Tuesday 4th – Saturday 8th June

Kota Kinabalu, SABAH (The Land Beneath the Wind), Malaysia

Monday and Tuesday
After a relaxed afternoon and a morning around Bandar Seri Begawan we got to the airport in good time for our flight. After 45 minutes sitting on the runway waiting for a missing passenger his luggage was found and removed from the flight. Twenty minutes later we arrived in Kota Kinabalu (KK) in Sabah (Malaysia).

We had the first night booked in a hotel where we ended up staying for our four nights in KK. It was called the Promenade Hotel. Not the sort of place I will be staying when I go travelling but very nice. Not just a generic nice hotel, but it had that wee touch above. At about eleven pounds a night the hotel was not exorbitant either!!! The staff were very friendly and we had an extra-friendly doorman who was dressed in a shiny green outfit with a headscarf that looked liked a fancily folded napkin. He kept us up to date on all the World Cup scores after finding out that we were supporting Ireland.


On Wednesday we wandered along through the Filipino, food and fish markets by the harbour on our way to the buses. We found where the local buses congregated under a row of trees opposite the GPO. Trees become so much more important when you are in heat. There is a welcome drop of temperature in the shade they bless with. We went out to Sabah State museum. A fifteen minute and 50 sen (10p) bus ride away. The museum is set in lovely gardens full of examples of rainforest vegetation and with examples of traditional houses built out of bamboo around a little lake. The exhibition centre housed a variety of sections including a history Sabah; an ethnography section that included skulls from headhunter tribes; traditional artefacts including household items as well as weapons and musical instruments; traditional costumes and a small section of traditional and contemporary art.

Mobile phones are everywhere here. It is slightly bizarre to hear the same ringtones as at home. I have found myself hearing a text message coming through and though knowing I am not using my phone here still registering a trigger in my brain that the sound sets off. A kid was sat at the museum canteen playing with ringtones for over an hour. Some things transcend national boundaries.

We returned to the hotel to discover the swimming pool, sauna and jacuzzi.


Thursday morning our guide collected us at 7.30am. We were expecting a minibus and a group but it was to be just Patrick (our guide) and us in a car. It made for a very flexible and relaxed trip. Despite his name he has no Irish roots, just Chinese and native Sabah heritage. He turned out to be a great guide. He was very informative, chatty, patient and accommodating. Once he realised that I wanted to stop for a few photos he even started stopping at various places and saying “Photograph Jayne?”

We stopped at a suspension bridge, a local vegetable market village and several vantage points for a good unclouded view of Mount Kinabalu on our way to Poring Springs. All of these places are within the vast 750 square kilometres of Kinabalu National Park. We called into a conservation area where the milk Patrick had got us to buy was used to call Suzie and Vera down to visit us. They are two young orangutans. We could hear them swinging through the trees to come and see us and get their milk and fruit. After finishing hers Suzie reached out and was pulling my hand wanting to play! It was great.

At Poring Springs I went up to the canopy walk. You climb a hill through rainforest to get to the canopy walkway which is a secure but swinging one plank wide walkway through trees in the canopy of the rainforest (surprisingly enough!). A great place for a view over the top of the rainforest. After getting very sticky on the canopy walk it was a welcome relief to get into the Japanese style thermal baths of Poring Springs to cool off and freshen up. The sulphurous hot spring is piped to individual wee baths/pools where you can sit and soak.

We had a delicious curry lunch and then headed to the Mount Kinabalu Park entrance where the 100 climbers permitted on the mountain each day start the two day climb of Mount Kinabalu. We were happy to just see and photograph the highest peak in South East Asia. At 4101m it is half the height of Mount Everest. Here we were taken on a half hour tour around a plant conservation/research garden. Some of the plants were used in traditional medicine and we saw a few of the 1500 varieties of wild orchid (one that can fetch US$1000 and one the size of a pin head). My favourites I think were the pitcher plants. I like their form. The largest ones of these can hold up to three litres.

It rained on our way back and Mount Kinabalu was surrounded in swirling wreaths of cloud. We saw a great storm over KK as the car climbed back down the road that had taken us up into the park.

The same wee band as every night were playing in the hotel bar with an oriental flavoured rendition of western hits from the 60s with a couple Corrs songs mixed in.


Friday we got a boat to Sapi Island, one of the five islands in the Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park. We had a very relaxing day lying on the beach and snorkelling in the sea. I haven’t done a lot of snorkelling but this was the best I’ve ever done. There was a lot of interesting coral but it was the fish that were really amazing. A beautiful one that was pink and green and blue whose colours would be gaudy anywhere else; stripy black and white ones; shiny blue ones and black and white ones with a big yellow strip and a floaty fin. Just out past the coral there were shoals of fish that were all around. It felt like I was inside one of those paperweights with the snow shaken up and sparkling all around me.

It was amusing to watch the tour groups of Japanese tourists who were really enjoying the snorkelling but looking rather humorous for they all kept their life jackets on. This not only meant that there were all these matching little jackets and bodies floating around in the sea, but they kept them on while walking around the beach too. It was the matching bags or hats or something phenomenon of tour operators!

There were also some monkeys on the beach. The interest or novelty factor soon turned to nuisance. They stole my biscuits while I was away and poor Priscilla was trying to scare them off. They were in a gang of about 12 and quite aggressive and were not scared of any of the tourists. When a couple of the local guys came along though they backed off very quickly. Fascinating.

It rained on our way back to the mainland. It’s not a very long trip but they managed to run out of petrol. There we were. Adrift in the South China Sea! A passing boat let them siphon some fuel to get us back to shore.

We returned to Jothy’s Banana Leaf restaurant and had a delicious curry served on a banana leaf.


Saturday was taken up with shopping a little in the markets. Little knick knacks for pressies as well as the requisite little treat for yourself! We then spent our last couple hours at the swimming pool before heading to the airport.