17 May 2007 - dAy 1 @ kOTa kInABalU

Finally the day has come for me to spend my vacation at Kota Kinabalu since I bought the flight ticket almost a year ago. The main mission is to climb the mount Kota Kinabalu but before that we will enjoy ourselves with other entertainment. The flight supposed to depart at 7am but it was annouced the day before that it would delay 50 minutes. However, I still went to the airport early by Jo's baby car and had my breakfast with KC and KS at McDonald's. Later we met up Susan, Chris and Pui Leng who are also in our group.


Passengers were queueing up for the flight to Kota Kinabalu.

After a little bit of more than 2 hours, we finally touched down at Kota Kinabalu's airport. Horrifying thing is that I saw torn off paint at the vertical stabilizer of the aircraft. It seems like the aircraft is not really carefully maintaining and yet the security warned me that that is a restricted area and asked me to put away my camera. Although it is just paint but external paint has a function of protecting the components from environmental corrosion. Well, this is what we called Low Cost Carrier.

Oh yehhhhhh....so nice to see Kota Kinabalu welcome me!

After we had put our luggages at the hostel, we quickly gathered and had our lunch then departed to the harbour for the boat to Pulau Manukan. Photo below shows that my friends were busy selecting their fins and mask for snorkering.

Yeh! On our way towards Pulau Manukan~ From left: KS, KC, Kriangsak (malaysian-thai our leader) and myself.

Finally, we reached Pulau Manukan~

Lots of fish in the ocean~ however, most of the corels have died, too bad~



View from the beach to where we step out from our boat.

Gary has caught a baby octopus, so cute! Later he released it back to the ocean.

Yeh~ Leaving the beach of Pulau Manukan~

Another island~

Lovely and funny couple hahahaha~

Back to the harbour, while everyone was busy returning the fins and mask, I saw a beautiful scene in the late afternoon~ ta da~

So I just sat there enjoying it while others were busy calculating the rental price of snorkering equipments hehehe...KS took this photo for me, thanks~

Yeh~ Kota Kinabalu welcome me again!

That evening, we decided to stop by for seafood before heading back to hostel and we picked this restaurant; Kam Boh Seafood Restaurant Sdn Bhd. The prices are reasonable but they ran out of crabs that day, what a bad timing! However, their seafood is very fresh!


Look at their prawns! Comparing to the fishes, they are far bigger than normal prawns! Imagine the freshiness of their meats~

Chiew Har and Mee Pin, yum yum yum~

Yehhhhh~ finished everything but not full :P

After dinner, we went off to night market. Some of us were looking for a RM4 special shoes for climbing mount Kota Kinabalu and its called Kampung Adidas. However, our luck ran slim, all the people at the night market said it is out of stock.

Leng lui Chiew Har~ I called her BBQ prawn who charged people 50cents to wash foot at her place! :P

This is the Filipino Market where you can get a lot of local delicious food at a very cheap price. Look at those chicken wings, ready and waiting for you to buy :P
Many of my group members were tired after the night market especially our leader and they went back to the hostel to get some rest. KS has been to Kota Kinabalu before so he showed KC and me around the beach where there are a lot of pubs. On the way to the beach, we came across a luxurious seafood restaurant called Port View Seafood Village.

Such a luxurious restaurant, poor people like me can only take the photo from outside thru one of the windows :P


Another luxurious restaurant nearby the beach~

We stopped by a pub because KS said he wanted to enjoy some alcoholic drinks. He asked me whether I drink or not hahaha...I told him no, I am a very good boy :P But he doubt it LOL We entered to the pub and pick a table. Beside where we were sitting, there is a shelf with all kind of different red wines. Please don't ask me about wines, I have stopped drinking wines for a very long time :P

Imported! Don't play play~ :P

On top of those alcoholic drinks were order by this couple, not me, don't look at me :P

As for me, I order this drink, can you guess what it is? :P

It's diet coke! LOL Told yeah, I am a good boy :P

On our way back to the hostel, we took some photos around the town area.

Final photo of the day before heading back to the hostel for a nice hot shower before having a sweet dream for upcoming event on the following day :P