I Lost My Mind in the City of Lights, in the Backstreet Buildings and the Neon Lights

Although I have spent a lot of time transiting around from place to place - Initially to Baguio, back to Manila, then to Cebu City and back to the capital. For the first time today it was actually time to leave a country altogether and make my second step on this trip.

I feel like the experiences I have gained in the Philippines were good ones; there were bits I enjoyed, and bits not so much, but today it was time to put all that to one side and prepare myself for an early morning journey to Malaysia.

This is the part of the adventure where my journey starts to get a bit confusing, at least geographically. My stay in Malaysia will be split into three parts - I didn't even realise until I started doing research for this trip that it was such a big country.
From the Philippines this morning I travelled to the region of Sabah which is part of Borneo and slightly away from the rest of the 'mainland' we commonly refer to as Malaysia.

If you remember back to the blog about my plan, this was one of the sections of the trip where I had to do some serious research and really think about where I wanted to go. Initially I had written down three locations to visit in this part of the world - Tawau, Sandakan and then Kota Kinabalu.
After looking at travelling from one place to another, without enduring a painfully long bus ride every other day, there was realistically no other way than to jump on a plane each time I wanted to make a journey from one place to the next. With that in mind I had to make an executive decision about how to best spend my time, and looking at the different things to do in each place, I decided that it would be most beneficial for me to head to Kota Kinabalu which is the largest town in Sabah. I booked my tickets online last night but was horrified to discover that Air Aisa had whacked the prices up on their flights to around double the price of the last time I'd checked. Begrudgingly I decided to pay after accepting that I would either do that, skip out Sabah all together or get a different flight which would have got me here at 1am and made for even more confusion.

This morning I woke up about 6am with the dread of a traffic-filled journey ahead of me. I checked out of my hotel and attempted to summon a taxi to take me to the airport. Once again I explained to the driver which airline I was with and he dropped me off at the terminal - thankfully the correct one this time. Unfortunately it still wasn't a simple task as only having a 500 peso note from my deposit at the hotel, I was this guys first customer of the day, and he said he only had 120 on him in change. Considering the cost was just over 100, I wasn't going to give him a 300% tip so he drove around the block to every 7Eleven and petrol station he could find until eventually one of them agreed to split my note and I went on my way.

Terminal two looked in a much better state than terminal four where I'd left from to go to Cebu City. Much more modern, and more like a traditional international airport. Due to the change fiasco I thought I was going to be struggling to make the check-in time, but as it turned out I was by no means last.
I took a short walk to my to my gate, and just before it was time to board the plane I had some lovely lady from the Philippines tourist board asking me all sorts of questions about my stay in the country, and what things I think need to be improved from the perspective as a tourist. Would it surprise you if I said the taxi situation!!!!

I managed to find my seat, and due to a severe lack of sleep and having to get up so early I was intending to sleep all the way through the duration of my two-hour flight, but just before the cabin crew were about to go through all the safety checks, one of the stewardess' asked if I would move in front of one of the emergency exits as there was nobody sitting there - I agreed, and didn't mention that I would likely be asleep and therefore be totally useless if they did need my assistance.
After moving to my new seat location, I pretty much blinked a couple of times and fell into a semi-deep sleep, waking up to find that the plane hadn't actually moved yet. I looked at my watch and it was 10am - a full hour after we were supposed to have taken off. The plane's engine was still on so I figured there was some other kind of issue, or an announcement which I probably missed due to me sleeping. Thirty seconds later the captain came over the loud speaker and said that because the plane had been idling for so long without taking off, it had gone below the minimum fuel consumption needed to make the flight to Kota Kinabalu so we were going to have to move and re-fuel.

Falling back to sleep again, I was even more horrified to wake up half an hour later to discover that we were still sitting on the runway - apparently we were now waiting for a place in the queue to take off. Strange, in my experiences,m Asians don't to queuing very well, I'm surprised the plane didn't just push its way into the line!
Finally we took off at about 11.05am, and after what I can only presume was a relatively smooth flight we landed in Kota Kinabalu airport a full two hours after we were supposed to. Glad I paid you that extra money for the flight Air Asia.

Immediately I was taken aback by the scenary when disembarking the plane. I do like it when you get to somewhat of a smaller airport, and you're able to walk off the plane and onto the tarmac so you can immediately feel what it's like outside and see some of the place without the sterility of an airport lounge not giving you the sense of what the location holds in store for you.
I wouldn't say I'm in the wilds of Borneo by any means, but there seemed to be plenty of greenery around, lots of trees, plants and flowers - most of which will likely be unfamiliar to me.

I had my first experience of changing some money whilst abroad - I know it's not the best place to do it, but considering I needed some way of getting to my hotel I had to do some money exchange at the airport with the currency I had remaining from the Philippines. My 1000 or so Pesos managed to get me 80RM, 30 of which I spent on a taxi ride which brought me to my hotel in about ten minutes.

Reading online there is a theory that you could probably walk to the airport from the city centre in a hour, and the journey was pretty straight forward, but I definitely don't think I would have enjoyed trying to navigate my way to somewhere I have never been before, particularly in the heat and with a rucksack weighing me down (For anyone taking bets on the first part of my body to begin aching - if you thought my back, then you were correct).
My hotel is in a pretty easy to navigate location - just off the main road that runs from the airport so in fairness had it been a bit of a shorter distance and I'd maybe had the use of GPS then I would certainly have made an attempt to walk it.
My initial impressions of the place were very positive - the room was quite large with a fridge, kettle and other useful things. The shower was particularly impressive, after using it to wash away the stickiness of being stuck on a plane for four hours I did a little bit of research online to find out how to spend the remaining hours of my first day.

Having to pay a 50RM deposit to the hotel when I checked in, I was now totally out of money so my first intention was to go into the town, find a bank, and familiarise myself with the things that would be around me for the next couple of days. From my hotel it was about a twenty minute walk into the centre of KK, and almost immediately I began to notice several differences between here and in the Philippines including actual paths that you can walk on, traffic which is observant to pedestrians, and various places where it's safe to cross the road without fear that someone might come out of nowhere and potentially run you over.

There are a couple of shopping malls in KK, I walked around one of them for a while looking for a money changer service with the guidance of a map which the hotel provided me with, and eventually I got to somewhere where I could ask what the exchange rate was. Doing some quick calculations I went to an ATM to withdraw an amount of money which I felt would be enough to last me for a while. Part of the dilemma for this was the fact that I'll be in Malaysia for roughly two weeks (split up into three trips as previously mentioned) and it's difficult to calculate how much I'll need for travelling to different places and doing various activities - especially when I haven't really figured out where I'm going to be or what I will be partaking in.
I know that I want to spend a significant amount of time in Kuala Lumpur and also travel to Penang, but there are lots of other cities I have written down which I may or may not choose to spend my time in. This is where the flexibility of travelling does become a bit of an issue, but if in doubt I can always take some more out later in the journey.

I plan to spend quite a significant time in the town tomorrow exploring different things so I didn't spend too much time wandering around - just grabbed myself a quick snack and then headed back in the direction of my hotel with the intention of visiting the small town of Tanjung Aru where I'd read that there is a nice beach. I felt fairly comfortable walking around the city - they're obviously much more familiar with 'foreigners' here as you get plenty less awkward staring form the locals and less people shouting out 'hello' at you when walking down the street. There were also far less people trying to tout their services to you, and gone is the racket of car horns sounding every two seconds.

There was a nice area about half way back to the hotel which is clearly under construction, I believe it's called Times Square KK. The bit that is finished is home to a large shopping centre, and behind it there is a bit of a boardwalk (unfinished) and a lovely view out over the water towards Suetra Harbour resort. I managed to get some good pictures as the sun faded behind the landscape, as people started to make their way towards home after a long day at work by taking a walk along there.

On the way towards Tanjung Aru I stopped by at the City Mosque - a very impressive structure which can be seen towering over the buildings from just out of my hotel window. It was starting to get a bit dark by this point so I continued on and managed to make it to the town just as the sun set. I figured I wasn't going to make it to the beach quite in time as I had intended, but I looked at the map and saw that there was a park nearby called Perdana which I had seen on the Internet that was pretty nice.

Nice was a bit of an understatement as it had a large lake in the middle, several restaurants around the outside, and also a bit of a track around the outside where there were plenty of people spending their evening jogging and exercising. On my way into the park I read the scrolling sign which said that a musical lights show involving the fountains in the lake would begin in five minutes so I sat down to appreciate the simple joys of choreographed water on a still warm evening. To see exactly what I saw then visit my Youtube page where I have quite a good video of it all.

By this point it was basically pitch black and having not eaten breakfast or any proper lunch I was quite hungry so I decided to go back towards my hotel and find a place where I could eat. As in Singapore, the best places to eat here are Hawker Centres, which as unappealing as they sound are actually really quite pleasant.
These are quite easily distinguishable by their signifant lack of a menu, plastic furniture and the good ones are always very busy. They're well known for being very cheap and serving good quality food as I have previously experienced on my travels before.

In the end I stopped at one which is a couple of doors down from my hotel where I got some Roti Canai - basically a pancake a bit like you would get a naan bread, and this came with some curry which I devoured in double quick time.

I spend the rest of my evening planning what to do tomorrow, and then also my next step which will be travelling to Brunei on Wednesday. I've decided to avoid having to pay prices for ridiculous prices like I did to get here, I am going to try to stay a little bit further ahead of myself when it comes to moving from place to place. It's good to have an idea of where I'm going and what I'm doing, so I am intending to keep it that way for the rest of my trip.

My initial impressions of arriving in KK have been very positive - I feel like this is somewhere where there is plenty to do, and people would find it to be an enjoyable place to stay. It's not a huge location, but KK features so much more than the city centre where I have chosen to base myself. This region of Borneo is well known for it's Scuba Diving sights, and there are also opportunities to trek through the jungle and up towards Mount Kinabalu. As my stay here is only going to be a short one, I won't get many opportunities to do anything of this nature, but I certainly would - on first impressions - recommend people visit this part of the world if they're interested in good food, tropical climates and wonderful scenery.


Jungle (Not the music video, but I love this advert)
Jamie N Commons (2014)