Kota Kinabalu or formerly known as Jesselton, has several popular tourist destinations beside the city itself - the mountain, the beach, and the rainforest. As we're not mountain person, and we felt like seeing enough of rainforest lately, this time round we aimed only for the beach - Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park, which lies offshore of Sabah.
This national park has an area of 49 sq km, consists of sea and 5 islands: pulau gaya, manukan, mamutik, sapi and sulug. on our second day there we were picked up by divedownbelow staff at our hotel lobby, and we proceeded to Jesselton point ferry terminal for boat transfer to pulau gaya. the boat ride took 10 minutes. it was a really bumpy ride, as the waves were persistently coming towards our boats, jerking it up and down, up and down. the weather was not that friendly too, it was drizzling.
we arrived at pulau gaya, went through briefings, settled the registration and payment. and it's time to go snorkeling!
snorkeling is not as hard as I've imagined. but it's not that easy either. since it was our first time, we didn't find it relaxing at all as we're still adjusting to the concept of breathing through our mouths and wearing the equipments (paddle, goggle with an attached tube for sucking air).
although it was called a fully guided snorkel safari, the so called guide wasn't of much help. he didn't handle real beginners really well. he just zoomed off real fast to the deeper water, not much instructions were given.it was quite cool, though. we saw school of fishes, corals and many more.
a simple lunch was served at the beach hut. then we're off for another exciting activity - parasailing!
it was quite different from the one we did in bali last january. the parasailing started in the middle of the sea, on top of the boat. the staff tied us to the parachute and released the ropes. and up we went. it was more fun as we did it together - the parachute can accomodate 2 people. and we could also choose if we'd like to be dipped into the ocean - the wet way or the dry way. we opted for the dry way as I didn't wear my swim wear anymore that time. going back to the boat was quite scary, we're not sure if we'd be landed exactly on the spot, somemore the propeller at the back of the boat was running noisily. but we landed perfectly fine. the staff offered to take our photos too.. :)
we're back to jesselton point at about 4.30pm. walked back to our hotel smelt like sun and sea. needed a shower really bad. but not before we stopped by at some street vendor along the way. at first I was eyeing for the fried you tiao that was sliced in half and smeared with peanut butter. but once I laid my eyes on martabak asin.. final decision was made. it was a long long time since I last ate martabak asin. tasty!
dinner was at toscani's at the waterfront, overlooking the sea with sunset view. once the sun's gone, they promptly lighted up some candles and put one on each table.
talking about food, we managed to try out the famous seafood at ocean seafood village. it was a challenge to eat seafood for 2 person as there's a limit on how little you can get for one dish, and thus the limited number of dishes. we ordered butter prawns, sweet & sour garoupa fish and stir fried sabah veggie. our favourite was the veggie, hahaha.. it's really nice.
to me, kota kinabalu is a nice, laid-back city with friendly people. it's generally safe and most people speak considerably good english, although they had no problem understanding our indonesian. the city has a lot of shopping malls and plazas, considering their population. and new malls are being built, too. on top of that, there are also handicraft market, night markets and sunday morning market that opens every sunday morning. the sunday market was quite impressive, almost everything can be found there - from clothes, handbags, souvenirs and accessories, to household items, food, plants and pets. my only problem was the heat - it was super super hot!
for transport we relied mostly on foot and sometimes, cabs. foot because the city area was small enough and our hotel had quite a strategic location. the taxis, however, do not run on metre. there seems to be a well-known concensus for the price, like RM20 for trip betwen airport and city centre. we took the city bus once, from church to the city centre, as it was so hot then and there was no taxi in sight.
we also visited atkinson clock tower, kopitiam museum at australia place, segama waterfront and the sacred heart cathedral for sunday mass.
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