Blogs from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, Asia - page 6

Travel blog ep. 2 Kota Kinabalu is the capital city of Sabah. The British called it Jesselton, but with independence it has become the 'City of Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in SE Asia at 4095 m. Mount Kinabalu was formerly called 'Kina Balu' which means "new Chinese'in the native language because the Chinese saw it from the sea and were attracted to climb it, whereas the natives considered it a sacred place of spirits and did not climb. Kota kinabalu is a bustling city with rapidly expanding suburban tentacles stretching into the reclaimed sea and rice paddies. The common housing is rows of terraces, each double story with lounge dining room, kitchen and toilet below, topped by two or three bedrooms and a bathroom. The laundry is often outside under a veranda. Floors are tiled and ... read more

A reader of my blog recently pointed out that I do not provide much useful information. So here goes: The airport bus from Kota Kinabalu airport does not go into the city of Kota Kinabalu. It parks up in a muddy field station on the outskirts of the city. This is somewhat unwelcome if you have spent the previous night on the metal chairs of the KL Low Cost Carrier Terminal before the early morning flight and then waited for an hour on the KK terminal steps for said bus to arrive. The expected saving of £2.80 did not materialize as I decided to cast my principles to the wind and spent £2 on a taxi for the remaining few kilometers into town. Kota Kinabalu is a pleasant and compact seafront city. The capital of the ... read more

I had always wanted to see the Iban tribes in Borneo and decided to fly to Kota Kinibalu (KK), Borneo for a long weekend trip in February 2012. Unfortunately, I was not well prepared; other than my flight and hotel, I hadn’t made any other arrangement as I was on a business trip prior to my departure and the repetitive emails sent to a travel agent was not properly attended. I must have taken it for granted as when I travel in other South East Asia countries, it was quite easy to rent a car with a driver at the airport. To my surprise, I could not find any in KK! I then realised I was in Malaysia where labor is in shortage. Anyhow, I took cab going to Novotel, a newly opened hotel at the ... read more

Apologies in advance for the length of this blog. I'm 2 countries behind! So picking up where the last blog left off - Singapore was so cool! We only stayed for two full days because it was crazy expensive for those on a backpacker budget. Saying that, we decided to do the expensive stuff! We began our sight-seeing at the National Singapore Museum where answering 'yes' to the assumed question, 'you're both students?' gave us free entry! Result! We started with a gallery exhibiting a Singaporean artist's work then made our way through the longest audio guided tour in the world. We went through Singapore's entire history and it took FOREVER. It's impossible to stay riveted for that long but I tried my best. It was very in depth, looking at periods of history as short ... read more

It is time for another small update from our experiences in Asia. After fantastic experiences in the nature of Borneo, we finished off with two days in Kota Kinabalu. Once again we found the fantastic roti canai in the Indian restaurants. We had nice shopping centers, where we enjoyed a nice trip to the cinema in air condition. The movie “Side effect” is highly recommended. As an end to our Borneo chapter we had to make a visit to the Tunku Abdul Rahman Nationalpark which consists of a few idyllic islands with some decent snorkeling opportunities. On the beach we briefly gave a thought to the harsh Danish winter, but fortunately we soon came back to the reality. After Borneo we had two days in Singapore. We find Singapore a great city. We enjoy walking around ... read more