We had a bit of a slow start to our time in Kota Kinabalu and we missed the local governors birthday party (who has a birthday party at 7:30 in the morning?) but by the end of the day we had seen everything KK claimed as a highlight. Our own highlight was a small Sikh temple that was hosting a wedding- not only did we get a complete tour of the temple but we were introduced to the bride and groom, posed for numerous photos, and were invited to join them for the wedding dinner. We ducked out as gracefully as possible hoping that a couple of sweaty, dirty backpackers didn't spoil too many of the wedding photos (I was remembering a TV show called Bridezillas, where the Bride was insistent that none of her brides maids were overweight so as not to spoil her photos and here we were stumbling into a wedding album in Sabah).

The town of Kota Kinabalu (the cool people call it KK) is undergoing a frenzied construction boom which has resulted in brand new resort and golf course complexes being built right across from shanty towns built over swamp land?? It did make me glad that DH (who hasn't met a spa treatment that didn't need to be thoroughly examined) has never insisted on traveling with the five star crowd .

KK is normally used as a jump off point to the rest of Sabah which is the adventure and wildlife province of Malaysia. We stopped in at a couple of local tour operators hoping they would have something on offer that would get us jazzed. It was our first indication that we might be getting a bit jaded to the whole travel experience- go climb a mountain (we've climbed higher), see the Orangutans (done that three times already), do a jungle river trip (ho-hum). I think that the reality is that we've just come off a stretch of exhausting travel, and the idea of sleeping in and wandering across the street to catch a movie and munch on some popcorn had a lot more appeal than it normally would. Malaysian movies are often Hollywood releases with Bahasa Malaysia subtitles so we checked out DH's choice (Looper which was a bit graphic but a fairly novel concept) and my choice (Taken 2 which was a waste of 2 hours and an awful collection of action movie cliches).

Sabah, and KK in particular, was a nice place to rest, sit quietly, and watch Borneo life meander aimlessly by you. Now we're off to visit a Sultan.