Big Time Borneo

Trip Start Oct 12, 2005

Trip End Mar 31, 2006

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Where I stayed

Berjaya Palace Hotel Kota Kinabalu

(Kota Kinabalu hotels)

Flag of Malaysia Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Monday, January 16, 2006

Borneo!

Is there a more exotic sounding place? It conjures up images of jungles, orangutans, and headhunters. We weren't planning on visiting here originally, but found ourselves with a few weeks to burn in Malaysia before heading down to Singapore and then on to India. Perhaps due to some travel planning fatigue, we were unable to make a decision ourselves on where to go so we stopped into a travel agent near our KL hotel. He suggested Kota Kinabalu, a place whose name we remembered liking a lot on our last visit to Malaysia. So, almost exclusively on how much we like the name of the town, we booked the trip.

Kota Kinabalu is in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the Island of Borneo. I like to think of it as sort of the American deep south of Malaysia, it's a little poorer, very rural, and people seem to like heavy metal a lot more here

01 Mount Kinabalu

. Everyone is wearing Guns and Roses or Slayer T-shirts. Odd.

We stayed the first three nights in Kota Kinabalu town (or KK as the acronym-loving Malaysians call it), at the Berjaya resort, which is a place that was fine but probably had its glory days about 10 years ago. From there we booked a trip out into the jungle to visit the famous Mount Kinabalu. Kinabalu is the reason most people come here, because it is the tallest mountain in this part of the world (a little over 4000 meters), and a relatively easy 2 day climb to the summit, as far as mountain climbing goes. But of course you know us, we weren't there to climb the mountain, just to take a comfy AC bus to the park, take a few pictures, stroll around and look at some plants and then head back to town for a nice restaurant dinner. It was a lovely time, the mountain is very striking and unusual, instead of a single peak it has a wide jagged top, which towers over everything in the area. Very dramatic and now surpasses mount fuji as our favorite mountain (sorry japan).

Joining us on our trip were a nice family from Malaysia, who were kind enough to show us around the markets we stopped at and explain what all the food was. But most momentously, they gave us our first introduction to the most famous fruit of the Asian world, the durian

02 Jungle Canopy walkway

. The durian is a notorius character whom we first became aware of on our last trip to malaysia when we saw a sign in our hotel that said "No Durians or Jackfruits are allowed in this Hotel." What could be so offensive about a fruit that they would ban it from a hotel, we wondered? Well it turns out the reason is that the durian has a very strong odor. "Tastes like heaven but smells like hell," is the local quip. The smell is pretty terrible, more like rotting cheese than fruit. But the fans of the fruit cannot cannot be effusive enough about the taste. So there is was, sitting in the market, how could we not give it a try? As you can see in the pictures, the fruit is cut open by the vendor and small pods are popped out. The pods are not eaten whole but instead a thick paste which covers the pods is eaten and the pod discarded. Trying not to breath through our noses we took a mouthful. Not bad, but very odd. Sort of milky like a custard, but with a slight oniony taste. We made our Malaysian friend, Annie, try one to to verify if we got a decent piece. She confirmed it was suitable, not great, but ok. After the taste test, we had to go wash out hands and pop some gum in our mouthes, to make sure we wouldn't stink up the bus. Would we eat it again? Yes. And we might even try to sneak it into a hotel room.

Back at the hotel at the end of the day, Annie invited us to join her family for dinner at the hotel restaurant. She then wonderfully suprised us by buying us the dinner and refusing to take no for an answer! Another example of how great Malaysia and its people are. Thanks Annie!

Our next stop in Borneo was the Nexus Resort, about an hour outside of KK. This is a fancy full fun all activity place, and we decided we deserved it in order to save up some energy for India

03 Rafflesia

. (Ignore the fact that we just spent three weeks on Thai beaches). Nexus is all fun, you can golf, go horseback riding, hiking, tennis, archery, play giant size chess, etc. he activity we choose was: lie on the beach and read our books. Although we did every few hours get our lazy butts up and go play in the waves of the amazingly warm ocean. We did explore the golf option, but the club rules say you have to have a POLO shirt, not just a collared shirt, and we didn't think we could justify buying two new overpriced polo shirts, just to play 9 holes in sweltering tropical heat. So golf will have to wait until a another day.

Nexus is a very nice place other than its snotty golf club, and it attracts a very odd mix of visiters. In addition to the Japanese which we see all over, there are big groups of Koreans, the constant Australians, scattered Eurotypes, two ragged Americans, there are many many Russians. This is a first for us on this trip, and we have been very amused. They are not just Russians, but RUSSIANS, big loud bursting with muscles and 80s clothes. Is body building a huge thing in Russia? Because I haven't seen so many beefcake types in such concentration since Venice Beach. There is even one guy whose arms are perpetually out at 90 degree angles because his soccerball size muscles won't let him lower them. And we apologize in advance if some of them are not Russian, but Lithuanian or Ukranian or something.

Anyway, today we say "Dos Vedanya" and head back to KL (Kuala Lumpur) to visit with our freind Gunna and watch some fireflies, or something like that.