Kota Kinabalu

Nick and I have had a lovely holiday in Kota Kinabalu, which is part of Sabah, Borneo.

We've not done a lot but that was the purpose of our holiday... to relax and not do much. The sunsets are beautiful, the view of the ocean from our room is lovely and I love hearing the ocean when everything is quiet.

We've enjoyed a foot massage as well as full body massage. We've read while lying by the beach as well as sitting on the balcony. We've really just lazed around and loved every aspect of it.

We floated down the river to view the fireflies and we even got to see some young orang-utans close up and from a distance. We enjoyed the cooking demonstrations to make curry chicken and peanut sauce. The chicken curry was a little too spicy for me however I now know that by adding sugar it helps lower the level of spice.

I got to experience riding a horse along the beach near sunset. It sounds romantic... but it wasn't really. I have no experience with riding horses and even though my horse was really good for most of the ride, she did break into a trott a couple of times, and towards the end she wanted to do her own thing.

The resort (Shangri La Rasa Ria) participates in the conservation of orang-utans and works with Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre. Sepilok is on the other side of Sabah and rehabilitates orphaned orang-utans back into the wild. Part of the rehabilitation process is that the orang-utans spend a couple of years at the Shangri La Nature Reserve. They are fed twice a day and visitors can go for a walk into the reserve to view the orang-utans but we cannot touch them no matter how close they may come to us.

The orang-utans are between 3 and 5 years old. We adopted a little girl orang-utan for 12 months. Katie is the newest orang-utan to the reserve and is still very cuddly and likes human contact, compared to the other 6 orang-utans within the reserve. While we were there we only saw 4 of the 7 and one of them was Katie. This is Katie below.

If you're looking for a place to visit that is some where a little different, I'd definitely visit Sabah. To view the rest of our photos, please visit my online album, Kota Kinabalu.