Kota Kinabalu, Borneo

Hello from Kota Kinabalu.  Hope all is good with you all, you will be glad to hear that we are still having a wonderful time on our trip and enjoying ourselves in SE Asia.

Kota Kinabalu (KK) is located on the west coast of Sabah, Borneo. The city lies on a narrow flatland between the Crocker Range to the east and the South China Sea to the west.
Five islands (Gaya, Sapi, Manukan, Sulug, Mamutik) are opposite the city, and their surrounding waters, are preserved as the Tunku Abdul National Park.

KK is known for its beautiful sunsets, which you can see from the above photo we took.  I promise that this photo has not been photoshopped (or photo fake as I like to call it) this is actually how it was and this wasnt even on a good day day either, as it was very cloudy, but yet it is still amazing.

We were due to spend nearly two weeks in KK as Andrew had planned to climb Mount Kinabalu and I was going to chill out by myself for a few days in a nice hotel.  However plans had to change as he started researching it, it dawned on him that he wasnt quite in peak physical condition to climb a mountain that is 4 times the size of Snowdon!  I think that when he read a quote from a successful marathon runner that it nearly killed him that he decided to park the thought.  So we have spent the last 12 days in KK enjoying what the city has to offer.

This is me on KK Esplanade

We went into a shopping mall to get some relief from the heat and there was  large group of people offering some free treatments - this was Andrew having the eye massage.  I didnt like it one bit they squirted this liquid right in your eyes, it was nasty.

They also offer sinus treatments but this involved shoving all sorts up your nose and cotton buds and then someone actually unblocks your nose and all this gunk drips out of it,  I politely declined and started heaving as snot started pouring out of peoples noses as shoppers walked by, yuck!!
 

This is Andrew donning the eye massage glasses which they give you to wear for 5 minutes after squirting that stuff in your eyes.  The treatment is meant to improve your eyes and make them shiny however I think it was a big con as they didnt look/feel any different.

We also both ended up having a really bad cold after this, I think it was all the germs flying round from other people having the sinus treatment.

The staff at our hotel told us about this open air seafood court - you can select the fish you want to eat from the many tanks which you can see from the photo below - there was so many different fish it was unbelievable, we had not heard of lots of the either. 

The freshest fish you can get really and it was lush.

This is me at the seafood court.  It is open air but then if it rains they have a roof which comes across, a bit like the Cardiff Millenium Stadium but on a slightly smaller scale!
















We were told by the locals to have the soft shell crab so that is what we did - this is the before and after shots! (sorry all you fish lovers).  The crabs are caught just as they have shedded their skin so when they are served you eat everything due to the softness of the skin and the crab itself, it was very nice indeed.

We went on a boat trip to Manukan Island.  We head to get a boat from the jetty, now, I am not scared of boats or water at all normally however we had the devil driving us I think that day, it was a speedboat and the driver drove like a nutter and the water was choppy.  I thought that we were going to tip over, it scared the life out of me and took about 2 hours to recover when I actually got to the island.  We had a lovely day snorkelling and chilling out by the water looking at fishies as there was lots.  It was a local holiday so the place it was very busy with locals enjoying their extra day off.

This is Manukan Island.

This is me looking a right idiot in a snorkel!  I had to put it on though as Andrew made me... I can hear you all laughing at me...

These are some of the fishies in the water

We didnt have a hotel for a couple of nights as ours was booked up so they recommended that we spend some time up in Mount Kinabalu National Park.  They sorted us out a lovely lodge called J Residence, just outside of the Park.  It was truly amazing and we had the most spectacular views.  The lodge itself was made of lot of glass windows (even the bathroom) so you could see the mountains and jungle from every angle.  It was a great place to recouperate from our colds and get some fresh air and away from the hot, stuffy city.

This is Andrew outside our lodge and you can see our room on the right.

We woke up the following morning to find lots of insects and bugs outside our room, we have never seen so many different colours... this is a moth which had landed on our room number.

This is Andrew enjoying the view from our balcony just after lunch, we threw a few games of scrabble after this picture was taking (I lost 3-0!! rubbish, but I have come back from worse leads before so rematch in the Phillipines me thinks)

This is Mount Kinabalu.  Andrew woke up at 6.30am and went for a 4 hour hike round the National Park (I was otherwise engaged at this ridiculous time of the morning which wont surprise you all).  

He saw lots of weird and wonderful flowers which you can see below and even got chased a little by a wild dog which was bit scary

This is Andrew doing his Bear Grylls impressions  ... luckily Andrew had the luxury of having our lovely lodge near by to relax, oh sorry that is what Bear Grylls does anway!

(dont worry, this was only on the balcony of our lodge and the drop was only 20ft or so, I can confirm that Andrew wasnt hurt in the creation of this blog)

This is picture is of me and Andrew on our balcony trying to film a video for the twins, we were trying to get the pose right but instead we get another picture of me looking stupid again!

Time to sign off now from Borneo, we are flying to the Phillipines tomorrow where we will spend 1 night in Manilla and then Cebu before heading to Malapascua Island for at least a week.  Hope you have enjoyed our Borneo and we will be in touch soon to update you on the Phillipines. Take care, Sar & Andrew xxxx

Have a look at our new world food blog website The Food Atlas.com for world food recipes and stories.
Are you interested in food recipes from around the world? Have a look at www.thefoodatlas.com
Computer speed problems? www.systemoptimizer.org