Orangutans, steam railway & white water rafting - A visit too Kota Kinabalu

Why Kota Kinabalu (KK)? Two reasons. Mount Kinabalu and orangutans. Mount Kinabalu is the highest peak in South East Asia at 13,450 feet. I wanted to climb it. I also wanted to see orangutans. Because I described that in the previous blog entry, I won't go into it here.


So I booked a 9-day trip to KK, setting aside 3 days for Mount Kinabalu. But the more I read about it, the more difficult the climb seemed. I also saw a documentary on NHK in which a group of Japanese climbers, taking a circuitous route, took 5 days to reach the top. Not being in the best of health, I began to have doubts. Diabetics were advised on various websites not to attempt the climb, and I chickened out. But, at the back of my mind, I want to go back and make an attempt.


Hong Kong is cool at this time of the year and KK is hot and humid, averaging 33 degrees during the day. The Le Meridien Hotel, where I stayed for 5 nights, turned out to be conveniently located downtown. Because I had a Club room with a sea view, the calm sea spread before me, a hazy blue in the morning turning a deep blue as the day wore on. A deep blue sea spread before me! What a treat!


Down below, across the street, was a bustling market. This was the view from my 10th floor room. The photo of the sunset was taken from the Club Lounge, where i went for breakfast, and, in the afternoon, for snacks and drinks.  

I had read about the North Borneo Steam Railway that ran from KK. Back in 1959-60, in Sri Lanka, my brother and I traveled to school on a steam railway. (I blogged about this in 2008.) The unmistakable sound of a steam train - "shush, shush, shush"- with a rising crescendo, the piercing steam whistle, the clatter of the rails, the sooty engine, the smoke streaming past the carriages, the coal dust that got into our eyes when we popped our heads out of the window, the stops for taking in water for the engine. The nostalgia for steam trains fills my heart. No way was I going to miss a trip on the North Borneo train.


So there I was, standing beside the gleaming carriage, made in Japan in 1970, being pulled by an engine made in Britain in 1896. The engine is powered by firewood, not coal. Smartly dressed attendants in crisp uniforms and pith helmets welcomed and guided the guests to their seats.


The journey itself was uneventful. Despite Malaysia's rising prosperity (the roads are cluttered with cars), many people live in poverty, and numerous stilt houses built on what looked like mosquito filled swamps could be seen from the train. We also passed through a forest reserve. Two stops at small towns - Putatan and Kinarut were probably uncalled for. They had rustic wooden buildings and a slower paced lifestyle, and may have appealed to a Western traveler, but not to me. Almost all the traders at these towns were Chinese immigrants. At Papar, our destination 38 kms from KK, I glimpsed a Chinese herbalist in his "pharmacy", weighing herbs for some patients. What made him stay back in this small town, eking out a living, when he could have returned to a prospering China?

In Sri Lanka, the steam engines had been named after former British Governors when the country was a colony. Ten years after independence, the engines still carried a plaque with those names: Sir Fredrick North, Sir Edward Barnes, Sir Hercules Robinson ... This helped us to tell the engines apart. 


One day, the engine driver allowed us to board the engine, marvel at the gauges of the controls, and peer into the furnace where the coal was burned. It was hot and the fireman worked bare bodied, sweat streaming down his body, shoveling coal from the tender to the furnace, non-stop. I saw a similar furnace in the North Borneo engine. Instead of coal, stacks of wood were piled in the tender.

Much hype was made of the "tiffin" lunch. Tiffin is a colonial term for the lunch that was brought from home to office workers. The office worker's lunch would be collected from his home by a cyclist who would deliver it to the worker at his office. It's still used in India and to some extent in Sri Lanka. The tiffin lunch on the train came in a stack of stacked tin bowls. A mixture of cuisines, although, at the price I paid, a la carte lunch would have been better.





Running a train, especially a tourist train on a steam engine operating twice a week, is expensive. I understand that the North Borneo railway was reborn ten years ago as a joint venture between a tourist resort and the Sabah State Railway. Thanks to them, I enjoyed a journey down memory lane.


An added bonus for staying at the Le Meridien was the nearby Warisan Square, a haven for "spas", really massage places. I love a good massage, so I visited four of these places. The Rafflseia, which employed Balinese masseurs to provide Balinese massage, was easily the best. I also visited Le Borneo, Blue Lagoon, and Helen's. Some of these places employed Filipinos. 


When I felt like eating out, I went to Secret Recipe,  a chain restaurant which served authentic South east Asian fare as well as Western food. I had Vietnamese beef noodles, Malaysian satay, Thai Tom Yung soup, Singaporean laksa, and Australian beef tenderloin, all equally good. They even had sugar free chocolate cake!

On a Sunday, I walked to the Sunday Market. People had set up what appeared to be hundreds of stalls, selling everything from handicrafts, food, jewellery, pets, clothing. The aisles were crowded, the atmosphere was festive.





A few years ago, I visited Hong Kong's Ocean ark with some visitors from Sri Lanka. I am not fond of roller coasters, but I took a number of rides because I wanted to experience them at least once in my life. The excitement and exhilaration of those rides were brought back when I took a white water rafting trip down Kiulu River. This trip was not on my agenda because I don't enjoy being on the water. I can't swim, and I have heard or read about too many drownings to, in fact, fear water. 


So, I went with some trepidation. The company I went with, Riverbug, turned out to be very safety conscious. The guide on the raft, Adam, was skilled, and knew the river well. It was a Grade I/II river, at beginner level, and there were families on other rafts with young children. Because the river was high that day, we rafted for 15 kms, often on fast flowing but calm water, but sometimes on rapids. I became so confident that, on Adam's urging, I jumped int the water and floated downstream, what they call "body rafting". Of course, the ample life jacket kept me safe, although I got nervous when i began to drift downstream faster than the boat. The orangutans were nice, but this was the high point of my trip to KK. I want to return for a Grade III/IV trip down another river.




For the sake of variety, I stayed four nights at the Shangri La, Tanjung Aru. An overpriced hotel with a smallish room. Even the beach appeared to be man made. The above view was from my 6th floor room.

I went for a walk just outside the hotel, and found this deserted beach. Miles of walking and I got sunburned. Would have been nice in the evening but I wasn't sure how safe it would be.


Shangri La's Rasa Ria resort, where I went to see orangutans at their "rehabilitation place", I saw a real beach. The photo at the bottom was also taken at Rasa Ria.