Ara Dinawan Island, Sabah - Day 1
After more than six months without a real break, finally we get to go on a weekend getaway! So I drove my car to Beringgis Seafood Restaurant located in Kinarut, around 25 minutes drive from Kota Kinabalu International Airport. There's a small jetty beside the seafood restaurant. You can park your car at the open space car park right beside the seafood restaurant. We reached there around 2pm and waited for our speed boat to depart at 2.30pm. First speed boat departed at 2.20pm since all the guest already arrived. However, we have to wait until 2.40pm for a couple who arrived late. In total, there's 9 of us including the resort owner's son named Johnny. He's a very nice and friendly person who kept on asking how's everything throughout our stay at Ara Dinawan Island.
It's a smooth boat ride and 10 minutes later we have arrived at Ara Dinawan Island. The water is clean but not as clear as Mantanani Island. When we arrived on the Island, none of the resort staff wore any mask. They served us a welcome drink and gave us a short briefing. Johnny showed us to our tented villa and guess what! This is our first time glamping. Electricity only available from 3pm to 9am and basically they are using generator to power up our tented villa. The resort itself is using solar power during the daytime.
They served simple tea break - curry puffs with free flow of coffee and tea at 3.30pm. The owner has 4 dogs named Shogun, Ali, Roger and Jeelong. Shogun is a playful black German Shepherd who loves to play with sand and water. On the other hand, Ali the Dobermann might look aggressive and ferocious but in actual fact it's very obedient. Roger and Jeelong are siblings but Jeelong has some vision problem. Hence, don't get scared if he suddenly came barking at you as if you are an intruder.
That happened to me when I was strolling along the beach after tea break. Out of nowhere Jeelong came running towards my direction together with Roger, ferociously barking at me. I got a shock but stood still and ignored them without looking at their eyes. By then, Jeelong realized he made a mistake and quickly ran back to where he came from. Basically Roger just followed Jeelong around. Phew! Glad that they didn't attack me.
My partner went for shore snorkeling while I relax in a hammock. We waited until 5.30pm for the sunset tour at secret beach. Two of the resort staff brought us to the other side of the island. It's about 15 minutes walk and along the way we need to climb over rocky areas and pass through a forest. Too bad the weather was a bit cloudy. We can only see the rays of sunlight creeping through the gloomy clouds. After the sun had set, all of us quickly walked back to our resort before it gets dark.
We had our dinner at 7.10pm. They served pineapple fried rice, spicy wedges, pandan chicken, Vietnamese spring roll, tom yum soup and pancake with ice cream as our dessert. Pandan chicken wasn't flavourful enough, wedges was too spicy for me and the Vietnamese roll was stuffed with thick strips of carrots. Apart from that, it's kinda sad that the served us melted ice cream and not to mentioned the pancake was tasteless. Overall, we're not impressed with the food. Luckily I brought some snacks otherwise we would have gotten very hungry at night. Bear in mind that there's no convenience shop. There's only sun, sea, sand and your tented villa!
At night they have this bonfire activity but seems that nobody participate in it. I sat in front of our tent at night, stared into the sky and enjoy the night breeze. Too bad there's tree obstructing my sky view. Later that night while I was lazing on my bed, I heard my partner frantically calling me from outside of our tent "the dog is here... the dog is here...". Hahaha... Seems that Ali did his night patrol and licked my partner's leg before disappearing into the darkness. My partner hated it but I'll be on cloud nine if Ali did the same thing to me... :)
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