Kota Kin­a­balu is the cap­i­tal of the north­east­ern Malaysian province of Sabah in Bor­neo and dif­fers from the rest of the coun­try with it’s heavy Indone­sian and Fil­ipino influ­ences.  Also, you can feel here that the fairly new build­ings are just barely hold­ing the jun­gle at bay.

Our intro­duc­tion to the city was marred by an icy wel­come to our booked accom­mo­da­tion.  Upon our mid­night arrival we entered the store front style hos­tel to a hos­tile, bleary eyed and down­right mean ‘recep­tion­ist’.  Silent through­out the entire exchange, she flung the guest­book at us, fol­lowed by a toss of a pen, pointed to the stairs that would pre­sum­ably lead to our room.  We clam­bered up hot and exhausted to dis­cover there was no remote to the AC so no way of turn­ing it on and no sheets on the bed.  The Sullen One spent the next half hour try­ing to locate both, again with­out mak­ing any eye con­tact nor utter­ing a word.  Stunned by this com­plete dis­re­gard for any com­mon cour­tesy we decided to try our luck get­ting a taxi and find­ing another place to sleep at that hour.  As we were beel­in­ing for the front door we noticed a sign on the glass ‘Need Recep­tion­ist for imme­di­ate’.  The next day we came back to speak to the owner, a decent enough dude; he apol­o­gized and said they were work­ing on find­ing a replace­ment because “She not so nice, don’t smile and don’t like job.”  Yeah tell us about it.

[View Slideshow]