table for us instead of being kept hot on a buffet.  I have never had stone cold fried eggs before.  We ask for toast and it comes hot if a bit pale but we are happy.  It seems we are the first Westerners to stay here and they are really trying to keep us happy even if they don't know how.  

We make a short stop at the Buddhist Temple of the Goddess of Mercy.

Lynn and I attempt to get into the lotus position

In a previous life this goddess had been a male farmer.  His cattle were starving so he cut open his arteries to feed them his blood.  The cows survived but he died.  However in his next reincarnation 

he was born a woman who became the Goddess of Mercy.  

The Temple is fairly small with an alter inside and large murals on the outside walls depicting her life.

The goddess being born and growing up.

Fast forward to becoming a Goddess and Buddha

  There is a big gold statue in the gardens outside. 

 I took a photo of some dogs and for the first time ever a dog growled at me and bared her teeth.  But she was extremely thin and perhaps disappointed I had no food.  She could have had my cold egg had I known.

At the Agricultural Park I had a pleasant surprise In that it was really interesting.  We saw some bees being used in research programme.  It seems we have only one or two species of bees in the UK but they have eight in Borneo.  Some sting, some don't, some make honey, some don't.  When they puffed smoke on the bees it was not to make them sleepy as I thought.  It's to disguise the pheromones we give off which the soldier bees might pick up and attack us. 

We saw plants that are used against cancer in Borneo, a tree with lots of dangling ball shaped fruits called the cannon ball tree

  We smashed open one of the fruits and it had dark brown flesh inside which smelt really bad.  But we also found a tree whose flower smelt wonderful and was called the Chanel tree. The flower gardens were absolutely gorgeous, every colour of bougainvilleas, hibiscus (the natinal flower of Malaysia), orchids of every size, shape and colour and plants the size of small trees which are house plants in England. 

A few examples 

There was so much to see we had to trundle round in a little train

 We had a very nice meal featuring beef in coconut sauce at the patio restaurant.  Being a bit bored of melon surprise we bought a choccy lolly at the shop though I would have preferred my usual KitKat Cornetto

On the way back we stopped at the town market.  It was all food, either fresh or cooked on the spot chicken of beef satay, fish, fruit and veg, donuts and waffles, fruit drinks. 

 Everyone was very friendly and we were clearly a novelty with our white skin and yellow hair.  By the way the town, Keningau, is a corruption of the Malay word for cinnamon tree.

It has been very hot today and that combined with the fresh air all day means we are dead tired so are going to give the Peppermint lounge karaoke  a miss. I am sure they will miss us.......not.

Bring silly in the restaurant