Borneo: Kota Kinabalu 3-5 Mar 12

I flew into the capital of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, Kota Kinabalu, with Air Asia which is the Easyjet of Asia. It’s pretty minimal but who cares? It was on time with new planes and the pilot seemed to know what he was doing which is enough for me.  I'm nervous about flying in these parts because of the giant swirling monsoon storm clouds that make the planes flail about like a cork in the ocean, but my heart was my throat and my stomach in my shoes for only half the flight which wasn’t too bad.  It appeared as a stroke of surprising forplanning that I had  pre-ordered dinner when booking the flight and seeing as it was dinnertime I thought this showed my travel organisation at its best, although I was sure I hadn't ordered rubbery bits of gnarly chicken cartilage dripping in oily peanut sauce so I didn't get to eat anyway.

KK isn’t a big city, although it’s the biggest in Sabah. It has some sea front hotels, a jetty, some restaurants and then some bigger hotels and grander buildings on the outskirts of town. The capital of Sabah used to be Kudat when the British were controlling the area, and then it changed to Sandakan when the pirates and tribes of the Sulu Sea chased the Brits away from Kudat. Sandakan then got bombed in WW2 to show the Japanese who were occupying it a thing or two, so the capital got moved to KK. It’s a bit beat up and dirty and just a city I guess, the reason to come here is to climb Mount Kinabalu and to organise the rest of your stay in Sabah through tour operators. They say that you have to plan way in advance to do anything in Sabah and mainly go through tour operators, but I found you can knock a few hundred MYR off the package price of the climb if you try organise most of it yourself. There are a few people trying to hussle tourists in KK but nothing like big tourist traps like Bangkok. For instance the bus station is about 5km outside of town, why I don’t know, and the taxi drivers charge you a relatively hefty sum to get into town. The people are a bit used to tourists but I still got a few stares when I went for a wander through the Sunday market and to the rest of the town.

It was quite late when I landed, and after trying to find public transport of any description and failing, I got a taxi into town with another backpacker from Melbourne called Jeremy. The currency here is Malaysian Ringgat, and is around £2 for MR10. The taxi was around £6 between the two of us. We got dropped off in the dark in what looked like a roundabout in the middle of nowhere but turned out to be Australia Place, where most of the backpacker hostels are congregated down a side street. I found mine by just turning around and walking two steps. It was Bunibon Hostel, and was about £4 a night with free ‘breakfast’ which turned out to be five day old white bread with some fly flavoured jam. But that didn’t stop me from eating quite a few peanut butter sandwiches from there, free food is the best. Other than that it was okay, it had an outside area where you could sit and natter or watch telly in another language and there were a couple of guests there who were good fun, including a stark-raving-mad Swedish fishermen who entertained us with his travel tales and persistently tried to make us smoke his pot.

The rooms were tiny but had these huge bunk beds so you only had space to squeeze yourself in with your bag and hop into the top bunk, which wobbled so much when you moved it banged the wall and made all the other beds and no doubt the whole hostel shake so you really had to lie still. The aircon was in direct line with my head on the top bunk, so while I had icicles forming in my nostrils the rest of the room was a relatively bearable temperature. Not much sleep going on at Bunibon Hostel! The bathrooms were okay, unisex again and with one warm shower (usually the showers are cold in these tropical places).

I had a chat with some people there about climbing Mount Kinabalu which is the thing to do here. It’s the highest mountain in (South East Asia, not Asia!As my sister Bec pointed out to me!) at around 4000m and you climb for 6 hours, sleep a bit at the top and then in the early hours you climb a bit higher to see the sunrise. It sounded amazing but is a gruelling upward climb, and looking at the state of everyone who had done it, not being able to walk straight for a week afterwards and with wrecked back and knees, I thought that I shouldn’t risk it as I didn’t have any proper walking shoes only cheap flimsy tennis shoes from Primark. I would have done it in those but I got heavily warned! Also it was really expensive, at least MYR 800 which is £160.

The next day I went for a wander around the Sunday market. The streets were crammed with sunglasses, clothes, random electronics, sarongs, puppies in cages (I know, hate seeing that) and strong smelling food and other bits and pieces. I bought some sunglasses and a huge papaya and took that back to the hostel for breakfast. Jeremy had told me about an island in the Lonely Planet guide that was good for snorkelling, and avoiding all the tour operators that were happy to take MR150 to take you there, we found the jetty and managed to get over to the island for MR40 with snorkels and flippers included. The island Mamatik was one of five in close proximity to KK, and looked like a popular day trip destination for locals. It had a beach front off a small jetty and a restaurant with some holiday cabins and people swimming with clothes on (being a Muslim country), so we walked down the beach trying to find a quieter spot for snorkelling.

The water was so warm! We tried some different spots and found a few fish but nothing like the Lonely Planet describes as the best snorkelling off the KK islands. I went for a walking farther to find some different beaches and spots, but the rest of the islands small beaches’ were covered rubbish which was really sad.

We went for a walk through the jungle path and found ourselves right out the other side of the island. I thought it would be really fun to walk around the outside of the island on the rocks and shore instead of back through the jungle pass. I didn’t quite think this through because it turned out to be a tiny bit traitorous with slippery rocks and deep pools of sea with crabs and think forest, and we had to swing on vines and do some monkey manoeuvres to get across some of the rocks. Good fun though, eventually we made it back to the pier again, soaked through. I was later told that the biggest of the five islands is almost autonomous with shanty towns of Philippinos with no rubbish disposable infrastructure, and they just dump everything into the sea, such a shame.  The boat ride was really fun though and you could see KK in the distance with the misty jungles behind it.

We got back to the hostel and found the group making dinner. The guests consisted of an older French guy from Algiers who I think worked there, the mad Swedish boatmen, two Swedish girls, a Swiss guy, two Malaysian ladies who were friends of the Algerian, a proper English girl, my Australian buddy and me. The Swiss guy Felix had driven from Russia to Thailand, and then cycled all the way from Thailand through Indonesia with two friends.

We went out to find some food and found the night market in town which actually turned out to be the red light area, with some not very nice looking street food, and so walked further and found an outside food area with Chinese and Malaysian dishes. Here all the restaurants have a kitchen and then all the seating and everything else outside. They all have the pictures of the food displayed above the counter which is really handy if you can’t understand anything. We grabbed a seat in the square and had rice, some garlic-y oily spinach and some beef curry. It was quite tasty and really cheap, with drinks and some milky desert stuff it came to £3.75 each. Tipping isn’t the thing here but I did anyway, as we stayed there for ages eating and making merry. When walking back we came across a square where they had set a stage and an Asian band was entertaining the seated crowd with some keyboard pop, everyone bopping their heads.

I decided that night that I wouldn’t stay in KK any longer as I didn’t want to climb the mountain, and I wanted to get out the city as soon as I could. So I booked a flight to Sandakan which is on the East Coast of Borneo, to go to Sepilok where I had arranged to take a boat into the jungle for three days. The next morning I got a taxi to the airport with the Swedish girls who were going to the Phillipines and caught the Air Asia flight to Sandakan which was around £25. I could have taken a bus but that would have been a whole day of travelling and I didn’t want to waste time, and the flight was only 40min. I was really happy to get out of KK and the grubby hostel and to the Jungle!

Here are the Borneo photos.