Kota Kinabalu

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We arranged for Jad (taxi driver) to pick us up from the Nak Hotel at 6.30am for our 8.15am Air Asia flight to Kota Kinabalu. Kota Kinabalu, formerly Jesselton, is the capital of Sabah state in Malaysia. The city is located on the northwest coast of Borneo facing the South China Sea. The Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park lies on one side and Mount Kinabalu, which gave the city its name, is nearby. On arrival at KK we got a taxi to Hotel Eden 54, we had booked this accomodation whilst in England. The hotel was lovely, nice big room and very friendly staff, who let us check in early. After checking in we decided to take a five minute walk to Jessleton harbour and have some lunch. We had lunch at a local coffee shop come noodle/rice takeaway/restaurant. We had a plate of 20p noodles and a cold coffee each. A cold coffee was becoming an addiction to Jane and she doesn't even like coffee! We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get a decent price for us to go white water rafting on the Padas River. We had told Fitty and Sian that we had wanted to do this and they had said they would like to come with us. We went to several tour operators who all started their pricing at MYR235, we eventually got the price down to MYR180 with Busat. We had arranged to meet Fitty and Sian at 4.00pm at Beach Street, as they were getting a later flight than us. Just before we were about to set off in search of Beach Street the heavens opened, luckily we had our £1.20 Disney ponchos that we had bought in Sandakan! So on went our posh ponchos and off we trotted, looking like complete muppets, but at least we were dry! The street was a five minute walk from our hotel and they were easily spotted sat having a drink. They were both still eager to book white water rafting if a little nervous and apprehensive. We eventually convinced them that it would be fine, but we decided to go with a little more expensive operator who would have safety canoes along side our raft. A quick phone call and we were all booked to go the following morning, we would be picked up at 8am. We spent a little time chatting about tomorrows trip before we decided to leave Fitty and Sian and go and find somewhere to eat. After spending most of our time eating either noodles or rice, we decided to have a change and go to Little Italy. This was an Italian restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet guidebook. We shared garlic dough balls and a fantastic pizza, such a nice change from the usual meals. After our meal we decided to have a little walk to an ice-cream parlour that we had spotted earlier, in one of the many shopping malls. After an hour and a half of looking and 5 shopping malls later and still no ice-cream we decided to give it up as a bad job! This must be the first time ever that Jane has not been able to sniff out ice-cream! We had a task for the following evening now though, surely we would find it tomorrow. After four hours of continuous rain the weather brightened up, not for long though, within an hour it was raining again. At 9pm we decided to head back to our hotel for an early night. Bring on white water rafting tomorrow, oh and the ice-cream!

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