Sabah : Here I Come

I've bought the ticket to Kota Kinabalu since last May during Air Asia vs. MAS air fare war. With RM0 fare for MAS, the deal was too good to be true, so i bought. We were separated into a few flights whereby mine was the earliest at 4.00 am, Saturday. Others with Air Asia at 6.00 am, 12.30 pm and the last was at 9.00 pm with MAS. The flight went smoothly with MAS with a lot of empty seats.. which my Sabahan friends called it the 'mercy' flight :) But i had a different mission which was to conquer the Mount Kinabalu.. with my brother only.

This is the newly launch pre-pack hot food from MAS. I chose this mee siam with chicken which was marvelous. The flight was very smooth and for your information, one of my favourite if i fly is taking the sky & clouds photos which i find very unique. As we flew towards the sunrise, the scene from the above was so magical.

Kota Kinabalu beach lines started to visible from the darkness.

And finally the best sunrise of Sabah with the Mount Kinabalu background. . marvelous.

We touched down around 6.30 am with the beautiful sunrise.

This is the still under construction Kota Kinabalu Airport which MAS uses. Air Asia has other terminal at the other end of the airport.




As this is a backpacking trip, i stayed at this Akinabalu Youth Hostel which is situated at Jalan Gaya, in the middle of KK town. The location is perfect for budget travellers like me who treasure the authenticity of a place. Everything is in the walking distance which also allows us to explore the town intimately through people daily activities.

A glimpse of KK town from a stranger :)

The backpackers' area around Jalan Gaya, KK.

KK has an interesting pedestrian bridge networking which inter-connecting buildings while also shades people from shine or rain.

The place that we stay is only 5-10 minutes walking distance to the main market which is by the sea. My brother and i went around the town looking for extra climbing gears and also had our lunch. What i cannot stand with KK was the heat. It was so hot that Saturday without cloud and it was very hard for us to jalan-jalan. The only choice was keep ourselves shaded and air-conditioned inside the shopping malls.


At 3.00 pm, we managed to get a boat to the nearby Island of Mamutik for RM17.00 per person for a snorkeling escapade. Sadly, the corals are dying.. nothing much left.


After Mamutik & a short rest at the hostel, i joined Shah, Yazeed and their KK friend for a dinner at the back of the handicraft market which also known as 'Pasar Filipino'.

The bigger than palm size prawns ready to be purchased and grilled.

The all-time favourite of chicken wings.

Our dinner, 2 nos. of grill fishes plus other 2 nos. of big squids for RM100 with rice, that seaweed and some sort of pickled non-dried anchovies.

Unfortunately, i turned down our next activity with Shah, Yazeed, Ham & Hairi later for a late nite outing as i need to sleep early for my early checked out for the Mount Kinabalu climb. An uneasy feeling settled in me thinking about the climb.. emm..