Just back from KL & Borneo
 

Thanks to all of those who answered my various pre-holiday questions. We had a fabulous holiday!

We spent 5 nights at the Sheraton Imperial in KL and 11 nights in the Shangri-La Rasa Ria in Sabah, both of which hotels I would highly recommend.

Our photos can be seen at
http://uk.f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/...ysia/my_photos

I won't do a full trip report, because I think the photos speak for themselves, but if anybody wants further info on the places we visited I'd be happy to try and answer any questions.

=:)

I enjoyed looking at your pictures.
We will be going to Sabah in a couple of weeks.
Where is Kanarut?

Kanarut is a small town about 20km south of KK on the main KK-Beaufort railway line. It's called Kanarut on our map, but we also heard it called Kinarut, so that's maybe why you can't find it.

Thanks for explaining. I did find info on Kinarut. There is an Ethnobotanical Garden there, is that right?
We are staying on Gayana island for 3 nights. Plan to take some side trips while there.
Any suggestions?

We are heading to Sabah in June, and debating betwwwen the Rasa Ria and Tanjung Arung properties. I'd imagine, since you were there for 12 days, that you loved the RR hotel, but wondered if you'd visited the TA hotel? We are only going for 3-4 days, and frankly were concerned that we'd have a hard time seeing/doing anything in KK itself if we stayed at the Rasa. We've been considering (BTW, we arrive at 3:30 AM!) staying in town at the TA and taking a day trip to the RR.

ANY thoughts, on or off line would be most welcome.

We LOVED the photos!

Steve and John

kyob:- I don't know about the botanical gardens, we only had about half an hour's stop in Kinarut during our steam train journey, so we didn't have much chance to explore the town.

Gayana Island is a resort on the opposite side of Gaya island from Kota Kinabalu. We did a guided trek through the mangrove swamps on Gaya, which lasted for about 2 hours and which we found very interesting. After that, we hopped across to Sapi island where there was fabulous snorkelling. We were told that the best snorkelling in the area is off one of the other islands in the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park - I think it was Manukan, but we didn't make it there.

We found the steam train ride a bit of a disappointment, because the day we went they found a fault on the line and we were only able to do half the journey, so missed out on visiting Papar, where I understand there is a good market.

However, we really enjoyed our trip to the Klias wetlands. It's about 2 hours' drive from KK, but well worth it. We saw proboscis monkeys, macaques, water buffaloes, fireflies and a whole load of wonderful birds, which our guide David expertly pointed out and identified for us.

Steve and John:- We shared your concerns about the Rasa Ria being isolated from KK, but in the end picked it over the Tanjung Aru for its beach and location in a nature reserve and in the end we felt we made the right choice for us. The RR is about 30 minutes' drive from KK, which we drove through several times during our stay there.

There is a shuttle bus from the hotel about 4 times a day, which costs RM22 for the return trip and we went into town on it one of the days. To be honest, after having just spent 5 nights in KL, we found KK a bit of a non-entity in comparison and didn't bother going back there in the evenings. The RR has 4 different restaurants, 2 separate bars and great room service, so we didn't feel any need to venture out in the evenings (apart from the Klias trip, which included dinner overlooking the river). However, we're both in our 50's and past partying - you may differ. We normally like to visit as many different local restaurants as possible during our holidays, but we had done that in KL and, since the Sabah part of our holiday was mainly about relaxing and seeing the countryside and nature, we kind of got lazy, but didn't feel as though we had missed out at all.

The island hopping trip we took left from the jetty at the Tanjund Aru and we had a look around the hotel grounds whilst we were there. Although the TA is a bigger hotel than the RR, the gardens and pool area actually seemed smaller and the "beach" there is just a tiny (maybe 50 metres long) patch of sand. Also, although it's a LOT closer to KK than the Rasa Ria, it still seemed to us to be too far to walk into town in the Sabah heat and humidity.

So, it all depends on exactly what you're looking for, but personally speaking, we would pick the Rasa Ria over the Tanjung Aru without a doubt. Oh, and the orang utans are fabulous - we visited them twice and occasionally spotted them swinging around the trees from the hotel!

Hope this helps.

=:)

Thanks for all the help, Xenos
Just one more thing......did you rent a car in KK?

We had planned to hire a car in KK, but after factoring in the 3 "organised" trips, a shopping day in KK and several visits to the nature sanctuary at our hotel (where they forest treks and bird watching walks as well as the orang utan visits), it didn't leave us with with many free days to just relax and enjoy the sea and sun, so in the end we didn't bother.