There really isn't very much to do at Kota Kinabalu if you aren't climbing the mountain, we realised... during the trip. So it was a tiny relief that our 2nd night was spent in the city area, at a hotel right next to supposedly Borneo's largest lifestyle hypermall - 1Borneo. And that's why I could stroll to Starbucks on a Monday morning to enjoy green tea latte and banana choc muffin and have the whole 2nd floor of seats to MYSELF. Heh. This was an urbanite's failed attempt to connect with Mother Nature...
Though there wasn't a whole lot of stuff to do, I totally didn't mind it. We were still sufficiently entertained throughout the trip... I watched a Twilight movie (the first one) for the first time - on cable TV from a not-so-cosy-but-passable chalet room in the middle of the Borneo rainforest... and found myself empathising with Twilight fans... I think I was quite taken by the interesting idea of dating a vampire and the neat stuff they cld do tog in the forest, like flying around etc haha. D cldn't quite get what was so cool with that pale vampire named E but got quite enchanted by the vampire family's house. We later discovered (after cheapo-ly flipping thru some Twilight movie book at a Harris bookstore) that the whole house was just a specially constructed movie set... a really nice one though.
The uneventful holiday ended with a mini drama when we were stuck in the rain and jam on the way to the KK airport. And just when we thought all traffic had cleared, we found ourselves getting stuck in a most nasty jam leading all the way up to the departure terminal... Thankfully, the rain caused havoc not just outside but also within... so flights were delayed and we found ourselves quite early for the flight despite arriving only half an hour before...
Here are some pictures (pretty irrelevant to my lil trip summary above) from the trip to show! :P
Pretty nice dining area at our Mt Kinabalu hotel
Lovely flowers at the hotel "garden" - the chalet was somewhat dismal (mainly cos it was cold and damp), but the landscaping at the hotel was done up quite nicely
We managed to get a good view from our hotel as it was perched all the way up on a little hill too :)
The peak of the mountain seemed to be permanently obscured by huge clouds
Seafood dinner the 2nd evening - Grilled tilapia with belachan sauce. Fresh and delicious!