A week in Kota Kinabalu and Sepilok: Sabah, Malaysia

[KennethT]

Hello!!! And welcome to another edition of KennethT in SE Asia...  thankfully, this time around I have no illnesses to report whatsoever!!  It's a miracle!  I'm amazed that we didn't get sick right off the bat - as we were sitting at the airport gate waiting for our flight, there was a youngish guy about 20 feet away who had a constant deep chest cough and he never covered his mouth while coughing.  Of course, he wound up sitting directly behind me on the plane!!!  So, we decided to wear our N95 masks almost the entire 18 hours of the flight, except while eating.  Not the most pleasant but I'm happy to say that it was successful in keeping us from getting sick.

 

I'm going to start by showing where this area is on the map as it's not well known - actually, I'm stealing @BonVivant's maps, hehe....

 

 

On the right side of this map is the island of Borneo, whose ownership is split by Malaysia, Indonesia and the small country of Brunei.  Within the Malaysia portion, it's divided into 2 states, Sarawak - the western portion, and Sabah, the eastern portion.

 

Here is Sabah in a lot more detail.  We stayed in Kota Kinabalu - the capital of Sabah - for our city and scuba diving portion (there's a protected marine national park about 15 minutes off the coast of Kota Kinabalu by boat) and then a short bit in Sepilok, an area in the middle of the rainforest near Sandakan.  The whole area of Sabah used to be covered by one of the world's oldest rainforests, but sadly, has been greatly reduced in area due to the creation of palm oil plantations, many of which you can see when you fly from KK to Sandakan (about a 40 minute flight).

 

Incidentally, if you're interested in scuba diving, one of the top locations in the world, Sipadan island, is located just south of Semporna - but we will most likely not get there for a long time (if ever) since it's so high in demand that there's a daily lottery to see who gets to dive there as well as the fact that dive operations there can be picky so they insist on only taking divers with Advanced certifications and tons of dives in their histories.

 

Anyway, as usual, we flew via Singapore Airlines direct from NYC to Singapore (about 18 hours), the meals of which were detailed here:

 

and here:

and here:

Our flight was supposed to take this route:

however, at the last minute, we diverted flying over the Netherlands and then head down over the middle east, India, etc.  I was hoping to fly over the pole since I was hoping to look at the Northern Lights, sometimes visible from an airplane.

 

As always, I love the Singapore airport Terminal 3's baggage claim filled with tropical plants:

 

Our connection to Kota Kinabalu left out of Terminal 1 which doesn't have nearly as many food options as some other terminals (love you Terminal 2!!!), but we still were able to get a decent chicken rice:

It was very good, and similar to Wee Nam Kee in Terminal 2, but the seating area was much more crowded.

 

We landed in Kota Kinabalu around 10:30, and immigration was fast and easy, and the airport is a convenient 20 minutes from the city center, so we got to the hotel before 12PM.  Of course, our room wasn't ready at that time, but the hotel was amazing in that they let us us a different room to shower/sleep/whatever while we were waiting!!!!  So we had a nice 5 hour nap before heading down and having an early dinner in the hotel since we were still too tired to go running around the city.

 

Even though it's hotel prices, they weren't so bad - KK in general is SUPER cheap....  like a 30 minute taxi costs about $2.50...

 

 

 

There's currently about 4.5 RM (Malaysian Ringgit) to 1 US$.

 

A decent char kway teoh

 

Nasi goreng (fried rice) with grilled chicken

 

After dinner, we changed rooms and went back to sleep!

[rotuts]

@KennethT

 

looking forward to your trip.

 

nice time for it , w snow on the ground here.

 

thank you for taking the time to share.

 

Food looks delicious.

[ElsieD]

Oh boy, I am SO looking forward to this!

[KennethT]

Our hotel had a fantastic breakfast buffet, included in the cost of our room.  Multiple stations featured food from all over the world with many from the local area which we frequented.  But they also had a lot of Chinese like rotating dim sum and congee (there's a lot of Chinese tourists in KK), European stuff like cured meats/cheeses/yogurt, also an egg/omlette station, waffles, croissants, bakery, and a soup station with a few different broths and many choices for additions.

 

One thing I always hit (every morning) was their roti prata / curry section:

While the prata weren't made to order, they were freshly made and had great texture.  Three different curries to choose from (vegetarian, chicken or fish) plus the smaller pot full of sambal (chilli sauce) which is ever-present in Malaysian food.

 

They also had a good Nasi Lemak station - which is white rice or sometimes coconut rice with a bunch of stuff with it - very popular all over Malaysia and (with a different name) Indonesia as well:

Back left is the dish full of rice, then a dish of sambal, fried chicken, beef floss and chicken floss, ikan bilis - small dried fish that have been fried and peanuts, plus egg and cucumber

 

First of many roti prata with chicken curry and sambal

 

Fantastic pineapple

 

Teh tarik - a specialty of kedai kopi (coffeeshops) all over Malaysia and Singapore.  A very strong black tea (or coffee) is mixed with sweetened condensed milk and sometimes Milo powder and poured back and forth between 2 pitchers to mix and froth.  Tastes kinda like hot chocolate.

 

A nasi lemak plate:

 

And if you haven't eaten enough yet, there were a rotating selection of curries/sambals...

 

On the left is kambing masak hitam - or goat in black curry and on the right was their version of a chicken rendang.  The goat was really good but the chicken was a bit on the sweet side.

[KennethT]

Along much of the waterfront are open air markets.  The one directly across from our hotel was the puffed snack/dried fish market:

 

KK was originally a fishing village, which is evident in the multitude of dried fish/shrimp and fish parts on sale.

 

 

Puffed snacks

 

 

 

Right next door to this oderiferous market is the handicrafts market, sometimes called Filipino market as many of the vendors are Filipino (many there illegally).  They will do alterations right out on the street:

 

 

There's also a large fruit market:

 

Mostly flavorless mango.

 

After wandering around the markets in the morning in the 90 degree heat with tons of humidity (the heat index was about 110F every day), we decided to go across the street to one of the many indoor malls which has a supermarket:

 

On the hunt looking for dried chillies to bring home

 

In the basement of the mall is a food court with a very well respected kedai kopi:

 

They have a steam table full of various different dishes, but they also have a menu:

 

 

 

We got a roti canai with goat:

The style this place does is that they drown the roti in the curry.  The goat was flavorful and tender and the texture of the roti was fantastic but midway through the curry soaked section started dissolving!

 

Roti cobra with chicken - roti cobra is basically the same as the roti canai but topped with a fried egg

 

This is a drink we had all over, similar to the lime juice (limeaid) that is all over SE Asia, this is called kitchai ping - calamansi juice and a good dose of sugar, plus a salted dried plum is covered with a bit of hot water (to dissolve the sugar and start to rehydrate the salted plum) then covered in ice and more water.  So the drink is sweet, tart and slightly salty - very refreshing when it's really hot outside.

 

A frothy teh tarik.

 

It's so humid there, the plants wind up growing on top of plants -

I loved this tree, partially taken over by a monstera and various ferns

 

 

[KennethT]

For dinner, we decided to take a walk around the city a bit and wind up at a well known place for Bah Kut Teh (aka bak kut teh) translated as pork bone tea.  The Malay style is porky with a bunch of dried herbs and is supposed to taste like an herby tea as opposed to the Singapore style which is basically just garlic and black/white pepper.

 

 

Bah kut teh with pork meatballs and ribs, fried dough

 

Accompaniments - raw chopped garlic, chopped green chilli and sliced red chilli

 

Soy sauce with chilli

 

Yum

 

Stir fried "baby kailan" which I haven't seen outside of Singapore

 

more kitchai ping

 

We had the good fortune to see this from our table:

 

So of course....

Delicious - great durian flavor, creamy, not too sweet....

[KennethT]

Breakfast the next day:

 

Roti prata and a savory donut with chicken curry and sambal

 

\

more teh tarik

 

more pineapple

 

From the soup station - prawn mee - wheat noodles with liquid shrimp and shrimp paste topped with fried shallots - chilli sauce on the side

 

Chicken kurma - a Malay version of an Indian korma - uses similar dried spices but also has lemongrass, and coconut milk instead of cream

 

Seafood "paprik" - some kind of mild-ish chilli sauce

 

Sambal ikan - fish cooked in sambal

 

chicken, fish and sambal

 

seafood

[Shelby]

2 hours ago, KennethT said:

Mostly flavorless mango.

That's too bad I know how much you love a good mango.  When is mango season over there or is it all the time or? 

 

Very happy you're doing a blog--I was hoping you would   Can't wait for more.  OH and I'm so glad you guys enjoyed a non getting sick vacation!

[weinoo]

3 hours ago, KennethT said:

Mostly flavorless mango.

before you buy stuff like this at markets like this, do you buy one to try or ask for a sample?

[KennethT]

18 minutes ago, Shelby said:

That's too bad I know how much you love a good mango.  When is mango season over there or is it all the time or? 

 

 

I'm not sure - I always thought that it was around March to July or so, but I think it varies depending on location within the monsoon rains which are seasonal wind direction changes which affects the rainy/dry seasons.  For instance, this time of year is the rainy season for the east coast of peninsular Malaysia and the dry season for the west coast of peninsular Malaysia - like Penang.  Malaysian Borneo itself is not as dependent on the monsoon as it gets a lot of rainfall year round, but according to Weatherbase, the height of precip in KK is June-November and the dry season is Jan-April but it's reversed in other areas of Borneo - like the east coast like Sandakan....  and since the amount of light available is basically the same year round (so close to the equator), I imagine the mango season has to correspond with rainfall.

 

So, since they grow them all over the place, maybe there is a continual supply, just depending on whether they are local or need to be brought in from somewhere.

[KennethT]

8 minutes ago, weinoo said:

before you buy stuff like this at markets like this, do you buy one to try or ask for a sample?

In general, they're so cheap that it's not a big deal to buy a couple and then come back to buy more if you like them.  One vendor was actually cutting samples for every tourist walking by (and there's tons of them) but his prices were also like double that of most of everyone else!  Most of the vendors didn't speak English - sometimes they don't even speak Malay but rather speak some local language, but the guy cutting samples was hawking in pretty decent English and was quite aggressive, so I like to avoid those types.

[liuzhou]

So happy to see this and delighted you managed for once to take a trip without being sick! Looking forward to more.

 

My local Malaysian restaurant (admittedly not the best in the world) has closed down and my lovely Malay friend has gone home (no connection between the two other than the country), so I'm having Malaysia envy!

 

 

[KennethT]

4 hours ago, liuzhou said:

My local Malaysian restaurant (admittedly not the best in the world) has closed down and my lovely Malay friend has gone home (no connection between the two other than the country), so I'm having Malaysia envy!

Malaysian or Indonesian restaurants here in NY are few and far between.  Those that are here are even less than mediocre and are expensive for what they are doing. 

 

When you did frequent your local Malaysian place, what did you typically order?  I had a discussion with some Malay friends a while back - we were trying to decide why Malaysian food hasn't taken off in NYC (or elsewhere for that matter) like the various regional Chinese or Thai has.  My thought was that the Chinese and Thai have a few dishes that everyone knows - mapo tofu, pad Thai, various stir fries with known ingredients, etc.  while most Malaysian/Indonesian dishes are unknown quantities so people would be nervous ordering them not knowing what they'll taste like.   I think of it like a killer app for software companies.  Or maybe it's the fact that shrimp paste is in everything....

[TicTac]

Great photos and thanks for taking the time to take us along for the ride...

 

I think I would have fallen in love with that tree as well - whimsically magical!

 

Sadly I would never survive that part of the world with the abundance of Garlic seemingly everywhere!

 

 

[KennethT]

13 minutes ago, TicTac said:

Sadly I would never survive that part of the world with the abundance of Garlic seemingly everywhere!

You're not wrong.  Whether it's Malaysia, Indonesia or Singapore, I can't think of a single spice paste that doesn't use tons of it.  And even things like fried chicken are typically simmered in a spice paste first, before being fried.

 

Years ago, I had a friend who couldn't tolerate garlic - lots of stomach cramps after eating it.  She loved to eat "ethnic" foods, so she was always looking for some kind of miracle cure.  She settled on using something called Beano - it's some kind of enzyme - you take it just before eating things with beans (or garlic) and it helps your body digest it.   That was a long time ago, I don't know if anything better has been developed since then.

[liuzhou]

7 hours ago, KennethT said:

When you did frequent your local Malaysian place, what did you typically order?

 

The Malaysian restaurant was a small, casual café-like place and, for obvious reasons, I suppose, leant heavily to the Chinese side of the country’s multi-culturally influenced cuisine. The menu was entirely in Chinese, too so I never really learned the Malay names of many dishes. Looking back, I realise the menu was somewhat clichéd with a heavy reliance on the more obvious ‘famous’ dishes and those they thought would appeal to the locals. 'Foreign' restaurants have never done well here.

 

Malaysian Restaurant  - Liuzhou

 

Funnily enough, the young Malaysian woman I met didn’t know it was there until I told her. She was Malay-Chinese, born and raised in Malaysia where she met a young man from Liuzhou and eventually married him and moved here. Anyway, she visited the restaurant and was unimpressed, saying it wouldn’t last long in Malaysia. It didn’t last long here either. Neither did she. After having delivered a healthy bouncing boy, the couple moved back to Malaysia.

 

I didn’t visit the restaurant often, maybe three times maximum, but when I did, I nearly always went for one of the Indian influenced curry dishes. Few curries to be found here and when they do appear they are usually sweet Japanese-style – not my idea of curry. Their fried chicken was acceptable, if not great and they couldn’t mess up nasi goreng. I did eat Bak Kut Teh, there but wasn't knocked out by their version.

 

Incidentally, for many years there has been a hugely popular and more ‘authentic’ Malaysian restaurant in London near where I worked. The name escapes me for the moment, but it was standing room only with long lines every day. There are a few others in London, too.

 

 

[KennethT]

After breakfast we took a tour of the city center's supermarkets looking for dried chillies to bring home.  Most the supermarkets were really lackluster and their produce didn't look very good - I would have killed for that supermarket near our hotel in Jakarta!  The  last supermarket we visited is on the outskirts of the city center (in this last supermarket, I actually did find a couple different types of dried chillies that looked really good to bring home so one mission accomplished!) and it's obvious here how the city is wedged between the South China Sea and the rainforest....  This is standing in the supermarket's parking lot, facing away from the ocean:

Just past this tree is impenetrable jungle!

 

After the supermarket, we took a Grab taxi (like Uber in SE Asia) to a large garden store that an Instagram acquaintance of mine who lives in KK recommended to look for chilli seeds.  The garden store was huge and gorgeous with tons of tropical plants, and lots of vegetable seeds but they were out of all their chilli seeds.  For reference, a 30 minute taxi ride in no traffic to the suburbs cost RM13 - or not quite $3.  After looking around the store, we took a short ride to a well known seafood restaurant.  There are now 3 or 4 locations of this mini-chain (with one in the city center) but blogs I read said that the original location in the suburbs was still the best and most consistent - conveniently, not far from the garden center.

 

 

Outside, on the right, are tanks full of live fish and seafood

 

 

And the menu:

 

 

Water and kitchai juice

 

Chilli scallops.  I'm not usually a fan of scallops, but these were great.

 

Fish head curry - a good size grouper head and shoulders with an amazing asam curry - coconut milk, tamarind, curry leaves and spices.

 

This is a local vegetable that doesn't seem to have a name.  On the receipt, they called it Sabah vegetable but I kept reading it being called Sabah chai - and whenever I asked for it, everyone knew what I was talking about.  Evidently, it's a perennial vegetable that's kind of like a fern - it's very inexpensive because it's constantly growing all over the place, so you can cut it and it keeps growing.  It's also really tasty.  We got it sambal style here.

 

[KennethT]

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel to relax in the air conditioning a bit and start packing for our scuba diving day the next day since we'd have to head out early in the morning.

 

For dinner, we headed out to a well known kedai kopi in the city center, on the first floor of a hotel.

 

 

 

The thing they are best known for is:

According to many sources, these are the best chicken wings in KK - some even say the best in all of Malaysia!  Personally, we were less than impressed - they were ok, but covered in the gloppy, sticky sweet sauce.  We thought the wings that we had in a hawker stall in Penang as well as a multitude of different vendors in Singapore were much better.

 

Prawn curry - this was pretty good with tamarind- better than the wings! 

 

Stir fried kang kong, aka morning glory. They didn't have any Sabah-chai.

 

And since it was still around 90 degrees outside,

Kitchai ping

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

Fish head curry - a good size grouper head and shoulders with an amazing asam curry - coconut milk, tamarind, curry leaves and spices.

 

That (or something similar) was my favourite in the Malaysian place in town. Made with bighead carp, though here. Still more 'authentic' than most of their menu.