Wednesday 16 July Snapshots and karaoke

This evening we had another excellent rally dinner by kind invitation of the mayor of , Sabah tourist office and the yacht club, the venue for the evening with about 40 cruisers and 40 local people.

It wasn't just a dinner. It was a seafood feast with prawns in three different ways (and I love prawns), fish, beef, chicken and unlimited beer and soft drinks. The top able with the mayor and his wife had tow bottles of whiskey brought by their guest from Taiwan and a very happy table it was too

After dinner the winners of the photo competition were announced. At the start of the Sail East Malaysia rally Sazli told us there was going to be a photograph competition to be judged when we reached Sandakan. Each boat was allowed to submit up to fifteen images and from these ten were chosen in each of the five categories for every guest to vote for with the addition of yellow dot. Normally I'm upset when I get spots but tonight the dots were yellow and stuck on my photos. Very unexpectedly I won best animal picture with a snapshot of Lionel Richie, the orang utan, best architecture with a 'ready for renovation' house and second runner up in rally life with a shot of our cricket game on the beach in Kapas. I was quite bowled over.

Prize given by Tengku Adlin

 

Lionel Ritchie (his name)

 

beach cricket in Kapas

 

ready for renovation

After the awards ceremony the eagerly awaited (by local people more than the cruisers I think) karaoke was fired up. There was a dash to be first on the microphone won by an Errol Brown lookalike who gave us some good ole rock 'n roll. The mayor sang a ballad. His wife a duet with another lady but the yachties were being polite and letting our hosts do all the work. High on my creative success and egged on by David we decided to be brave and give everyone nothing to aspire to – a rendition of We're All Going on a Sailing Holiday, a murdering of Cliff Richard's Summer Holiday. There were tears in the eyes of the audience. Not sure if these were from laughter or pain. Our many Australians later gave a spirited a capella of Waltzing Matilda.

It was a great night. Errol Brown was back later with a country and western for us to line dance and a jive number to test our fitness. We went home happy, full bunnies and for us, a personal invitation to stay with the Mayor and his wife next time we are in Sandakan. Guess they thought we were good entertainment value.