I decided to see a few sights after booking my Mount Kinabalu climb. The main city centre consists of 5-6 long streets. A few plaza’s, food courts,and shops. It’s small enough to have charm like Sandakan, despite still being a city, this is the main bypass road just to show how busy it can be:
Empty road in Kota Kinabalu
Just outside the city centre, about 40minute walk away was a few museums, so I headed in that direction, stopping off at anything that caught my eye (food).
First was the Sabah Art Gallery. I walked in, and all the lights cut out due to a power cut. Never mind, lets try that again.
Outside the Art gallery was a train made in Leeds in England about 60 years ago for Borneo island. Borneo island only had 1 train track so this was quite an important train in its day:
First train on Borneo Island
I then went in the Sabah State Museum. Entering this I was greeted with a giant whale skeleton.
The area is divided into different cultural elements, such as clothing, bamboo work, natural history, and a time tunnel which showed documentation on the arrival of the Filipino and Indonesian immigrants, Japanese WW2 Occupation, British Colonial period, and incorporating the states of Sabah and Sarawak into Malaysia. I read the newspapers from 40 years ago, it seems Sabah and Sarawak population unanimously wanted to join Malaysia as a bigger country only older immigrants seemed to protest the idea.
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interesting seeing the 60 year old train. I remember going to school in a similar train, it was known as the push and pull,as it was single track.
The whale skeleton rocks!!