Kota Kinabalu travel info

Around six in the evening, people in Kota Kinabalu start drifting toward the sea. Sit on the sand at Tanjung Aru and the sun drops between the silhouettes of Gaya and Sapi islands while the sky runs from orange to pink to violet. Stalls behind the beach grill corn, kids run barefoot along the waterline, and it's fair to say most visitors came for exactly this.

In the morning you go the other way, out to sea. A boat from the city jetties reaches Manukan or Sapi in the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park in 15 to 20 minutes, and even in ankle-deep water reef fish swim between your feet. Back in town for lunch, it's a kopitiam (coffee shop) and a plate of springy Tuaran mee or a bowl of beef noodles. By dusk, smoke from the fish grills rises over the Filipino Market on the waterfront.

The city is small and the airport is twenty-odd minutes from the centre, so you can be out the same evening you land. Give one day to the drive up toward Mount Kinabalu, two hours away: up on the Kundasang plateau, under the 4,095 m peak, it's around ten degrees cooler than the coast.

Kota Kinabalu International Airport (BKI)