1/11- Kota Kinabalu

It is a beautiful sunny – and hot – day outside as we sail into Kota Kinabalu.  The captain announced this morning that we will have a surprise overnight here in this Malaysian port due to a ferocious storm in the S. China sea. The storm lies between us and Nha Trang, so sadly, our port call in Nha Trang has been cancelled.  The trip to Nha Trang would be too “uncomfortable” for us, and the water so rough once we arrived, that the ship would not be able to operate the tenders.  So two days in Kota Kinabalu.  We have our first half day planned, but not the 2nd, so we will see what our options will be to try to get to Mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain south of the Himalayas.

Sailing in is lovely, as we navigate between hilly islands outside the bay.

As is par for the course with this ship, all the itineraries and the captain say we will be docking at noon.  The Patter (the daily agenda) and the CD say we will be docking around 12:30, and the gangway will be congested and busy with long lines for the first 45 minutes after we dock.  Sigh.  This is pretty consistent with the first leg of this cruise.  The information is totally confusing and contradictory – and typically not correct.  We have never encountered congested gangways, and have always docked or tendered as stated in the itinerary.  It’s just frustrating the amount of mis-information they dole out here. 

Today we are docked at a rather commercial port about 2 miles from the Central downtown area.  There is a shuttle we can take for $16US each – but it doesn’t begin operating until 1:30, and once we get the information we find that the shuttle only takes you 1 mile into town, dropping you at some mall complex that isn’t anywhere close to the Central Markets, which is where we are planning to go.  We have a whole walk planned that actually ends at the markets, but we figure we can find a taxi into town for way less than the shuttle and then do the walk in reverse.

As it turns out, we do just that.  We are – as usual – one of the first independent guests off the ship and walk out into a morass of Taxi driver hawkers.  The first guy leads us all the way to his dilapidated car before finally telling us it will cost $10US (or about 40 ringgits) to get to the markets.  We say no, and he won’t negotiate, so we move on.  Another driver comes up, and we manage to negotiate down to 30 ringgits for the 2 mile – in a much better vehicle with good A/C.  As we drive through the traffic clogged streets, our driver, Mr. Hamid, gives us a little bit of information on the town and talks about city tours and other places he can take us.  We ask about Mt. Kinabalu tomorrow – and strike a deal with him to take us to the Mountain and the Poring Hot springs (his suggestion, or insistence really) for 400 ringgets (100USD).  He gives us his card, we take his picture to remember what he looks like, and agree to meet in the morning at 7:30.

Mr. Hamid drops us at the Fillipino market, where we wander a bit, and get accosted by the belt and sunglass street hawkers.  They are persistent little buggars!  Ed finally strikes a deal with one guy for 2 pairs of sunglasses for 30 ringgits (after the guy started at 150 ringgits for 1 pair – does anyone really pay that?  Crazy!).  He kept telling Ed he just wanted to go home, and Ed said he could go home if he sold him the sunglasses for 15 ringgits (thus, 30 for 2!).  Finally we pocket the glasses – which we needed because one of Ed’s pairs broke in Singapore) and head through the stalls of souvenirs and crafts that aren’t really appealing to us.

The markets back up to the bay where there are a host of different ships moored, making for some wonderful photo taking….

Reversing course, we walk through the back of the market to the central market and wander though stall after stall of gorgeous produce and snacks. This place is huge!  You could stroll for hours just trying to take it all in.

We’re done relatively quickly with our exploration.  It is too frustrating,walking past food you can’t buy.  So we strike off out of the market to conduct our little city walking tour. I had mapped out a route from the port, but as Mr. Hamid drove us into town, we had already passed 2 of the stops – the tourist office (a nice piece of old architecture) and the Graffiti corner – which sounded much better than it actually looked (very glad we didn’t walk all the way over there – that would have been a disappointment). This meant we had less ground to cover, which was good in this heat and humidity.  As it turned out, the city walk was much shorter than anticipated.  Right away we found the war memorial dedicated to the Australians who died fighting for Borneo in the 2nd world located in the little strip park running down the middle of the main road…

…then moved through the City Gate and on to the Giant Egret statue in the traffic circle…

….past the governmental building with the cool Christmas tree made up entirely of plastic bottles.  They even made the flower ornaments out of the cut up bottles and caps….

…and finally to the Atkinson Clock tower, the oldest structure still standing in the city.  Built in 1905 completely out of wood with no nails holding it together, it was dedicated to the memory of Francis George Atkinson, a popular district officer at the time who died at the age of 28 from Borneo Fever. 

As an added bonus, the stairs leading up to the clock tower are pretty interesting too – each riser painted to make the staircase look like climbing flowers.

 

Nice little tour.  And by little, I mean short.  It took maybe 15 minutes total.  Hmmm…what do we do now?  Well, we can explore the city a bit and look for the “new super market” Mr. Hamid pointed out to us.  So we wander down the increasingly hot streets of Kota Kinabalu, heading in the basic direction of the water front.  We pass little alleyways filled with clothing shops under tents and open air restaurants, and finally end up at the Api Api center (we think) looking for the supermarket and this restobar I had found online – this place is totally Halal and finding a restaurant that has alcohol is pretty darn difficult.

It’s starting to rain, so we stop at one of the malls to see if there is anything there and it is deserted.  Barely a retail shop open in 4 floors.  It was pretty sad.  Yet across the street there is a thriving mall which we visit and tap into their free wifi only to find the restobar we were searching for didn’t open for another 2 hours.  Hmmmm…..Google to the rescue.  We found an Irish bar a few blocks away on the waterfront.  By now it has stopped raining, so we venture out through the wet streets, passing one of the ubiquitous seafood restaurants where you pick your seafood from the tanks and the restaurant cooks it to your specification.

 

We would have loved to have had lunch there, but we arrived too late for that.  Oh well, them’s the breaks.  Moving forward we crossed over to the waterfront and found the bar exactly as Google showed on the map.  Success. And double success – it is air conditioned.  Yay.  It was a cute little quirky place with all those silly sayings posted on the walls and over the bar.  We felt right at home and had some fairly pricey beer and wine, caught up on our emails and just relaxed for a while in the cool barroom. 

As we were getting ready to leave, the skies opened up.  We hung out at the front window for a while until the rain tapered a bit, then made our way back to the front of the mall and hailed a taxi which cost us only 20 ringgits to get back to the ship.  Nice!  It was a quick day outside, but we accomplished what we wanted and looked forward to tomorrow’s adventure in the mountains.