Day 1&2 - Kota Kinabalu

Alright so here starts the saga of my 3 week holilday in Sabah, Borneo (East Malaysia).... I met my sister at the Singapore Airport where we boarded our next flight from Singapore to our destination, Kota Kinabalu. We (mostly my sister, she had been travelling for 30 hours!) were exhausted when we finally arrived in the city and just wanted to find a place to rest. The first hotel that we went to was a little too expensive for us and also posted day rates which was a bit suspicious so around the corner we found the Wah Mei where we stayed for the night. The rooms were decent, small, but clean. Here is a photo of the typical Malaysian bathroom with the shower over the toilet.

My sister still looking cute after all that travelling.

The view outside of our window looking out onto one of the main streets with partial ocean view, how luxurious... if you look really hard you can kind of see the sea at the end of the street.

We had lunch down at the harbour where all the ferries leave for the islands. Our first meal of Nasi Goreng (fried rice) and definately not the last. I think we ate enough fried rice and fried noodles on this trip to last a life time!

That night we went to the Filippino market to have a look around and fried noodles for dinner. I took some photos of the market, but they seem to have vanished into thin air. Or they could be on my sister's camera, who knows.... This wasn't exactly our most productive day, we basically ended up wandering around the city aimlessly and then around and around in circles trying to figure out what we were going to do and where to go for the next few days.

So a fresh start the next morning. We walked into an Indian restaurant to have some roti (Indian bread) for breakfast. It was a bit intimidating walking into the restaurant as there were 3 tables of men staring at us as we walked through. One of the workers directed us to the other side of the restaurant which was empty. Hmmm how peculiar, later I figured out that they must have been staring at us because I stupidly wore a dress with a very low cut front and was probably exposing the very little bit of cleavage that I have. Being a Muslim country, I suppose that was not a very wise choice of dress, although in my defense I did cover up my shoulders with a shawl.

The workers had a good laugh at us taking photos of our food. This was my first time eating roti, I had to capture the moment. Here is roti with egg and some dipping sauce. This was our usual breakfast food, variations of roti... roti with vegetables, roti with egg, plain roti, roti with banana etc. I was pretty sick of roti by the end of the trip.

After breakfast we headed straight for the tourism centre to try and make reservations for accomodations Mt. Kinabalu so that we could climb to the summit. At first they told us that everything was booked up til November!! We couldn't believe it, we were so disappointed. Oh but then all of the sudden the girl said that she could get us into a lodge for the night of June 5th so we snatched it up straight away and headed to the mountain headquarters.

Here we are making our way to the bus teminal to catch the number 10 bus up to Mount Kinabalu. I don't have a picture of me carrying my backpacks so just to show you what a flattering look being a 'backpacker' is, here is a picture of my sister hauling all her gear.

After a short 5 minute walk we arrived at the bus station in a state of confusion. Everyone was trying to get us into a taxi or nini bus or what ever they were driving up to the mountain. We tried to ask some people where to catch the bus and they all told us that there is no public transport (after the man at the hotel told us to catch the number 10 bus) and that we had to take a mini bus or taxi. How strange considering the man at the hotel told us to take the number 10 bus and our guide book says that there is a bus that leaves every hour. We ended up taking a mini bus up there with some other people because we were too stupid to see the public buses on the other side of the street.

Here I am guarding our luggage with my life, not trusting anyone here at this point and still confused. The mini buses won't leave until they are full, so far there were only 4 of us and they had to find at least 2 more people before they would leave. It finally filled up and we continued on our 2 hour journey up to the base of the mountain.