This ended up being a Shangri-La vacation. If it didn't involve being at the Shangri-La, or being organized by Shangri-La … we basically didn't do it!
Truth be known, we both caught a bad flu slightly over a week before coming here. Thus by the time it was Thursday afternoon and we were supposed to leave, we both just wanted some good R&R to get over the damn flu that just knocked us out!
And our dear friend Kevin from Canada who came along … just wanted to soak in some sunshine and get ready for that long Vancouver winter :-)
Kota Kinabalu on Borneo (or KK as it's known) was the perfect place for a good recovery. The pace is slow, sunshine abounds and even though the water is not crystal clear, the white sandy beaches where we stayed were stunning.
We had been to Kuching (Sarawak - Borneo) before, and expected KK to be similar. However, KK is a much newer city. A lot of the city was destroyed by the Japanese during the war, and thus the architecture is very 50's - 60's. Kuching was much more authentic, yet KK is much more developed.
We will have to come back though. There are still a few things that I would like to see here.
One thing I wanted to see is Mt. Kinabalu. Towering at 4,095 metres, it's the tallest mountain between the Himalayas and Papua New Guineau. But for the whole time we were there, it had a cloud cover. What is unique about the mountain is that it doesn't have one peak, but several craggy ones. The solid granite mountain has a fairly flat top, with several peaks jutting out. One day we have to climb it!
Another thing I wanted to see was the Raffleasia … the biggest flower in the world. It grows to a diameter of 94 centimeters and can be found in the Mt Kinabalu Park, however, they are very rare and November is definitely not the right season!
HOW TO GET HERE:
This is when you realize how big Borneo is. When we flew to Kuching in neighboring Sarawak, I remember the flight being little over an hour from Singapore. KK from Singapore is 2 hours 15 minutes. And I was sure it was just slightly further down the road! And this is when we found out … Borneo is the 3rd largest island in the world, after Greenland and New Guineau!
> flights: we flew with Air Asia, but besides them you can take JetStar, Silk Air and Tiger Airways.
WHAT TO DO:
> visit orangutans: within the Shangri-La Rasa Ria resort they have an Orangutan Rehabilitation centre. Currently they have 7 small Orangutans … and they are precious. The way they play, interact with the care-givers, look at you … you can observe them for hours. As they swing from branch to branch you realize what a 2D world we humans live in. They are so agile in a 3 D world, going in every which direction with complete ease. I'm jealous!
> watch a sunset: I can't remember the last time I saw a sunset where the sun went all the way into the sea … it's hard to get that last little bit. But from KK we got it! The only downside … I don't have a photo from that evening! The evening of the beautiful sunset we went out for a walk, camera in hand, but our room was the temperature of a sub-zero cooler and when the camera went outdoors, it fogged up so badly … that it took more than 30 min to de-fog!!
> Mengkabong River boat trip: this was the first venture out of the 'compound'! And it was beautiful! Just the three of us … took a boat trip down the Mengkabong river and saw mangroves, large skies and small fishing villages. As soon as we left, we also dropped 4 crab cages into the water … and guess what? When we got back several hours later, there were 6 crabs inside … yeah!
> Nocturnal Animal Watch: this has to be recorded for it will go into our annals of most memorable tours ever! Since this was another one of the Shangri-La tours on program, we thought why not! We were told the tour lasts 2 hours and we were to be fully dressed for the mosquitoes tend to be quite frisky at night! As we come to the Wildlife Interpretation Centre, we were gathered, made to pay and then taken to a little wooden hut literally about 50 metres away. This is when we found out that this is where we were going to spend the next 2 hours, seated on a small bench and looking out from a slat of a window … and checking out the animals on the other side. And what did we see? A chicken in the lobby area where we registered, two deers staring at us sitting in the wooden house, a cockroach crawling along the ledge … and we give it to them, a bear cat that came crawling out of the tree. After 25 min, we decided to go to the bar!
WHERE TO STAY:
> Shangri-la Rasa Ria Resort: there are two Shangri-La's in KK, the Shangri-la Tanjung Aru Resort which is right in town, and the Rasa Ria resort which is where we were, and is a 45 min drive out of town. The hotel is a luxury resort located in it's own beautiful cove. Make sure you rent rooms in the Ocean Wing, which have a huge balcony with lounge furniture, a large outdoor tub and a beautiful view of the white sandy beaches and sea in front. It's isolated, quiet and a reprieve from the chaos of Singapore.
Bojan Tercon
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