Having woken before dawn to catch our bus to Kualur Lumpur airport we finally checked into our hotel in Kota Kinabalu on Borneo Island at around 4pm - the room was great and included all mod cons such as hot water, tv, kettle, tea bags and best of all clean linen - something we had forgotten about since coming to Malaysia. After a quick rest we set off to explore the place, unfortunately we had pre-booked an out of town hotel in preparation for our walk so there was nothing to see - fortunately (for some) the hotel was above the largest shopping mall in Borneo. Kota Kinabalu was heavily bombed in ww2 (and subsequently rebuilt with ugly ugly concrete structures) and there was not much to see apart from more shopping malls and a market, so we spent our time sorting out parts of our Australia trip and seeing what the malls had to offer. This included coin operated massage chairs (which we got a little addicted to) and a pay as you go archery place with seemingly no h&s rules- something you would never get in the UK.
Other than supporting Manchester united and talking about football the other Malaysian favourite past time is shopping and eating so our hotel's handy location above a clothes and food mall allowed us to experience some local 'culture' whilst in Kk.