Living in Kota Kinabalu

Well, I’m been offline and out of touch for a lot longer than I anticipated, but I’m back online now. I’m working in Kota Kinabalu and will likely be staying here for a while. KK turns out to be a surprisingly vibrant, yet picturesque little city. As my brother-in-law says, you can get nearly everything that you can find in Kuala Lumpur here, but there are plenty of stuff here that you won’t be able to find in the Klang Valley, such as great beaches, clean air and fantastic scenic views..

The place I’m staying at is near the University Malaysia Sabah campus towards the north. It’s some way off from the city centre, but that’s more than made up for by the mountain views available here and the fact that the newly opened 1 Borneo, the biggest shopping mall in East Malaysia, is within walking distance of where we are. Mount Kinabalu is theoretically within line of sight from here, but it’s always covered in clouds so it’s not actually visible. Even so, the sight of the mountain covering the whole horizon is mighty impressive, especially so when the sun shines directly on it.

1 Borneo is a decently big shopping mall, perhaps only slightly smaller than the Mid-Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur. It has the usual assortment of Malaysian shopping mall staples including Starbucks and fast food outlets, but most importantly for my wife, contains a GSC theatre. It’s supposed to have four hotels attached to it but so far as I can tell, only two have been completed so far. To tell the truth, it’s kind of hard to believe that they would built so much commercial space this far out from the city centre, but we’re thankful that it makes life for us a lot more convenient.

Finally, one last thing that KK has that KL doesn’t, plenty of fresh seafood. We’ve been to a couple of cool seafood restaurants built around prawn farms already and even seeing the variety and size of what they have was a novel experience.

Not everything here is perfect of course. The prices of some things here can be shockingly expensive and the general pace of work and life is slower. It took us three weeks to get our phone lines and internet connection up and running! But so far so good, so look out for more updates from me on life in Kota Kinabalu for a while.

2 thoughts on “Living in Kota Kinabalu”

  1. it’s 2 years now that you posted your article about living in KK,

    how is it today? you still think it’s nice living there?
    Would you recommend KK to others as a place for living?

    I’m asking because I will retire in a couple of years and amoung other reasons
    – I like warm climate and the ocean
    – I like to live in places where you have ethnical diversity
    – to live in a relatively young society (many kids, low average age) makes me
    feel younger myself
    – Malaysia has a MM2H program that supports foreigners who want to stay in the country

    SIn other words: when you screen the world for places where to stay KK pops up as an option.

    That’s why I’m asking. You still like it?

  2. Wow, I’ve even forgotten that I wrote this post.
    Personally, yes, I do still like living here. It even seems that we’re going to be staying a bit longer than expected. A potential downside is that KK is growing faster than most other parts of Malaysia, so traffic has increased noticeably even within the mere two years we’ve been here. Even so, it’s still far easier to get around in KK than anywhere in the Klang Valley.
    Not knowing much about your personal preferences or where you’re from, it’s hard to make any specific comments. All of the reasons you’ve noted are still valid of course. I’d like to add that it’s a pretty good place to stay if you like nature in general and outdoorsy activities like trekking, rafting, snorkelling, mountain climbing as all of this stuff is readily accessible.
    My wife’s biggest disappointment about KK is probably the lack of more diverse entertainment options. My wife likes concerts and other types of live performances, exhibitions and other art events etc., and there’s not a whole lot of that stuff going on in town. The city just isn’t big enough to support that sort of thing.
    Feel free to ask me if you need more specific information.

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