In case you are planning a trip and wanted to get the low-down on Kota Kinabalu (KK), here is a list of do’s and don’ts based on my experiences.

THE DO’S
1. Island hop. There isn’t much of a beach around Kota Kinablu other than a poor excuse of a man-made beach at a few of the resorts. Jesselton Pier in town can arrange for day trips or if you stay at a resort they can also provide boat services (but twice the price and goes to islands half the distance)

2. Eat. Local. Food. It’s f#@cking cheap and delicious. There was a wide range of Indian infused foods to Cantonese fused–i guess this is known as Malaysian food. A meal for two at these joints never went over $10 bucks. Here are a few recommendations:
Yee Fung off of Jalan Gaya was visited on more than one occasion. Their Laksa is amazing–its the perfect blend of spices and ingredients to keep my attention to the last drop.The beef noodles reminded me of Pho, which is always comforting. Their clay pot chicken rice is also notable but was in the shadow of the Laksa. On another occasion we mixed in a bowl of wonton noodles made dry (noodles and wontons come separate, noodles dry and wontons wet) and the texture of the egg noodles were chewy and saucy to my liking. Have your choice of a vegetable as a side–it will be doused in oyster sauce. You can wash all this down with a Kopi O–strong and a-bit-too-sweet instant black coffee–or what I preferred; 拉茶 (la cha) a foamy iced milk tea.

Maimuna is 24/7 and always serving up goodness. We went for their Roti Canai and Mee Goreng Seafood. The taste and textures of the Mee Goreng have me intrigued; I might try my hand at recreating this dish in the near future. I saw they had 2 locations, on the same street. They also have a buffet style offering of indian style curries. You get a plate of rice and get to attack the buffet.

Kedai Kopi Fatt Kee at Ang’s Hotel was a comforting twist of local Cantonese dishes. The sweet & sour shrimp and oyster sauce chicken wings came with a dash of nostalgia for my dad’s food (Cantonese language and the overwhelmingly comforting sounds of a Cantonese kitchen added to the nostalgia as well). I was tempted to order more wings, but decided to save some room incase I came across something interesting that needed to be tasted.

There are dozens of other options but we always found ourselves super hungry and without the patience to search for another place to grub. Just walk around town and find a place that is busy and order the first item on the menu.
3. Take an afternoon to explore the craft market, spice market and of course the wet market. Start off at the spice market since it closes somewhat early, then venture into the craft market to pick up some gifts and after five, venture into the wet market–which is the real reason I ventured to these markets; fresh seafood made to order. In fact, I didn’t even go into the craft market or spice market (I live in Beijing and frequent markets like this often). Tiger prawns and fresh fish were the main items up for order. The guy grilling up goodness, was as much a salesman as he was a cook. He convinced us to get three of the giant prawns and one in each flavor; chili, garlic butter and plain. I was a bit reluctant as I’m not a big fan of Tiger Prawns since they are usually chewy and tough but I wanted to try out the different styles. The cook threw them on the grill. I ordered a Tiger beer to wash down the tiger prawns and in the meantime I ordered some grilled chicken wings from the next stall. I also grabbed a square fried delight (didn’t catch the real name), which was made using fresh dough pulled paper thin and the size of a laptop then dropped in hot oil, then a filler of cabbage and other vegetables was dropped in the center and then the edges were folded over to make a square. The wings were sweet and savory and I was tempted to grab a few more but the Tiger Prawns landed on our table. They were good but not great. As expected they were tough and unfortunately nothing special as I was expecting a local twist on these to blow me away. In fact, I was a bit let down by the limited offerings of made to order seafood (essentially just Tiger Prawns and a couple varieties of fish) and the limited styles they offer to prepare. The prawns were about $10 a pop. The beer was also about $10. The wings were a couple bucks for a half dozen and the fried delight was under $1.

4. Climb Mount Kinabalu. You can do a 3 day 2 night trek, 2 day 1 night trek or even a 1 day climb to summit the 4095m mountain. Unfortunately, my time was limited in KK and I had to make a choice: scale the beast in a day or don’t or don’t climb it at all. The choice was simple really–what’s the point in exhausting yourself racing up a mountain in one day? To achieve an egotistical accomplishment? Naw. I’d prefer to climb slow, spend a night on the mountain and take in all that the mountain has to offer. Next time, Mount Kinabalu! (book your climb in advance here since they cap the number of climbers per day. So book ahead!)
5. Sunsets in KK are amazing.

THE DON’TS
1. Do some due diligence on the islands you are hopping to. We over-paid, or as I tell myself ‘paid for convenience’ through our resort to go island hopping to do some snorkeling and beach bumming. If we had more tme, I would have gone to islands further out via Jesselton Pier (I heard Police beach is good).
2. Don’t expect KK to be a beach town for bumming around. I think there are 2 types of travelers here: the backpacker in transit to/from Mount Kinabalu and the various other (diving) destinations in Sabah or a vacationer doing the resort thing.
3. Eat. Local. Food. If you are staying at a resort, don’t eat at the crappy restaurants that are over-priced at your resort, get out to town and eat at the first joint you see that is busy with locals. The same goes for backpackers–don’t eat the shitty banana pancakes that they serve at your hostel! Get out and eat the local stuff. You will probably save money too, you cheap backacker!
4. Don’t sleep in. Get up early and get out. It was monsoon season which meant daily rain. The rain usually started between noon and three an lasted a couple hours–perfect time for a nap and rest from the sun. The mornings however, were beautiful!
5. Don’t drink too much. Malaysia is an Islamic state and here is a 100% tax on alcohol—I’m not sure if those go hand in hand or not… Anyways, that means you will be paying double for any kind of drink and you should always try to respect local culture.