Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

When we left Yogyakarta, we had to connect through Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to get to Kota Kinabalu, which is on the Borneo part of Malaysia. Since most Air Asia flights seem to let you off down a staircase onto the tarmac, we had to walk towards the building to get inside the airport. When we exited the plane, for some reason there weren’t any signs or employees directing passengers, which we didn’t notice at first. We just followed the crowd, or so we thought. After walking alongside the building for a few minutes, we finally saw a door that didn’t say “do not enter” and started walking towards it. Until we noticed the sign above it that said “domestic arrivals.”

Amanda and I just came from Indonesia, so this couldn’t be right. We walked in anyway, had a look around and decided to ask if we were in the right place. An airport employee told us that we should’ve gone to international arrivals (obviously) and pointed us out the door we came in through and told us to go to the left. As we walked out, we looked at each other in disbelief. We could’ve just walked right through to the other side of that room and out of the airport, into Malaysia without ever having passed through customs and immigration. After setting off in the correct direction, getting our passports stamped and rushing through the chaos of the Kuala Lumpur airport’s budget airline terminal, we boarded our next flight, destined for Kota Kinabalu.

I had heard a lot about the night market, so we decided to see what it was all about. It had the typical vendors selling fruits, vegetables, drinks, and other food items. But we kept on wandering until we got to the fish vendors. All varieties of fish and seafood were displayed on tables, some we recognized, some we didn’t, some fully intact, some chopped up and still bloody. We kept walking until we reached the stalls selling food to eat. Fish and seafood, chicken and beef, vegetables, rice, noodles, fruit shakes, everything you could imagine. Amanda ordered some squid skewers and I got a few different types of chicken. Her squid was good, but not really my thing.

Kota Kinabalu night market
squid we ate at Kota Kinabalu night market
Kota Kinabalu night market
Kota Kinabalu fish at night market
Kota Kinabalu night market
fish at Kota Kinabalu night market
Kota Kinabalu night market
fish at Kota Kinabalu night market
Kota Kinabalu night market
fish at Kota Kinabalu night market

After returning from the rain forest to see the orangutans and proboscis monkeys, we were both craving pizza. On our way out of Kota Kinabalu we passed an Italian restaurant near our hostel and decided to try it out. We weren’t terribly impressed, but it satisfied the craving. Unfortunately our walk to the restaurant brought up another desire: Mexican food. That’s right, we passed a restaurant advertising tacos, and despite having just shared a pizza, we stopped in to try the tacos. They weren’t what I would expect in the States, but close enough and very tasty. Full, we returned to our hostel to get some sleep before our early morning departure for Brunei.

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