I was so looking forward to our visit to Kota Kinabalu as I had been here 20 years ago on a yacht. We were moored at Sutera Harbour for a couple of months over Christmas 2005 and I met some lovely people who have remained friends on social media. Karen is one of those friends and we had made plans to catch up for lunch after our morning shore excursion.

Dave and I had booked a Kota Kinabalu Highlights tour but unfortunately there were not too many highlights. Our tour guide was terrific with the limited resources he had and gave us interesting info about how KK is aiming to develop itself as a tourist destination.

Here’s a couple of ‘highlights’

The visit I was most looking forward to was the Cultural Village – and it was underwhelming to say the least!

The museum is under renovation and has been for a couple of years and the village is situated within the very shabby grounds with overturned rubbish bins, water covered pathways and very steep walkways with no hand rails. The toilets at the entry were awash with who knows what so that was a turn off right at the start. Unfortunately the tribal houses haven’t been maintained and are deteriorating badly and only three were accessible.

The day continued to deteriorate when our plans to meet Karen fell apart as we were unable to finalise our arrangements with no mobile service once off the ship. We waited at our pre-determined meeting place for about an hour while Karen was waiting to hear from us that our tour was over! What a mix up! We walked the few hundred metres back to the ship and instantly connected but by this time I wasn’t able to walk the few hundred metres back to the entry to the port so our long awaited meet-up didn’t happen 😢

In the meantime Dave had a panic moment when he couldn’t find his phone. He ransacked the backpack, his pockets, his shoulder bag and the bus seat getting more and more anxious only to discover it had fallen on the floor and was hiding UNDER his seat. Phew 😅 By this stage everyone in the bus also breathed a sigh of relief but none more so than Dave & I. I mean, everything is in our phones these days! Can you imagine what it would be like to lose it?

Our guide was aware of many improvements needed to make KK a successful tourist destination but was also philosophical about political graft that directs money away from where it should go and into politicians pockets. It’s a shame that such grants aren’t applied where they should be to bring the area up to scratch and make it more appealing as a tourist spot. Government buildings and mosques don’t do it for me I’m afraid.