Kota Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu, in the Malaysian state of Sabah, is pretty far off the beaten track, but we’ve actually been here before. In 2001 Liz and I traveled to Malaysia to attend a wedding in peninsular Malaysia, and we took the opportunity to visit Borneo on that trip. There are now a number of large buildings that weren’t here before! We did recognize the beach we snorkeled at, though.

Rather than snorkel this time around we’d booked an excursion up to Kinabalu Park, about 5500’ up on the slopes of Mount Kinabalu. We didn’t dock until 8:00 and our excursion did not meet up until 9:15, so we had time to eat breakfast and get our things together. We had a very nice welcome on the dock from local dancers and musicians. We hopped on the bus for our lengthy drive to the park. Our first stop was at a market in a small town fairly high up the mountain. We were on a mission in this market as we had come up with an idea to get some friends we’d made on board little Easter gifts. We didn’t want anything big, just something we could decorate a bit and hand around. We found some little bongo drum souvenirs with “Sabah” on them and figured those would do. We also bought a bunch of bananas to munch on.

From the town it was another 30 minutes or so to the park. It’s a really beautiful setting in the rainforest on the slopes of the mountain. We were able to walk along a trail through the forest, checking out plants and trees and looking around for wildlife. The latter was in short supply, although I did get a couple of life birds: Chestnut-hooded Laughingthrush and Little Cuckoo-dove. The walk was wonderful, but far too short. As with several other excursions we would have gladly traded off some time at lunch for more time on the walk.

Lunch at a hotel followed. Our guide had called ahead to tell the facility that there were a handful of vegetarians coming, which was nice. The buffet had several vegetarian options already, though, so we kind of wound up with a double lunch. The grounds of the hotel were beautiful and had some very nice views of the surrounding mountains. There was also a wedding going on and it was fun to see the folks dressed up and celebrating.

Then it was time for the 2+ hour bus ride back to the ship. Overall this outing was a lot of travel for a little time in the rainforest. We’ve decided that going forward we’ll look closely at the specific excursion itineraries – which are, unfortunately, not available until the beginning of the cruise leg – and decide if we want to cancel our bookings and replace them with our own arrangements. The excursions are nearly all part of the cruise package we booked, so we’d only get onboard credit back. That’s not ideal, but we really want to maximize our time in these ports.Läs mer