We arrived in Kota Kinabulu or KK as it is known locally, after a very long 12-14 hour coach ride! during which we had to change buses twice and a local man hid in the toilet of the coach to avoid the transport authorities (rather him than me as it stunk REALLY badly)
Once we got off that coach/bus we realised we needed to walk to another place to catch a 'local' bus to get into the city centre. We found this and after paying 25p for the ride we didn't moan but we soon realised we had been tricked when we realised it was a pimped out private bus with home made speakers and it started pumping out Malaysian hard rock - and in case that didn't give it away we saw the real 'local' bus pass us several times along the way.
Anyhow we made it safely into the city and made our way to the highly recommended place in the rough guide book only to realise it was a complete dive, and after a bit of a walk in 33 degrees we found another place that was a lot cleaner and nicer (even if the rooms for 8 people where actually only big enough for 3!
We then set about exploring KK and what it had to offer - we had heard there was an amazing curry house in the city that did curries for 2 quid so we made our way over there in the evening only to find out it was Father's Day and everything we had ordered was sold out! fortunately we found another place that was equally as nice (if a bit more expensive) on the water front and filled ourselves on curry.
The next morning we headed to the near by islands to top up our tans and have a little snorkel around - the islands themselves are amazing and we had a nice morning on the beach until it reached about 12pm and it was too hot to do anything at all! so we headed back to escape the midday heat. that evening we decided to try and find the KK night life which is pretty non existent or at least it was at this time of year, we stumbled across a bar called BED which stood for best entertainment destination and despite there only being 5 people in the place there was a band playing who where really good! They sat the 3 white people at the bar and used us to get other people to come in and within an hour of us getting there the place was rammed. The drinks where pretty pricey but after Leanne and Amy bought a cocktail each, they where given free drinks to stay in the bar as they do not get many white women in there - so by the time we left they had obviously had a few too many, which made for a interesting walk home!
The next day I left Leanne and Amy to explore the smelly markets while I went for a walk and enjoyed a few coffee's out of the heat, we then decided to go to a fresh seafood restaurant for dinner where I had a mantis prawn and the girls had an array of cockles, mussells and I think they where sea snails!
We then hired a car and decided to drive to 'the tip of Borneo' which is near a town called Kudat and is Borneo's most Northerly point - there where amazing beaches and not really a person in sight - in the town itself there was a massive laughing Buddha statue which brought us great amusement.
We tried to make it to Mt.Kinabulu that night but it was a bit too far and after getting slightly lost we ended up bedding down in a town called Kota Belud - the people where really friendly to us and I think we where the only white people most of them had ever seen. The next day we made it to Mt.Kinabulu and found a nice guesthouse on the mountain side before we went to the national park to enjoy the views of the mountain. The girls went for a little trek but where disappointed not to see as good views of the mountain as they where hoping. We then went to explore another local town called Ranau, where again we where the only white people a lot of the locals had seen at least for a while. We went to a local restaurant and the owner welcomed us with open arms and made us some very tasty meals so we where all happy.
We then went to return the hire car to the train station and as we where almost there a guy on a scooter hit us and marked the back parking light! but luckily the woman from the company didn't see it and we got our full deposit back.
We then sat in the station cafe waiting for the afternoon train to Beaufort, once we where on the train all the locals where staring and probably asking why we where on the train.
We arrived in Beaufort which is basically a small town with a huge Mosque! we found somewhere to stay as again it was incredibly hot, the girls in our hotel had adopted the American way of speaking English and we had a good laugh with them. We ate at the best little local Chinese restaurant and enjoyed a few beers for about 3-4 quid each! We then retired for the evening as we had to get up early to catch the coach to Brunei.
So obviously next stop Brunei....
To see our photo's from KK and around please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/KotaKinabuluMalaysianBorneo19thTo23rdJune2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCJWQx5P60uy15QE#
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