To sum it all up, it was seven days, 4 modes of transport, 2 countries with only 300 USD.
Day 1
We arrived in Kota Kinabalu in the afternoon, it was a short flight and the weather is not very different from Manila - which meant it was freakishly hot! I estimated an initial budget of 350USD based on the itinerary I made. But I was starting to worry that it might not be enough, I brushed it off thinking I can just withdraw.
Kota Kinabalu isn't the most exciting place to travel too. But I heard that they have really good food (it's true!) so that was enough incentive for me.
Upon arrival we got a taxi voucher for MYR30, we settled in our hostel which was a shared dorm with a couple other people. This was the cheapest I found online and it's great meeting other people in the same room. Excited about what the day (and the city) has to offer, we then proceeded to the tourism office where I asked the kind lady for recommendations and to mark all the places we wanted to visit on the map they provided. The rest of our first day in the city was spent going around the Handicraft Market where you can find intricately designed/ carved items and eating grilled seafood at the Night Market beside it.
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| Lots of seafood! and kat was wearing sneakers! |
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| My plate of crawfish, chicken wing, stingray and fried rice with seaweed on the side. |
The Night Market was pretty overwhelming, it's the size of about 10 basketball courts and they have all sorts of grilled seafood, local desserts and even fresh fruits and vegetables.We got excited and had the urge to try everything! We ended up getting crawfish, stingray, chicken, seaweed and fried rice - which were too much! For dessert, I got pancakes with different fillings which I loved. Although I would've wanted to try their version of halo-halo too (they put elbow macaroni in it), too bad there wasn't space in my stomach anymore. haha We walked back the hostel which was about 20 minutes away. We spent the day 'discovering' the city (+ 2 hours of getting lost), looked at souvenirs and scoured for food which had us walking for about 5 hours! And man, were our feet tired! We just wanted to rest when we got back to the hostel. And we did.
But since Kat's boyfriend Chino gets hungry like every 3 seconds, we had to get midnight snacks and went to Azlina Sulawesi along Gaya - and I'm so thankful cos it led me to discover the best Indian Roti Susu (sweet milk) ever! ( I liked it so much I had 4 or 5 whole rotis for myself during our stay in KK)
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| Best Roti Susu Ever haha |
Day 2
We were supposed to go to the orangutans on our second day but our roommate suggested otherwise, saying that the 2-hour trip is not worth seeing the orangutans who were kinda caged up (and Chino's aunt owns orangutans and he promised let us see them haha so I let that go easily). So instead, we woke up early to go to the museum. We arrived a little after 8am but the museum doesn't open until 9. To kill time, we just went around the back first where there was a set-up of old Malaysian villages. The houses were a lot similar to Philippine nipa huts but the place was very beautiful, there was a pond with these gorgeous pink water lilies and it was very serene.We also went around the foresty area where there was supposed to be indigenous fruits (but we only saw a few berries and a 5-inch butterfly!) We were supposed to go to the museum but we just don't appreciate how they charge tourists MYR15 and locals MYR2, that's like 800% higher. And so we decided against it and just bought pretty vases in the souvenir store.
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| Kat, you're to white for this nipa hut haha |
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| Blending in with my floral dress and malaysian looks haha |
We walked out to the main highway and crossed the intersection to the bus stop and took a bus back to the city. We had no clue where we were getting off so of course, we missed the proper stop. It was scorching hot so we just got a cab to the hostel where we were meeting other friends who were to arrive in KK around 1pm. When they arrived, we went out for lunch and ate roasted duck with noodles along Gaya st. - unfortunately, the place we went to served duck which were probably a day or two old.
We didn't have much to do that afternoon since it was also raining, so we just took a cab to Suria Mall and bought Moscato, crocodile meat, curry chips and other local stuff from the grocery for that night. For dinner, our new found friend from a store suggested we go to Yu Kee for Bak Kut Teh - this seemed pretty popular with the locals considering how full it was. We ordered Bak Kut Teh with different servings of meat (intestines, spareribs, meatball etc). In my honest opinion, spareribs were the best and it goes so well with kicap manis, chili and garlic! It was so good, even Gail - who was our pickiest eater - loved it. (We loved it so much, we even bought bottles of Kicap Manis to bring home after haha)
Day 3
On the third day, we walked to the Jessleton Port to 1. buy boat tickets for Brunei and 2. go island hopping. We didn't get to buy tickets to Brunei because we didn't have a copy of our passports so we had to go back early the following day instead. For the island hopping, the lowest deal we could get was MYR42.3/head for all 3 islands, +MYR10 fee + MYR 10 for a lifejacket and a snorkel mask (which I did not get since I prefer using my own goggles and my swimming endurance is pretty good). For big groups though, it might be better to go straight to the jetty and commission a private boat.
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| Jesssleton Port |
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| Sapi Island |
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| Sapi Island (before all the tourists came) |
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| View from Sapi |
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| I caught a jellybug!! |
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| Group photo! and yes i'm fifth-wheeling :O |
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| The girls in Sapi Island! |
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| And the boys in Sapi Island |
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| Beach Selfie and 2 photo bombers :D |
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| Manukan Island |
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| Sweet! At Mamutik Island.(i think) |
I feel like being from Philippines has set our standards a bit too high as far as beaches go. The first island we went to, Sapi, was okay - white sand, clear water - it was beautiful but it wasn't anything special (although the jellybugs are cutest things). The second island was Manukan, it would have been nice - there were monitor lizards roaming around and it was a decent beach - but it was so so dirty, we didn't even take a dip in the water anymore and just stayed at the restaurant. The last island, however, was the most beautiful! (It wasn't as nice as say, Calaguas island) but the sand was fine, not too crowded, magnificent rock formations on the side, and patches of live corals (which you will not see in the other beaches). I didn't know why the locals recommend the other two islands much more when this was the nicest amongst the 3, a pitty we only spent about an hour there.
Day 4
The fourth day was solely for our transit from KK to Labuan to Brunei.We went early to buy the tickets, left Jessleton port around 8 in the morning, reached Labuan around lunch and Brunei around 3pm. We had money changed at the port and we were so lucky that just as we walked out of the port, there was a bus going to the city. The KK-brunei travel was comfortable, I slept through most of it. What was uncomfortable though was the bus ride from the port to Bandar Seri Begawan, it was pretty long (no aircon) and we had to transfer buses halfway.
We got to the city around 4:30pm. We initially planned to stay at Pusat Belia hostel which was closed when we got there (closing time is 4pm) but there are people around/at the back whom you can talk and theyll let you in. The thing though is they only accept women. Since there were guys in the group, we decided to stay in Capital Residence Suite , which charged B$80 for two nights (we were 3 in a room so we ended up paying B$27 each, which wasn't bad at all)
We rested in the room and planned the next day. Although, I wish we just went straight to the waterfront and had the watervillage / mangrove tour late in the afternoon. We just went out to have dinner in Tamu Selera, it was also very affordable since most dishes cost B$1-2 a serving.
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| lovely brunei sunset |
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| Tamu Selera |
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| Really good food, i tell you. |
Day 5 was for going around Brunei. We had a heavy breakfast and walked to the waterfront (10/20-minute walk from our hotel), where a water taxi driver just shouted at us as we walked by. He offered to take us around the water village and the mangroves for B$100, we haggled it down to B$40 -which according to blogs I've read is the average cost.
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| Breakfast: some sort of mee and ginger tea tarik |
The
photos honestly do not do justice to the water village, it wasn't what
I'll call pretty but it was very (for the lack of a better term)
intricate - it was like another world roughly stitched together.
The highlight of the
trip though were the mangroves. They were absolutely magical and so
beautifully mysterious. It was great having seen Proboscis monkeys as well but they were quite far since most of them go deeper into the forest as
the day progresses (best to go around 7am). And since I did not have
eye glasses, I just saw tiny things jumping from jumping from one tree
to another. I didn't even see the nose! haha
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| Ready for the tour! |
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| Water Village |
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| On to a wonderful adventure! |
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| He demanded I take a photo of him buying oil. haha |
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| This rock has a legend, something about a sinking boat. That's about all the driver said about it. |
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| Boat in reverse |
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| Looking for monkeys! |
It
was only a two-hour tour and we were done by lunch. We decided to go to
a mall complex about 20-minutes from the hotel. There weren't much souvenirs to buy though, would've preferred to spend the time going around Kiangge instead. Although my friend who lives in Brunei (and I just found out she was there after I got back to manila) suggests visiting the museum (she says it's free and there are lots of random stuff made of gold). It is also best to wear long/maxi dresses as respect to the local culture.
The hotel service picked us up from the mall
and brought us to Aminah Arif Restaurant to buy Ambuyat - a local
delicacy which ironically was hard to find. We had it for take-out and
ate in the hotel room.
Day 6
On our sixth day, we were traveling from Brunei back to KK. The hotel offered to bring us to the boat terminal which was a huge relief since it meant we did not have to take the bus. We left a little after 7am, bought a ticket for the earliest boat out and ate breakfast at their cafeteria. We traveled from Brunei to Labuan from 9am-11am. Once we arrived in Labuan, we bought tickets to KK, ate mediocre Roti Bom (butter and sugar) , had all our excess Brunei dollars changed to ringgits and bought some chocolates from one of the Duty Free stores.
We arrived in KK around 4 in the afternoon, immediately went to our Roti place and ordered 1 Roti Susu each - no we did not want to share! Afterwhich, we went to the handicraft market and bought all our pasalubongs. I personally loved the hand painted vases, carved wood (and plates/bowls!) and batik wooden bracelets. Their price tags are always much higher than actual cost, you must haggle when you buy.
Day 7
The seventh day, we woke up early to head to the airport. The week passed by so fast, we couldn't believe it was over! And that we only spent USD300 with pasalubong!
The trip went better than expected. The mangrove tour was enough for me as I found it absolutely amazing! And Having been able to spend time with (very busy) college friends and go island-hopping and try all the
cheap food in this gastronomic city were the icing on the cake. I feel
so blessed to have such a great start of summer with good friends :) And just so thankful that even if they have never shared a room with other people before, or bathed in a tiny/shared bathroom or rode a public bus or ate street food were open to experience these things (i knew it was difficult for them, I could see it in their faces haha and i kinda felt bad HAHA but I just hope they had fun too :P ). xx
