[Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo] The name ‘Kota Kinabalu’ conjures up images of an amazingly picturesque Bornian city surrounded by mountains, jungles and blue seas. Well it isn’t. The city is dull. We decided to have a look around the city and take in the provincial museum, waterfront and local market with a stop at one of the many malls to get supplies for mount Kinabalu. It was thankfully overcast but still very humid as we set out on our walk. The 3km+ walk out to the museum was along very busy roads – I have no idea what all these people do for work in this little city but they seem to spend a lot of time driving.

The museum looks like it was built in the 80’s with the architecture inspired by the Atari logo. It is currently being renovated so a large portion was closed off. In our opinion even the reduced entry fee (RM 8) is too expensive for what you get. After that disappointment we took a few snaps of the funky looking mosque across the road and headed back towards the waterfront. More of a concrete fishing harbor than a waterfront we walked along it passing the local markets as it started to drizzle. There was a row of old pedal driven Singer sewing machines towards the end of the market manned by tailors hard at work.

We found an excellent little ‘Italian’ spot for lunch – carbing up for Kinabalu on pasta. We obligingly commented in their guest book. Nandos in KL did the same thing the other day and for our ‘address’ I put the blog address. How cool is Nandos Malaysia – they took the time to find the relevant post on our blog and leave a comment.

I reckon we walked around 10km. I don’t think it really counts as ‘training’ for the mountain. 10km on streets at sea level doesn’t compare to 18km round trip from 1500m to 4095m. Tomorrow we head up into the mountains. I only hope it stops raining.

[Pictures: The funky mosque]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi