Kota Kinabalu

click images to enlarge

January 11th began as a partial sea day as Sapphire Princess continued towards our first port of call in Kota Kinabalu.  The ship arrived on schedule around noon.  While eating breakfast the captain announced that our next port of call, Nha Trang, would be cancelled due to high seas and wind in the China Sea which would prevent safe tender boat operation.  The ship would remain in port overnight and depart at 5 pm on Friday. 

Kota Kinabalu

The capital of Malaysia's Sabah State in Northern Borneo, the town dates from 1963 and occupies the site of Jesselton, the old British colonial capital. (Jesselton was razed during World War II.)

City Drive & Sabah Museum

We pre-booked the City Drive & Sabah Museum excursion, which was scheduled to depart at 2 pm.   That gave us time to get some lunch before the tour as we wouldn't return to the ship until 6 pm.  We met in the Wheelhouse Lounge on deck 7 and after checking in waited in Princess Theater until our group number was called.  Our bus departed around 2:30 pm.

The tour paused for photos at the Tun Mustapha Tower, a 30-story circular glass and steel tower that's one of only three buildings in the world constructed in this "suspended" manner.  Since it start d to rain enroute to the tower, we stayed on the bus.

The next scheduled photo stop was at City Mosque, an example of contemporary Islamic architecture. Again the driver paused for us to get photos from the bus.   By the time we arrived at the handicraft market, the rain had ended.  We had about 30 minutes free time to explore the market and surrounding area, which was included the Le Meridian, a SPG hotel. 

We made one more photo stop at another impressive mosque before heading to our main stop at the magnificent Sabah Museum, a showcase of Sabah's rich cultural heritage.  Our visit began with a tour of several of the buildings within the Heritage Village.  The first was a long house where several families would have lived together.  The entire structure is constructed with bamboo.  We toured a couple more buildings before heading to the main museum building to view the indoors exhibits including a huge whale skeleton in the main lobby.  After about an hour we returned to our ship, arriving just after 6 pm.

This tour gave us an understanding of past and present day Sabah.  

Click on the image to the left for more Blog posts about this trip.

Related Album:

Kota Kinabalu
Sabah Museum

Additional photos can be found on our Southeast Asia Shutterfly page

View Our Other Shutterfly Share Pages

Follow Us On

Sign-up for Exclusive Email Offers

Where have you explored? 

Gather your travel and food pics and join us Wednesday night for the latest installment of #FoodTravelChat