Holiday:Kota Kinabalu

Yesterday I just flew back in from Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. We had a school holiday from Thursday to Tuesday and I went for a relaxing holiday with my friend, Praise. We stayed at the Shangri La Rasa Ria resort - which was luxurious to say the least!

We flew in and had a quick tour of the city before heading to the hotel. There we settled into the room and then headed down to the outside restaurant for the buffet. We spent well over three hours eating crab, prawns with HUGE heads etc - but we had to pace ourselves and make it worthwhile. There was also a local dance group which was cool and we were entertained.

We went off to some island (I know I'm really good with names of places!) where we ventured into the water to trip over rocks and get scratched by the violent corals. There was a little boy who came over to us and we watched him through the day finding new people to try and make friends with but actually just ended up pestering. We gave up on the idea of being immersed in water and sun bathed to ensure we obtained the obligatory tan. After our lunch of prawns, noodles and crab we continued our lazy afternoon in the sun which ended with the spotting of a monitor lizard on the beach, at which point we made a mad dash for our cameras to record the sighting.


We stopped off in town on our way home and popped in to the other Shangri-la hotel, which I was definitely less impressed with and then we ended up having a curry at Naan back at the Rasa Ria.

Sunday started with rain which we were sad about as it was what we had planned to be our 'animal' day - we had planned to ride horses and visit animals in the jungle next door. We managed to have a one hour horse ride along the beach - past the buffaloes who go there every morning. Now for someone who had never been on a horse before it was cool but I felt very uncoordinated as my guide tried to get the horse to trot with me not really knowing what to do. I finally figured out what to do in the last 15 minutes of the ride by which time I had already acquired the sore bottom. Just after our dismount the rain poured down as we ran back to the hotel.

We later went to the pool at which point we were supposed to be seeing animals in the jungle as we thought it was happening 2 hours later. Oh well. We weren't too disappointed as we then got ready for our 2.5hour spa treatment which included a body wrap where we were covered with powdered rice, egg and lemon. I ended up feeling like a huge piece of sushi. After that was all rinsed off we had a very nice massage and mini facial.

The next day, we went off to Kinabalu Park to walk some of the trails and of course see Mount Kinabalu. That weekend had been the Climbathon where people had raced up and down Kinabalu in just over a couple of hours - good grief - where do they get the energy from, and can I have some? We walked at a leisurely pace looking at the flora of the park including a pitcher plant, orchids, bamboo, naked trees etc. We had lunch and then continued with a walk around the garden where we saw loads of orchids, but most were about half the size of the nail on my pinkie. It made me wonder why are they so small? Well, God can make it that small, so he does..totally amazing and beautiful!



We ended the day back at the hotel and ate at Coast which is a restaurant by the beach with chandeliers shaped like Jellyfish - very cool. Oh...and that was another 3 hour meal!