Kota Kinabalu is in Sabah (old North Borneo). Although I was brought up in West Malaysia, I had never been to East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak). We decided this year to visit Kota Kinabalu for some sight seeing and SCUBA diving. We flew from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu on Air Asia on the morning of June 30.
When we landed in Kota Kinabalu (KK), we took a taxi to our homestay in Tanjung Aru. Our homestay was a comfortable ensuite above a local traditional coffee shop. It was very conveniently located around many food stalls and just a fifteen minute walk to Tanjung Aru Beach.
Our club in Port Dickson was affiliated with the Kinabalu Yacht Club, and we took advantage of this by spending our evenings watching the sun set at the KK Yacht Club located in Tg Aru. The Tg Aru beach is a very popular spot, crowded with people who are there to swim, enjoy the sights and the many food stalls that fringe the beach.
Rhonda and I are both divers but had not dived since 2005. We heard that the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park is a diver’s paradise and booked a day of diving with a company called Scuba Junkie. After a refresher and checkout dive, we had two 50 minute dives in different areas of the park on July 1. Scuba Junkie, was very professional and we felt very safe diving with them after such a long layoff.
We filled the other two days we had in KK with a lot of walking and visits to museums and cultural centers. We found the KK museum and the Mari Mari cultural village to be very informative and interesting for our short visit.
Because of our time contraint we did not venture beyond KK to the site of Mt. Kinabalu or the many nature parks in Sabah. On our next trip to East Malaysia we shall try something new and head for Sandakan in Sarawak.
Educhirp 