Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Singapore & Malaysia 2014
I'm busy going nowhere; isn't it just a crime?
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No early rise this morning! I got up around 8am and had breakfast in the Zest restaurant, which had an extensive Malaysian and Western buffet, complete with an egg station. After breakfast, I visited the in-house Mendara spa to book a massage for the afternoon, and thereafter spent a lazy (but enjoyable) morning lounging by the pool and reading. Dark clouds threatened to build on several occasions, but it came to nothing.
As I made solid progress with an e-book, my concentration was interrupted at one point by what sounded for all the world like a nearby vacuum cleaner. Needless to say, no such device could be seen, and I eventually realised that an electric pump was gradually breathing life into a large and very limp inflatable that was lying by the pool. As it was the one and only event taking place in the real world outside my book, I took a few photos to record the progress of the brightly coloured object as it slowly transformed itself into a slide. A sudden loud bang nearly caused me to leap off my lounger, while the note of the pump changed to indicate that it was no longer under any kind of strain. One of the joins on the surface of the inflatable had given way, causing a flurry of activity on mobile phones as ever more senior-looking managers were summoned to see the damage.
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| Watching a large inflatable take shape was about as eventful as it got ... | ... until BANG! Oh dear! | ||||
And that was the only minor drama all morning!
Eventually, I returned to Zest for a pizza lunch.
The
highlight of the afternoon was a relatively short, 50-minute
'Balinese' massage at the spa. Although it featured a heavier than
expected touch from the rather petite female therapist, it was a
perfectly pleasant and relaxing experience. This was followed -
hopefully not negating the benefits! - by a drink at the pool bar.
Much later, and wanting to make full use of my spacious quarters, I
repeated the previous day's experience of a room-service dinner.
In what seemed like a clear break with the previous weather pattern in both Singapore and Kuching, there hadn't been a drop of rain since my arrival in Miri.