Looking for Wild Men

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Oh wow! We’ve arrived in Sabah, Borneo, and it really is something. I can see why Pete and Jeanette love it so much (although I shall never know how you managed to avoid eating seafood Jeanette!)

We arrived in Kota Kinabalu (KK hereafter!) early this afternoon and quickly settled into our hotel, complete with doorman with a pith helmet, shorts and long socks. We then went off to find a laundry that could handle the rather huge pile of washing that had been accumulating! Luckily we managed to find somewhere that charges approx $1 per kilo, although the poor girl did look rather stunned when we loaded her counter up with carrier bags.

We walked down to the waterfront and found the most amazing market area with open air food stalls selling bbq fish, prawns (huge, huge ones), crabs and all sorts of good things. There was also an area selling the freshest seafood I’ve ever seen, they literally looked as if they’d been plucked straight out of the sea, and the colours of some of the fish had to be seen to be believed. There were a couple of stalls selling all manner of shellfish and seaweeds, which I assume were all edible (didn’t like to ask!). We meandered around for a while, and then decided to have a snack of fish and prawns, which ended up to be more of a feast!

Walking past the markets and the handicraft market (save that for another day), we got to the ‘waterfront’ which is a promenade area full of bars, all of which have front row seats for the spectacular sunsets for which KK is famous hereabouts. So we sipped on a drink and watched as the sky turned deep crimson and the sun dipped below the horizon - if that’s anything to go by, its gonna be a scorcher tomorrow!

A walk up through the town brought us to the Evening Food Stall area, which is full of seafood restaurants, with huge tanks full of shoals of fish and the biggest lobsters ever! There was even one tank with baby sharks in it! We had a beer whilst watching for which was the most popular stall, so we know where to go back to later in the week.

The night market and bar street led us nicely back to the hotel, with plenty of ideas for how we’re going to be spending our evenings whilst we’re here. There seem to be plenty of hotels and hostels here, but I can’t say we noticed many tourists whilst we were rambling round. KK looks to be an endearing place with many buildings only a couple of stories high, painted in some interesting colours.

Now a brief response to some comments that have been posted by the irreverent few to our ultra-serious travel journal ... sorry, we didn’t get to try the strawberry curry, but we’re sure they probably make it ... and yes, oops, the walking boots have been coming out less and less - we didn’t take account of the fact that my feet would swell up in the heat, so flip flops have been soooo much more comfortable! I am persevering (they cost a blinking fortune), especially on flight days because they also weigh a ton and I think we’ve already referred to our excess baggage...!!

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