Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Borneo really is all about jungle, animallife, good food and sincere and helpful people.
I have always travelled to the philippines, at least for the past 7 years and i love it there, a second home to me if not home.
But this year on my way over to php i am passing through malaysia for 3 weeks and then onto php territory.
My first stop was Kuala Lumpur where i met up with a friend that i will travel with for the three weeks in Malaysia.
Kuala Lumpur was a great first stopover. The puplic transportation is so easy and accessible. I have found that from the airports they will always reccomend that you buy a taxi coupon which turns out to be very expensive in the long run. Better is to ask the locals if they can direct you. We even got lifts into town just by chatting to people on the planes, as i said the locals are very helpful and positive. If you however still want to get a taxi from the airport but do not want to pay the fixed price then you are better off just walking out of the airport and down to the mainroad to get a taxi there or even a local bus.
Back to KL, where i stayed at my friend place in Bukit Bintang. A nice area that feels very safe and has everything you need for a short stopover, if however you wish to explore the surroundings, caves and so forth then that is also easy to do. As i said transportation is very good.
The beach is what i am always looking for, beachlife with alternatives like sports trekking and exploring. But i want it to be easy acces to everything and i want it to be my choice weather i want to do it now later or how much i want to pay. All this beeing sent off in groups is not what i fancy for my holiday. So what i have discovered here in Borneo is that most of the things to do here all costs money, everything has fees; terminal fees, environment fees, tour fees, there are fees for everything!
All the islands that i have encountered so far has had tripplr fees to pay, three tickets to get to a beach and go swimming, for me this is a little insane. Iam used to walk to the beach from my home and swim for a bit and then stroll on and have a snack and swim somemore. The environmental fee that is payed everyday that you wish to visit one of the islands beaches is 10RM. This is because most of the island beaches are protected National Parks which is understandable but it just makes the whole backpacker scene very expensive in the end since the boats that take you out there are chartered ones that all take a high fee for beeing able to get to a beach. If there were local boats that did these trips it could be a more enjoyable ride. Also the island that we went to yesterday, Sapi Island, was not very clean. Rubbish spread out everywhere, in the water on the beach. The fees beeing payed should cover cleaning up so that animal life can be respected and waters kept clean to swim.
I am not negative but ever since we got here it has been hard to just enjoy the sun and swimming.
Here in Kota Kinabalu there is one beach on the mainland that we walked to today, it took us 2,5 hours and we had 2 breaks. Once we got there it was an empty beach with waves and wind, nice! Water not clear but who cares! It was a beach!! And it was free!
The hotels and restaurants along this beach were kinda abandonde and high priced but the food was good and service very friendly and accomodating as usual.
There is a bus that can take you here, i think it costs about 1-2RM. So we are definetly going again before we leave KK. On our way back we hiked a lift with a local. Sweet!!! :)
Anywho! Other than all the negatives its nice with the warm winds and for those infor djungle, rafting, rivercruises and birdwatching this is definetly the place to be!
Manana again! Ciao
- comments