Telupid

My room is finally ready, but for a little storage space, so I drove to town on Saturday morning and bought a new kitchen dresser. Furniture shops here are big warehouse type places, with a mass of dressers and wardrobes and shoe racks just piled in there, and it always takes a while to evaluate and choose the right piece. Thus it was that by the time I had chosen, paid, and given details for the delivery, the two foreign hitchhikers I saw on my way out had walked about half a kilometre further up the road, and were now sitting on top of their bags looking thoroughly wiped out by the draining heat of Borneo. Feeling a little bad, but not bad enough, I stopped at a kiosk down the road and bought a cold drink. And it was the coolness of the drink that tipped my guilt far enough to stop for them when I left the shop.

Hitchhikers 4 and 5 were Russian - nice guys, on a one-year trip around Asia - and they were going to Telupid. "Agh," I thought, "it's only 2pm, I'll be back by 4, I can do this favour for them." So in they jumped - one of them straight to sleep in the back, the other in the passenger seat to chat to me about Russia and Putin and Siberian winters. See, sometimes it's nice to be able to communicate with people you pick up!

I wondered aloud how they had gotten as far as Ranau, Sabahans not being the most likely people in the world to pick up a hitchhiker. He told me the first lady to pick them up had told them the same thing, and so had the second driver. I was the third leg, and they were obviously starting to be a little disbelieving of the fact that hitchhikers are distrusted in Sabah! It made me feel good - I already knew that Sabahans were the friendliest in the world, but I've had so many people tell me not to pick up hitchhikers that I was beginning to worry if they had trust issues.

Anyway, Telupid - which is a grim little dorp, and to which I shall not take you if you come to visit me, as it is honestly just a dirty marketplace on the side of the road to Sandakan - was, as expected, just over an hour away, a little longer than it would have taken me had I not been worried about throwing the guy in the back through the roof by bouncing too hard over the terrible roads. I left them there on the side of the road, with my phone number in case we were the only three drivers in Sabah that trusted hitchhikers and they needed help getting to their final destination of the Indonesian border in Tawau.

It was about five minutes on the road back to Ranau before I glanced down to see that terrifying little event: the fuel light flashing on. Mindful of the fact that there is a fuel station in Sandakan, and a fuel station in Ranau, and nothing in between, I started to worry. Thankfully, my mind was taken off the light several times on the journey. For instance, when one lorry with a maximum speed of 20kph overtook another lorry with a maximum speed of 19kph on a double white line on a blind rise. That was fun. Also, the scooter with two adults and a tiny baby on it that was so close to the truck in front that from my angle, it looked like his front wheel was underneath the back bumper. Oh, and the moron that decided only he was waiting to pass a lorry, and overtook 12, that's right, I counted them, twelve cars, on a double white line. That was a fun one, because when he tried to force his way in front of me, I could give him the finger. Fun fact: living in a conservative country gives a woman twice the impact when being outright rude to men. He eventually had to drop back,  pull in behind me and wait his turn. 

So apparently my car can travel, without aircon or stepping on the accelerator too hard, 73.4km on an empty tank. The reason I can be so precise is that the moment it cut out was as I pulled up to the fuel pump in Ranau.

And on the way home, I bought a fuel container which from now on will live in my car boot.