Welcome to Malaysia - land of fish

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We arrived in Kota Kinabalu late afternoon after a pleasant flight on Air Asia - they ban you from taking your own food as they want you to buy their crap, me and ben didn't know how well this would be enforced until after we had purchased our baguettes and borded the plane - we therefore spent the flight taking furtive bites of our sandwiches and trying not to crinkle our hula hoop bags too loudly!

Also my whole "the flights are so cheap we'd be crazy not to go to borneo" spiel had been somewhat marred by the fact that we were only allowed 15kg luggage and I had 19 and ben had 26!!!!!  Excess baggage wasn't too extortionate but it still stung

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KK airport was very small but well organised and we quickly sorted out a taxi to our pre-booked hostel.  KK looked like a cross between india and the other parts of asia we had visited, the buildings were all very uniform and square - shops/restaurants at the bottom and apartments above.  It was very colourful and seemed well organised but with just that undercurrent of disorder you get used to and more like india with all the random shops and the lack of westernisation (compared to Thailand) ie no starbucks!

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We'd been in BKK and vang vien and the thai beaches for so long that it was strange to be back in a place where you don't see many westerners - strange but refreshing

we were planning on having a relaxing evening then getting a coach the next morning to Sandakan (6 hours away) as the place we had booked in Sandakan had told us they were having a Chinese New Year celebration on the 18th from 2pm onwards and we didnt want to miss it

we asked the girl at reception about getting the bus and she we had to go the bus station and that she thought the buses leave regularly until about 2pm.  So we hang out in the hostel then went to a local place for some food - fish fish or fish - which was very yummy but then i started to get serious jip from a cat

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the next morning we got up and packed and checked out and organised a taxi to the bus station - on arriving we were told everything was booked for the whole weekend except 7am the next morning!  However we were told we could try the mini van stand in town

Ben was for buying the tickets for the next morning but i felt that would be giving up to easily, so we found a shuttle bus that would take us back to the city and the mini van stand, we got on waited for 20mins then it set off

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when we arrived at the mini van stand it was just a mess of vans and buses and people shouting places and holding signs - non of which were Sandakan - i managed to find someone to ask and they told me that i needed to go to the bus station out of town!!!!!!!!!

during this time ben had stayed by the shuttle bus just in case, i told him the good news and we put our bags back on the bus and headed back to the station

on arriving the touts started asking us where we were going then realised they'd just seen us and we all had a good laugh! i got the tickets for 7am sunday - ben just stayed on the shuttle, to say the boy selling tickets on the shuttle bus was confused by our behaviour would be somewhat of an understatement, as would be saying that Ben could see the funny side of it!

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we finally got back to the hostel 3 hours later to try and check back it - no aircon rooms available but there was no way we were looking for somehwere else to stay, whilst checking back in the girl at reception asked what had happened and i explained, she then told me that we could have booked our coach tickets through the hostel - the girl working the night before when we checked in had been new and didnt know

at that stage i also began to fail to see the funny side of it!

after calming down we went for a look around the town which was beautifully decorated in preparation for Chinese New Year with lanterns and banners and fairy lights

in the evening we wandered to the Esplanade to have dinner in one of the many restaurants on the front, i really wanted fish - but then we saw the prices! Malaysia is not cheap unfortunately but they do have the most amazing fish restaurants - the first one we walked into had a wall of fish in tanks to choose from!

we found a nice cheapish place to eat in the end and had a lovely meal then on the way back to the hostel ben bought some chicken bum kebabs

we made sure we were all packed and ready for our 6am start the next morning and looked forward to seeing a bit more of KK in a few days time