Our Air Asia flight to Kota Kinabalu was supposed to leave just after noon. However as anyone who has traveled recently knows, airlines often have other ideas. We were able to rebook onto Scoot, the low cost airline of Singapore Airlines for their 630pm flight. Ironically the original flight we booked months ago with Scoot was cancelled and when they tried to rebook us on the evening flight, we decided it was too late and chose Air Asia instead. So, we had many hours to kill, but were able to access a very nice airport lounge. We had a lovely view of some bamboo and free lunch.

Once we did board we had a quick 2 hour flight from Singapore and have landed in the state of Sabah on the island of Borneo! 

Somebody who writes the airport bathroom signs has a sense of humour.

A taxi at the airport took us our amazing hotel in Kota Kinabalu.  Our room has a beautiful view of the South China Sea from the private balcony.  Too bad we are only here for one night! 

The view from our balcony. Next time we pass through KK we will stay again overnight. We will make better use the amenities.

Borneo is the third largest island in the world.  26% of the island belongs to Malaysia, made up of the states of Sabah and Sarawak to the north and west (these are the ones we are going to visit).  73% to the south is the Kalimantan province of Indonesia, and the country of Brunei sits in the northwest corner, making up the last 1% of the island.

Prior to 1967, Sabah’s capital was called Jesselton.  Kota is the Malay word for City and Kinabalu is the name of the highest mountain in both Borneo and all of Malaysia. The current population of KK is 731,000.

We leave bright and early tomorrow on our first tour, so we barely get to see the city at all!