Family trip to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah - Part 1

We have returned from our road trip to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah and we thank the Lord for safe journeys and a wonderfully relaxing & blessed time there!

I will attempt to capture our family holiday in 3 parts (yup, another holiday trilogy) of our most splendid time in KK throughout last week; hopefull I can find the time to blog on it this week (starting work again tomorrow after 1 week's break; so you can imagine what awaits me this week at the office! Work, work and more work!). Anyway, you may have had glimpses of our holiday in KK in the previous 7 posts or so from my PDA. However, the pics in this trilogy are taken with our digital camera, so they would be much better in 'quality' (resolution and clarity) than the ones from my PDA itself.

We started our journey from Miri at 6:45 am with another family from church. It was a beautiful day for a road trip! We had to drive through Brunei to get to Sabah.
















Along the way to KK, we had to cross bridges (yes, that means we had to pay tolls in both Brunei and Malaysia) and take ferries to cross rivers. The two pictures below were taken whilst waiting for one of our ferry rides. Yes, the timber industry in Sarawak is still very much alive and well. We were amazed at how much logs the little tug boat could pull! It reminded me of the story of the 'little train that could'! Ha ha ha.































We arrived at KK at about 4:30pm and checked into our holiday apartment. It is called Waikiki Condominium, located at Tanjung Aru. It is a nice family apartment with all the facilities one would find in a service apartment. We enjoyed the stay there, minus the mosquitoes! (URL : http://www.gayana-resort.com/contact.htm).

We had a nice seafood dinner at the Tanjung Aru restaurant just acroos the street that night. Lovely fresh seafood! By the way, you will hear more of this 'seafood' feasting later on in these blogs! A nice stroll along the Tanjung Aru beach ended the day nicely.

The following day was a trip to Tuaran and Inanam town up north of Sabah. You can read about the food blogs at those places in my previous installment (Tuaran & Inanam).

After breakfast at Tuaran, we went to Shangri-La Rasa Ria resort for a visit. Below are the pics.
















So what are they all looking at and smiling so broadly about? Find out in the short video clip below...



















Whilst stolling around the resort, we were very facinated by the beautiful and serene surrounding of the resort. We were informed that this hotle is very popular among tourists who would make climbing Mt KK as part of their travel itinerary as it is a half way point between the KK National Park and the city. Furthermore, the spa and massages (after the climb) is excellent, so we were told.

There was plenty of greens (not talking about golf courses here but there is a Rasa Ria Golf Resort adjacent to this beach resort too.. so golf lovers, take note!) around the resort and beautiful flowers too. Below is a pic of Jess wearing a 'frangi pangi" flower ( I think that is what it is called). Doesn't she look cute?































More pics of the resort below.




































A family pic along the sheltered walkways to the beach.




















And yes, they have horses too. It will set you back by about RM100 for an hour's horse ride along the beach. Horses are imported from Brunei, by the way.
















All in all, this beach resort has a nice setting and would highly recommend it if not for the price that one has to fork out to stay here! Do visit the website for more info on this resort.

End of part 1. More to come!