Kota Kinabalu 30 April 2009 to 3 May 2009

This trip started because of a simple reason. Read - Of Diving III

The dive trip to Kota Kinabalu saw us flying to the city over a late night flight, reaching Kota Kinabalu International Airport at 11pm. We booked a taxi and headed for our hotel - The Imperial International - a nice chic hotel which we saw ourselves housed on the 15th floor overlooking the beautiful coast line of Kota Kinabalu. We had a quick late night meal and then rested early for the next morning's dive trip to Pulau Sapi and vicinity.

Morning came and we had a nice breakfast at the rooftop cafe before being picked up by representatives from Borneo Dream Dive Centre which we signed up for their Advanced Open Water Dive course.We were shuffled to the jetty alongside with two Taiwanese girls, a German guy and a Japanese dude. All of us joined the dive trip for different reasons but for me and my travel mate, we were very determined to complete the Advance Open Water dive training.

We had our dive training during the morning and afternoon, with an intermission at Pulau Sapi for lunch. It was a beautiful island with crystal clear waters, horded by thousands of fishes and a layer of pristine white sandy beach. We had a nice local lunch on the island before we headed by to the waters for more dive training.

We completed day one at about 4pm and headed back to the hotel to wash up and then wander around the shopping district of Kota Kinabalu. Along the way, we spoilt ourselves with massages and a heaping good dinner of local chicken rice - we each ate 1/2 a chicken along with lots of local dishes. Needless to say this sent us sleeping early with a filled tummy.

The next day, we resumed our dive training and again, had lunch at Pulau Sapi. This time we saw some resident monitor lizards scavenging for bits of food left by the islanders. They seemed so tame and harmless that many of the locals were oblivious of their existence. More diving training in the afternoon and we finally earn our Advance Water Certification. It was unfortunate we did not have underwater cameras to capture the underwater views - which we a total delight.

We were totally beaten by the day's training that we decided to have room service dinner for the evening and indulge in some good local TV. Before we close the day, we bought some nice donuts and had a couple of Lattes from Starbucks brought back to the room.

The next day, we had our breakfast and went for foot massage, before flying back to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur. This was a very short trip but all in all, another one worthy of my memory.

Read: Kota Kinabalu AOW