Well today we hit Kota Kinabalu early at 0700. The ship was welcomed by a local native dance group and we enjoyed their display. That’s our friends Col & Helen in the 2nd picture below. Because of my crook knees we had to cancel all of our excursions but that’s OK because we like to do our own thing.
After breakfast Shane and I stepped ashore and quickly grabbed a cab. Nas, the driver, was a nice young bloke so I asked him to allow us to hire him till 1200, about 3 hours. Unsure of what to do I asked him “if you had friends visit you who’d never been here what would you show them?” He mentioned a few sights so I said “OK, lets go there and I’ll pay you $50 USD”. This is a reasonable rate for KK so he agreed and off we went for 3 hours of sightseeing.
You’ll see photos of the City Mosque known as the Floating Mosque on this post (I hope – bloody internet) which at peak prayer times holds up to 10,000 people. It’s a plain but interesting place.
From there we travelled to the scenic lookout over the city. KK is fairly big with a population of around 400,000 people. The waterways here look good from up here. Shane & I took a few pictures here then it was off again to the City Museum.
With limited time we saw only the first floor but there was much more to see. When you enter the museum you are confronted by a huge complete skeleton of a Bryde’s whale. This huge mammoth of the sea was only collected (it was already dead when discovered) a short time ago. It was also comforting to know that the local people here are fond of Aussies and keen to acknowledge the deprivations our Diggers withstood at the hands of their Japanese captors during WWII. Unfortunately photography within the museum was not allowed.
Nas then took us to the Filipino Markets otherwise known as the Handicrafts Markets. Markets worldwide in 2nd and 3rd world countries are almost identical and this one didn’t disappoint. It had moments of KK uniqueness but all in all a market is a market.
By this time it was noon and time to let Nas go. I paid him and we shook hands before he carried on his merry way. Shane & I carried on to Suriah Sabah a large modern mall where we got a local Malay SIM card for Shane’s card. This card will work in Penang too so it will be our local phone while in Penang.
Back on the ship we tied up a few loose ends before tea which as always was terrific. Following up on tea the “Legend” held an Aerial Show above an open area they call “Centrum”. Again I will attempt to upload photo’s to this post.
