to the land below the wind

golden week travelogue part 1 ~ kota kinabalu


being a malaysian, i've been to each states in the peninsular. somehow sabah and sarawak in borneo island escaped my radar, until this month. well actually we planned to go sipadan island but apparently the resort was fully booked, so we decided to go kota kinabalu instead.

we flew from singapore by silk air. now when i think about it, SGD350 fares sounds a bit expensive. oh well at least it was a full frill airline, which should not make me feel like a 2nd class citizen.

my first view of kota kinabalu

we touched down kota kinabalu international airport at almost noon. the airport was under upgrading but everything was straightforward and went on smoothly. i guess partly because there wasn't much crowd to begin with. i might be selfish but i would like the oxygen within 2 meters around me to only belong to me this week, so i must say so far so good.

the weather outside was wonderfully sunny with couple of clouds hanging in the otherwise clear blue sky of kota kinabalu. we bought the fixed rate RM20 town taxi coupons outside the terminal and off heading to king's park hotel.

by the time we were having our first glance outside the taxi window, i already forgot about silk air external power trip before we took off. i mean, really. that seemed like a world away now...

i prebooked this hotel from the net for RM128 per night for double occupancy. it's at the hill edge side of the town. still it's actually just a few blocks away from the sea front.

after checking in, we set our foot out of the hotel main door, took a deep breath and thought, kk town, here we come!

180 degrees view from Signal Hill

we could see people enjoying lazy afternoon fishing at the waterfront. while walking around the city, we also noticed this toilet direction signboard complete with the exact distance. i just thought it was unique.



this is the kota kinabalu state mosque. it's pretty out of town we had to take a short mini bus trip to get here.

from afar, the mosque looked nice. but a closer look revealed that proper maintanence had not been done. the building looked so worn-out, and to a certain extent, it looked abandoned.

late afternoon, we took a mini bus to tanjung aru beach. it's a very nice place just to chill-out. the restaurant by the beach was not very expensive too. we were hoping to see nice colourful sunset but there were too many clouds so it wasn't anything spectacular.

my only complaint, it was difficult to get out of this place. there were no public transport in sight at the entrance so we had to walk quite far outside to find the bus station.

kota belud

the next day, we took a cab to kota belud. it was sunday, and they have this tamu (open market) every sunday morning. kota belud is the main city of the bajau tribe, about 45 minutes drive away from kota kinabalu. the taxi driver charged RM15 per person for 4 passengers for a one way trip.

the tamu was just like the morning market in the peninsular, minus the backdrop of the majestic mount kinabalu of course. i was hoping to catch the bajau tribes donning their traditional costume riding their horses around, but either they were not there today, or they already left when we arrived. one thing that amused me though was that there were a lot of tabacco powder tradings, definitely not common elsewhere in malaysia.

we returned to kota kinabalu shortly after noon. after kota belud tamu, we decided to continue exploring the cultural side of the locals today, so we headed to sabah heritage museum.

frankly, i'm never a big fan of the museums. i always think it's just a short cut way of learning about whatever on display. plus, normally there are lots of facts cramped together which make you feel like living a school textbook.

the good thing about sabah heritage museum though, was that there were local people inside the various local house models. we even got to chat to some of them, and almost being offered their local home made liquor. we got to see some human skulls hanged on the roof too, although i did not know whether that was the real on or not.

we got back in time to catch the sunset from the waterfront.

at night, we went to sutera harbour magellan resort grand ballroom for sabah fest 2008. actually we only found out about this annual event from local newspaper that morning. it was a 2 day event, and tonight was the final closing night.







we paid RM30 for entrance, which was pretty worth it considering the colourful performances at such a grand ballroom. plus, at the end of ceremony, we got to join the dancers on stage to strut our stuff out in kadazan-dusun's way.

one of many thing's sabahan has to offer. but for tomorrow till the day after, we'd see what brunei has got to offer.



...ed