We were only a short while in Beaufort. It is so small that it takes about five minutes to drive across the entire town but it is not as small as Weston town which consists of about seven shophouses and a mini school. During the car ride, I quickly snapped a photo to prove that we were there once.
At Beaufort, Mr Tay took us to a busy restaurant that serves scrumptious roast pork (Char Siew and Siew Yok). It was belly smacking good. Mr Tay said hello to a lot of people whom he knew while Nic and I were busy eating up our food.
After lunch, it is another two hour ride back to Kota Kinabalu. After about 24 hours with us, Mr Tay still hadn’t run out of fascinating stories to enthrall us for the journey home. By this time, we had gotten past stories of his childhood at Weston to his adult experiences in London. One-third of the stories are amazing descriptions of food that he’d savoured. :lol:
We were supposed to pick up a rental car at Kota Kinabalu and head off for the mountain, but we enjoyed Mr Tay’s company so much that we decided to cling on to him until late evening.
He took us to his house which he had designed himself. We really love his airy high ceilings. Nic love the entire house.
My favourite part is the open platform on the second floor. This gives me a good glimpse into Mr Tay’s heart. He explained that he created the open platform as a place for his children to work and play so that they would not be closed up in their rooms. This way, he will be able to build a relationship with them and communicate even when he is downstairs.
I think Nic is most impressed by Mr Tay’s extensive CD collection. We lazed on his couch, Nic had his eyes closed as he listened attentively to the jazz music while I busied myself browsing through the gourmet food magazines piled on the coffee table.
We decided to ask for our rental car to be delivered directly to Mr Tay’s home so that we would not have to get out to collect it.
This rental car company is an excellent recommendation from the staff at Borneo Backpackers. It costs only RM140 per day for a Proton Wira Automatic after heavy negotiation. Since the company does not have a city location, their service includes delivery of the car to where ever you like as long as it is in Kota Kinabalu.
For RM20 extra, we could even drop off the car at the airport before flying off which is what we did. Interestingly, all I got from Borneo Backpackers is a mobile phone number to book this service. I still do not know the name of the company or the people behind it.
After receiving the car at 7pm, we drove out with our new car to the nearby pub for karaoke!
It turns out that both Nic and Mr Tay have voices that are truly crowd-stopping. Nic sang from Air Supply’s repertoire and pulled through the high notes successfully. Meanwhile, Mr Tay sang AND danced beautifully from Frank Sinatra’s collection. We saw many people gawking at him in unbelief. Truth be told, we ourselves were gawking at him in unbelief.
Even though we had such a fun time, we left the Karaoke early as we didn’t want to drive too late in the night on an unfamiliar road to Mount Kinabalu.
