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Entering Sabah
Dec. 17th, 2017 11:11 pmI woke up quite early on Thursday morning, with my flight out of Cambodia shortly after 8am. It wasn’t much of a struggle, on account of having to be up at similar times or earlier over the preceding two days, and soon I was aboard a tuk-tuk bouncing towards the airport. There, I had additional document checks for reasons which would only become clear when I arrived in Kota Kinabalu, the main city in the Sabah region of Borneo. I was flying there via KL which meant two flights taking up most of the day, but at least it afforded me to update my journal. Indeed I sat for quite a while at the far end of KL airport too, the quiet there being conducive to mr writing, so I got a fair amount done. There were seating issues on both flights - a group of Chinese people had sat around and in my seats on the KL-bound flight and refused to move while heading to KK, I think I was sat between a father and his two daughters, who kept looking at me and giggling quite often. It was all a little disconcerting. I also got the delight of two pasta meals again, which I’m assuming I get free for having hold luggage. The additional food is welcome but I’ve done a lot of flights and the same thing over and over is getting tiring, particularly as it’s not even local cuisine. Still, free food is free food I guess.
I didn’t realise that you had to get your passport stamped when entering Sabah from West Malaysia, which I imagine explains the additional checks at the airport. The queue wasn’t particularly lengthy though and I was delighted to receive a new stamp in my passport. Unfortunately none of my friends in Kota Kinabalu could pick me up from the airport and the hotel only did a shuttle service to the airport for some reason, not from it, leaving me to the mercy of the local taxi drivers. Had I known the airport bus would have stopped at the square opposite my hotel, I may have taken that, but getting a taxi from the official booth proved easy enough and pretty soon we were battling through the rush hour traffic on our way to the hotel. While we are traveling, the first few spots of rain started to fall and it soon turned into a deluge - a delight that was going to continue for the rest of the evening. This scuppered my plans somewhat as the local furs, understandably, didn’t want to drive in the torrents. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as staring out of your hotel window after arriving in a new place, desperate to explore, yet unable to do so because of the conditions. Still, I suppose it did enable me to update my journal and I was constantly in contact with Leon, with whom I was due to meet, to check the ongoing viability of liaison. I had arrived at my hotel room at around 5:30pm and later he set a deadline of 9pm for the weather to improve, which it didn’t seem like doing for quite some time. Fortunately, literally five minutes before the self-imposed deadline, the rain did ease slightly, enough to grab some food at least. I was ravenous and with no on-site restaurant at the hotel, I knew I would have to go out and get something, so a lift to anywhere was most welcome. However, due to preparation time and where he lived, it wasn’t until nearer 10pm when I jumped into his car and finally headed off to do some belated exploring.
It was still raining pretty heavily but at least it was drivable. Another fur I knew from FURUM, Gerard, also joined us with the plan to head to Boreno’s for some food. This is a local fried chicken fast food chain, catering to the love of this cuisine across the region. It’s not particularly exotic but it is a local favourite - particularly of the furs - and I was just happy to eat anything. I ordered half a chicken meal, which came with fries and coleslaw, with the latter in particular beings quite divine. The chicken was well cooked too, with a rich crispy coating which wasn’t too oily and tender hot meat inside. I had to wait eighteen minutes for the food though - far longer than my friends’ more simple meals - but we weren’t in any real rush and had a lot to catch up on. Indeed we stayed here for around an hour and a half, just chilling and planning my two full days in the city. Leon got in touch with another fur called Komo, who is a local taxi driver, and it turned out he could show me around on the Friday while everyone was at work. This turned out to be a huge plus and had I known I would have access to a car, I would have likely stayed in the city longer. Something to know for next time, and it was great having company for a day I thought I was going to be alone. We arranged for him to pick me up at my hotel at 9am the following morning and with this appointment to meet and our meals devoured, Leon dropped me off at my accommodation around midnight so I could get some rest. It was still raining.
Komo was slightly late picking me up the next day, but it wasn’t tragically, and by 9:30am we were exploring the city. Our first stop was breakfast, and we went to a place around the corner called Yee Fung, which had coincidentally been recommended to me by the nice chap behind the hotel reception desk the night before. It was very busy - often a sign of a good place - and soon I was enjoying laksa, a chilli infused noodle broth with prawns, chicken skin and vermicelli noodles. The balance of flavours was very good, with a spicy yet creamy combination to the soup making it one of the best meals I had on my trip. It was still a little strange to me eating such food for breakfast, but it’s s common thing in SE Asia and I’m not one to argue against tradition. I could certainly see why the place was so highly regarded though.
After breakfast, we decided to walk around the rather compact city centre, seeing a number of civic sights as we did. This included a number of shopping malls - no real surprise in this part of the world - along with the 0km marker for the whole of Sabah. The war memorial dedicated to the Australians who lost their lives in the Second World War fighting against the Japanese on the island, along with the Malays who lost in the war against Indonesia in the Sixties was of particular interest. We also saw someone in a monkey costume being bundled into a van by a group of elderly people wearing Santa hats outside a rather swish looking boutique hotel. I was hoping to take a picture but alas he had taken his head off before I had chance to cross the road to meet him. To be fair it was rather hot and it was only mid-morning. As you would expect, KK is the gateway to Borneo so there are a large number of concessions offering jungle tours for tourists and the like. With my pathological fear of snakes, alas this wasn’t really an option for me so I contented myself with a trip to the city market instead. There are a number of nice murals painted on the stairs of a rather utilitarian road bridge traversing the main road between the city centre and the waterfront market, including one of a tiger which was pretty. The bridge then descends into the market itself, which predominantly is a food market for locals. It’s a little like a concrete holding pen but there are many cheery faces selling a wide array of fruits, vegetables and snacks. As it’s a local market, you don’t get pestered as much as you would at the more touristy places so it was great to walk around experiencing the sights and smells. We picked up some popular local biscuits amongst the melee, which were somewhat ornate and star-shaped. We ate them in the car later in the day and they were dry and not particularly sweet. I also picked up some sweet sweet Bandung here, luminescent pink and in my view the best thing to come out of Malaysia.
Adjacent to the Central Market in a number of brightly coloured huts is the craft market and this is more tourist orientated. It was also more compact meaning there was a little more hustling going on. The crafts weren’t particular in unique and there were definitely more tourists here - particularly Chinese and Koreans who are by far the largest groups who visit the city. Shortly after this was an empty patch of concrete underneath some awnings which I was later to discover is the location for the famous night market. However, during the day it looked quite sorry, but at least we got some rather nice views over the South China Sea towards the five islands which litter the harbour here. Continuing the theme of pushy sales people, on this concrete landing there was a gentleman who was trying his hardest to convince Komo to hire his boat to go to the islands. He was charging 25 ringgit per person, a reasonable price to be fair, but we weren’t sure about his legitimacy. He demanded Komo’s phone number, which he gave with the intention of blocking it, but this didn’t seem to work for some reason and for the next hour he was bombarded by missed calls from this pushy guy. This was even after we had said we may come back later if we were interested. Suffice to say we didn’t follow this up.
Our next stop was Signal Hill. We probably could have walked there but Komo wanted cheaper parking so we returned to his car and drove the 300m or so to its base. Having parked, we initially encroached on the grounds of a mosque before finding our true destination, the Atkinson Clock Tower. Built in 1905 and named after FG Atkinson, the first district officer of the town who died of malaria aged 28, it was one of the few structures to survive the Allied bombing of Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu’s former name) during World War Two. It’s a quaint little tower, made of white painted wood, but is somewhat dwarfed by the concrete tower blocks which came after it. Apparently the tower used to act as a lighthouse which would suggest the coast is further inland than it is today as the heart of the city stands between it and the shoreline. This was particularly pronounced when we went to the top of Signal Hill, where there’s a cafe and modest viewing platform from which you could see the city. I was expecting a better view of the coast in all honesty but the modern hotels pretty much obscured this view. Looking down onto the city, you could see the flat plane on which it was built and it did give you a sense of perspective but it certainly wasn’t one of the prettiest vistas I’ve seen. We stayed up here for about ten minutes all told, with a lot of time taken up by me trying to take a picture of the Sabah state flag by the roadside, attempting to catch it at just the right moment in the wind.
Our next stop was the beach at the northern fringe of the city. Apparently this is quite a popular spot at weekends but as it was Friday it was quite quiet, apart from a scheduled fun run whose mascot was a dragon. They had a table set up but there were no runners, which was a little odd. On the beach there was also an interestingly sculpture of a shark made out of plastic bottles, which I thought was a good attempt at recycling. The same could also be said of the Christmas tree made out of bottles we had seen being transported through the city on the back of a lorry earlier in the day. As I was to observe, the plethora of plastic is a huge environmental problem in this region and innovative ways of dealing with it should definitely be encouraged. While on the beach, we also saw a little baby crab scuttling about, which Komo managed to catch expertly. He told me that he has experience of fishing with his dad, who uses a harpoon, and practically grew up on a beach and so knows how to catch a wide range of wildlife.
Shortly after this, we arranged to pick up another fur, so we drove to the Likas area of the city and to the place where he works. He was just conducting Friday prayers so we had to wait a short while until he was able to join us. This wasn’t a huge problem though as it gave us a chance to pause after what had been a rather busy morning. Soon he joined us and after we had made our introductions, we headed further north and away from the city in the hope of seeing some countryside. As we did, we drove past the rather impressive blue domed mosque, which was built in 2000 in the classical style. The road outside, a three lane highway, was busy as it was Friday prayers but things weren’t helped by the fact that the outside two lanes had been turned into a car park by the worshippers. The mosque can hold 12,000 people but clearly the car park cannot. I later observed that parking on main highways is a common practice here, as seen outside the City Mall later in the day. Anyway, I had wanted to go to Komo’s hometown but instead he opted for the Mari Mari Cultural Village which to be fair was pretty deep in the jungle too. The road soon became narrower and steeper, with the trees starting to close in, giving it a sense of adventure. Alas the Cultural Village is quite a touristy affair and they wanted us to go on a three-hour long official tour. Komo admitted he wasn’t overly interested and had just wanted to show me some of the traditional houses along with a local waterfall. Not wanting to pay the exorbitant entrance fee for three people, I accepted that it was best to go elsewhere so as soon as we had parked up, we were pretty much off again. Fortunately we were able to visit the waterfall, which we could hear through the trees even in the car park. It was only up the road and with an entrance fee of 1.50RM (about 30p), it was far more affordable. The place wasn’t that well maintained though, with the handrails not really being anchored into the ground adequately and the concrete steps up to the falls somewhat uneven and slippery. Only in the car later did Komo tell me that there had been deaths here, and I couldn’t help but feel that had this been in Britain, the place would have been shut down. The grip on my shoes wasn’t particularly great and I nearly slipped twice, but knowing that may have made me think twice about scrambling over the rocks to get a better view. However, I was incredibly glad I did, particularly of the top portion where the valley almost wraps around you, leaving you to marvel at the raw power of nature as you see the water conduct its longest drop. Catching the spray in my face and with the jungle all around me, for someone with a fear of snakes, l did feel that this was a triumph even if the car was only a matter of yards away. It was something I had wanted to experience though and while it may not have been overly adventurous in the grand scheme of things, I’m glad I at least had the tiniest sliver of a jungle adventure. There were a number of smaller falls further down the river too, which we also got to explore, and I ensured I could see this marvel from every possible angle.
We had a bit of time to kill after this as we were due to pick up Leon from his work around 4pm before heading to Tanjung Aru for dinner and to see the sunset. According to the guidebook, there was a Buddhist temple in the area, the Puh Toh Tze Temple so we thought this would be worth a visit. Even though it’s just off the main road, it did take some finding, hidden as it is behind an industrial unit selling Kärcher pressure washers. Behind this building there is a rather small and surprisingly tranquil park, with a water feature in the middle of it. There was also a number of pretty pink flowers, with its entrance being guarded by eleven Chinese deities. Each statue had a different likeness and facial expression, making each one unique, while the red Chinese writing carved in the cliff-face stone which formed the wall separating the garden below with the land upon which the temple stood added to the scene. The temple itself is dedicated to Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy and there’s a huge white statue of her likeness which forms a roundabout around which the car park sits. The highlight of the temple was the large golden reclining Buddha in the far room, although the huge bell and drum, adorned with Chinese characters, were other highlights. In the large Buddha room, which resembled something like a village hall, there were a number of fascinating carved golden states of various Buddhist deities. There were a number of rather nice murals on the walls too, along with some pleasant tiled walkways. The temple definitely had a lived-in feel and it wasn’t one of the prettiest I’ve visited, preferring function over form, but it was a good place to stroll around and one my two local furry friends had never visited either. To emphasise this, there was even an auxiliary corridor where tables of free books in Chinese were being given away. As the complex was on a hill, you could see panoramic views of the Inanam area of northern Kota Kinabalu, although as it’s largely suburb, there wasn’t really an awful lot to see.
We still had a little time before we needed to meet with Leon so Komi drove us to another suburb where, underneath an urban park, there was a car park with a number of food stalls. The sights and smells of food cooking was enticing but we were here for the ABC concession, which was basically a famous chain of dessert shops in the city. They tend to have premises in hawker centres but this one was a little off piste, but did huge portions as a result. I was given a choice of three things to try, with favour heavily leaning to one of the “Special” dishes containing fresh fruit, but I’m not really a fan of such things so I opted for the ABC Biasa instead. The pictures on the menu were somewhat misleading as Komo got the special and it certainly wasn’t piled high with fruit as had been suggested. Instead, the fruit was drowned in a Bandung-like substance with a shaved ice boulder in the middle. It was both simultaneously creamy and refreshing, with the fruit adding a freshness that made it quite exquisite. Mine did have fruit but nowhere near as much as the special, and in the end I somewhat regretted not getting it. The fruits mine contained were all local and quite hard to obtain in Britain, adding an exotic element to proceedings, plus it ended up being bright pink and thus getting my approval. The red beans inserted were more a savoury thing though and their dryness didn’t really work with the rest of the dish. Interestingly I later found out that Komo tends to request his without the beans. Meanwhile there were long green jelly type things in my dish which resembled worms and kept falling off my spoon, which was a little disconcerting for someone with a snake phobia.
As we were at the park already, we thought we would go for a brief walk. This was partly inspired by a zig-zag Bridge I spotted over some murky water that resembled the diahaerrea in my toilet bowl at FURUM the week before (a point I made with alarming frequency). There was a family feeding a huge amount of bread to the fish, which were rather flat and brown with big ugly mouths. They popped their heads up out of the murkiness to grab the food before diving back down into the muddy depths. In the distance we saw something wading across the pond and we weren’t sure what it was. It could have been a stick or a crocodile but most likely a fish, as it kept turning back into the water whenever it hit the shore of the lake. We ideally watched this for a few minutes before circumventing the park, rounding a wooden restaurant in the middle of the lake and a dilapidated looking water park that had seen better days. It looked closed down, with half of its protective fence at a rakish angle thus protecting nothing, and it did look a rather sorry sight. At the entrance it was billed “Sabah’s number one water park” but I imagine it may be the only one, such was the state it was in. It was sad to think of all the happy memories made there, all the kids’ delight now gone, but alas we couldn’t dwell on this too long as we needed to get to the car and then to the beach, if we were to catch the famous Kota Kinabalu sunset over the South China Sea. As a result, we swiftly completed the rest of our ten-minute walk and set off to meet the others on the shoreline.
I didn’t realise that you had to get your passport stamped when entering Sabah from West Malaysia, which I imagine explains the additional checks at the airport. The queue wasn’t particularly lengthy though and I was delighted to receive a new stamp in my passport. Unfortunately none of my friends in Kota Kinabalu could pick me up from the airport and the hotel only did a shuttle service to the airport for some reason, not from it, leaving me to the mercy of the local taxi drivers. Had I known the airport bus would have stopped at the square opposite my hotel, I may have taken that, but getting a taxi from the official booth proved easy enough and pretty soon we were battling through the rush hour traffic on our way to the hotel. While we are traveling, the first few spots of rain started to fall and it soon turned into a deluge - a delight that was going to continue for the rest of the evening. This scuppered my plans somewhat as the local furs, understandably, didn’t want to drive in the torrents. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as staring out of your hotel window after arriving in a new place, desperate to explore, yet unable to do so because of the conditions. Still, I suppose it did enable me to update my journal and I was constantly in contact with Leon, with whom I was due to meet, to check the ongoing viability of liaison. I had arrived at my hotel room at around 5:30pm and later he set a deadline of 9pm for the weather to improve, which it didn’t seem like doing for quite some time. Fortunately, literally five minutes before the self-imposed deadline, the rain did ease slightly, enough to grab some food at least. I was ravenous and with no on-site restaurant at the hotel, I knew I would have to go out and get something, so a lift to anywhere was most welcome. However, due to preparation time and where he lived, it wasn’t until nearer 10pm when I jumped into his car and finally headed off to do some belated exploring.
It was still raining pretty heavily but at least it was drivable. Another fur I knew from FURUM, Gerard, also joined us with the plan to head to Boreno’s for some food. This is a local fried chicken fast food chain, catering to the love of this cuisine across the region. It’s not particularly exotic but it is a local favourite - particularly of the furs - and I was just happy to eat anything. I ordered half a chicken meal, which came with fries and coleslaw, with the latter in particular beings quite divine. The chicken was well cooked too, with a rich crispy coating which wasn’t too oily and tender hot meat inside. I had to wait eighteen minutes for the food though - far longer than my friends’ more simple meals - but we weren’t in any real rush and had a lot to catch up on. Indeed we stayed here for around an hour and a half, just chilling and planning my two full days in the city. Leon got in touch with another fur called Komo, who is a local taxi driver, and it turned out he could show me around on the Friday while everyone was at work. This turned out to be a huge plus and had I known I would have access to a car, I would have likely stayed in the city longer. Something to know for next time, and it was great having company for a day I thought I was going to be alone. We arranged for him to pick me up at my hotel at 9am the following morning and with this appointment to meet and our meals devoured, Leon dropped me off at my accommodation around midnight so I could get some rest. It was still raining.
Komo was slightly late picking me up the next day, but it wasn’t tragically, and by 9:30am we were exploring the city. Our first stop was breakfast, and we went to a place around the corner called Yee Fung, which had coincidentally been recommended to me by the nice chap behind the hotel reception desk the night before. It was very busy - often a sign of a good place - and soon I was enjoying laksa, a chilli infused noodle broth with prawns, chicken skin and vermicelli noodles. The balance of flavours was very good, with a spicy yet creamy combination to the soup making it one of the best meals I had on my trip. It was still a little strange to me eating such food for breakfast, but it’s s common thing in SE Asia and I’m not one to argue against tradition. I could certainly see why the place was so highly regarded though.
After breakfast, we decided to walk around the rather compact city centre, seeing a number of civic sights as we did. This included a number of shopping malls - no real surprise in this part of the world - along with the 0km marker for the whole of Sabah. The war memorial dedicated to the Australians who lost their lives in the Second World War fighting against the Japanese on the island, along with the Malays who lost in the war against Indonesia in the Sixties was of particular interest. We also saw someone in a monkey costume being bundled into a van by a group of elderly people wearing Santa hats outside a rather swish looking boutique hotel. I was hoping to take a picture but alas he had taken his head off before I had chance to cross the road to meet him. To be fair it was rather hot and it was only mid-morning. As you would expect, KK is the gateway to Borneo so there are a large number of concessions offering jungle tours for tourists and the like. With my pathological fear of snakes, alas this wasn’t really an option for me so I contented myself with a trip to the city market instead. There are a number of nice murals painted on the stairs of a rather utilitarian road bridge traversing the main road between the city centre and the waterfront market, including one of a tiger which was pretty. The bridge then descends into the market itself, which predominantly is a food market for locals. It’s a little like a concrete holding pen but there are many cheery faces selling a wide array of fruits, vegetables and snacks. As it’s a local market, you don’t get pestered as much as you would at the more touristy places so it was great to walk around experiencing the sights and smells. We picked up some popular local biscuits amongst the melee, which were somewhat ornate and star-shaped. We ate them in the car later in the day and they were dry and not particularly sweet. I also picked up some sweet sweet Bandung here, luminescent pink and in my view the best thing to come out of Malaysia.
Adjacent to the Central Market in a number of brightly coloured huts is the craft market and this is more tourist orientated. It was also more compact meaning there was a little more hustling going on. The crafts weren’t particular in unique and there were definitely more tourists here - particularly Chinese and Koreans who are by far the largest groups who visit the city. Shortly after this was an empty patch of concrete underneath some awnings which I was later to discover is the location for the famous night market. However, during the day it looked quite sorry, but at least we got some rather nice views over the South China Sea towards the five islands which litter the harbour here. Continuing the theme of pushy sales people, on this concrete landing there was a gentleman who was trying his hardest to convince Komo to hire his boat to go to the islands. He was charging 25 ringgit per person, a reasonable price to be fair, but we weren’t sure about his legitimacy. He demanded Komo’s phone number, which he gave with the intention of blocking it, but this didn’t seem to work for some reason and for the next hour he was bombarded by missed calls from this pushy guy. This was even after we had said we may come back later if we were interested. Suffice to say we didn’t follow this up.
Our next stop was Signal Hill. We probably could have walked there but Komo wanted cheaper parking so we returned to his car and drove the 300m or so to its base. Having parked, we initially encroached on the grounds of a mosque before finding our true destination, the Atkinson Clock Tower. Built in 1905 and named after FG Atkinson, the first district officer of the town who died of malaria aged 28, it was one of the few structures to survive the Allied bombing of Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu’s former name) during World War Two. It’s a quaint little tower, made of white painted wood, but is somewhat dwarfed by the concrete tower blocks which came after it. Apparently the tower used to act as a lighthouse which would suggest the coast is further inland than it is today as the heart of the city stands between it and the shoreline. This was particularly pronounced when we went to the top of Signal Hill, where there’s a cafe and modest viewing platform from which you could see the city. I was expecting a better view of the coast in all honesty but the modern hotels pretty much obscured this view. Looking down onto the city, you could see the flat plane on which it was built and it did give you a sense of perspective but it certainly wasn’t one of the prettiest vistas I’ve seen. We stayed up here for about ten minutes all told, with a lot of time taken up by me trying to take a picture of the Sabah state flag by the roadside, attempting to catch it at just the right moment in the wind.
Our next stop was the beach at the northern fringe of the city. Apparently this is quite a popular spot at weekends but as it was Friday it was quite quiet, apart from a scheduled fun run whose mascot was a dragon. They had a table set up but there were no runners, which was a little odd. On the beach there was also an interestingly sculpture of a shark made out of plastic bottles, which I thought was a good attempt at recycling. The same could also be said of the Christmas tree made out of bottles we had seen being transported through the city on the back of a lorry earlier in the day. As I was to observe, the plethora of plastic is a huge environmental problem in this region and innovative ways of dealing with it should definitely be encouraged. While on the beach, we also saw a little baby crab scuttling about, which Komo managed to catch expertly. He told me that he has experience of fishing with his dad, who uses a harpoon, and practically grew up on a beach and so knows how to catch a wide range of wildlife.
Shortly after this, we arranged to pick up another fur, so we drove to the Likas area of the city and to the place where he works. He was just conducting Friday prayers so we had to wait a short while until he was able to join us. This wasn’t a huge problem though as it gave us a chance to pause after what had been a rather busy morning. Soon he joined us and after we had made our introductions, we headed further north and away from the city in the hope of seeing some countryside. As we did, we drove past the rather impressive blue domed mosque, which was built in 2000 in the classical style. The road outside, a three lane highway, was busy as it was Friday prayers but things weren’t helped by the fact that the outside two lanes had been turned into a car park by the worshippers. The mosque can hold 12,000 people but clearly the car park cannot. I later observed that parking on main highways is a common practice here, as seen outside the City Mall later in the day. Anyway, I had wanted to go to Komo’s hometown but instead he opted for the Mari Mari Cultural Village which to be fair was pretty deep in the jungle too. The road soon became narrower and steeper, with the trees starting to close in, giving it a sense of adventure. Alas the Cultural Village is quite a touristy affair and they wanted us to go on a three-hour long official tour. Komo admitted he wasn’t overly interested and had just wanted to show me some of the traditional houses along with a local waterfall. Not wanting to pay the exorbitant entrance fee for three people, I accepted that it was best to go elsewhere so as soon as we had parked up, we were pretty much off again. Fortunately we were able to visit the waterfall, which we could hear through the trees even in the car park. It was only up the road and with an entrance fee of 1.50RM (about 30p), it was far more affordable. The place wasn’t that well maintained though, with the handrails not really being anchored into the ground adequately and the concrete steps up to the falls somewhat uneven and slippery. Only in the car later did Komo tell me that there had been deaths here, and I couldn’t help but feel that had this been in Britain, the place would have been shut down. The grip on my shoes wasn’t particularly great and I nearly slipped twice, but knowing that may have made me think twice about scrambling over the rocks to get a better view. However, I was incredibly glad I did, particularly of the top portion where the valley almost wraps around you, leaving you to marvel at the raw power of nature as you see the water conduct its longest drop. Catching the spray in my face and with the jungle all around me, for someone with a fear of snakes, l did feel that this was a triumph even if the car was only a matter of yards away. It was something I had wanted to experience though and while it may not have been overly adventurous in the grand scheme of things, I’m glad I at least had the tiniest sliver of a jungle adventure. There were a number of smaller falls further down the river too, which we also got to explore, and I ensured I could see this marvel from every possible angle.
We had a bit of time to kill after this as we were due to pick up Leon from his work around 4pm before heading to Tanjung Aru for dinner and to see the sunset. According to the guidebook, there was a Buddhist temple in the area, the Puh Toh Tze Temple so we thought this would be worth a visit. Even though it’s just off the main road, it did take some finding, hidden as it is behind an industrial unit selling Kärcher pressure washers. Behind this building there is a rather small and surprisingly tranquil park, with a water feature in the middle of it. There was also a number of pretty pink flowers, with its entrance being guarded by eleven Chinese deities. Each statue had a different likeness and facial expression, making each one unique, while the red Chinese writing carved in the cliff-face stone which formed the wall separating the garden below with the land upon which the temple stood added to the scene. The temple itself is dedicated to Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy and there’s a huge white statue of her likeness which forms a roundabout around which the car park sits. The highlight of the temple was the large golden reclining Buddha in the far room, although the huge bell and drum, adorned with Chinese characters, were other highlights. In the large Buddha room, which resembled something like a village hall, there were a number of fascinating carved golden states of various Buddhist deities. There were a number of rather nice murals on the walls too, along with some pleasant tiled walkways. The temple definitely had a lived-in feel and it wasn’t one of the prettiest I’ve visited, preferring function over form, but it was a good place to stroll around and one my two local furry friends had never visited either. To emphasise this, there was even an auxiliary corridor where tables of free books in Chinese were being given away. As the complex was on a hill, you could see panoramic views of the Inanam area of northern Kota Kinabalu, although as it’s largely suburb, there wasn’t really an awful lot to see.
We still had a little time before we needed to meet with Leon so Komi drove us to another suburb where, underneath an urban park, there was a car park with a number of food stalls. The sights and smells of food cooking was enticing but we were here for the ABC concession, which was basically a famous chain of dessert shops in the city. They tend to have premises in hawker centres but this one was a little off piste, but did huge portions as a result. I was given a choice of three things to try, with favour heavily leaning to one of the “Special” dishes containing fresh fruit, but I’m not really a fan of such things so I opted for the ABC Biasa instead. The pictures on the menu were somewhat misleading as Komo got the special and it certainly wasn’t piled high with fruit as had been suggested. Instead, the fruit was drowned in a Bandung-like substance with a shaved ice boulder in the middle. It was both simultaneously creamy and refreshing, with the fruit adding a freshness that made it quite exquisite. Mine did have fruit but nowhere near as much as the special, and in the end I somewhat regretted not getting it. The fruits mine contained were all local and quite hard to obtain in Britain, adding an exotic element to proceedings, plus it ended up being bright pink and thus getting my approval. The red beans inserted were more a savoury thing though and their dryness didn’t really work with the rest of the dish. Interestingly I later found out that Komo tends to request his without the beans. Meanwhile there were long green jelly type things in my dish which resembled worms and kept falling off my spoon, which was a little disconcerting for someone with a snake phobia.
As we were at the park already, we thought we would go for a brief walk. This was partly inspired by a zig-zag Bridge I spotted over some murky water that resembled the diahaerrea in my toilet bowl at FURUM the week before (a point I made with alarming frequency). There was a family feeding a huge amount of bread to the fish, which were rather flat and brown with big ugly mouths. They popped their heads up out of the murkiness to grab the food before diving back down into the muddy depths. In the distance we saw something wading across the pond and we weren’t sure what it was. It could have been a stick or a crocodile but most likely a fish, as it kept turning back into the water whenever it hit the shore of the lake. We ideally watched this for a few minutes before circumventing the park, rounding a wooden restaurant in the middle of the lake and a dilapidated looking water park that had seen better days. It looked closed down, with half of its protective fence at a rakish angle thus protecting nothing, and it did look a rather sorry sight. At the entrance it was billed “Sabah’s number one water park” but I imagine it may be the only one, such was the state it was in. It was sad to think of all the happy memories made there, all the kids’ delight now gone, but alas we couldn’t dwell on this too long as we needed to get to the car and then to the beach, if we were to catch the famous Kota Kinabalu sunset over the South China Sea. As a result, we swiftly completed the rest of our ten-minute walk and set off to meet the others on the shoreline.
