Malaysia Trip 2022/2023 Day 4: Kota Kinabalu

Baggage status: Baggage status: 1/3 in Tokyo?, 1/3 in Incheon, 1/3 in Toronto?

Good morning KK! This morning, I woke up to the sounds of prayers at around 5am. I don’t remember this in my past trips. Perhaps it’s because we’re closer to the city centre this time. For breakfast, we conveniently headed downstairs to Latest Recipe, the all day buffet restaurant here. They had a large selection of food including western food (eggs, bread, pastries, sausages and beans etc), traditional Malaysian breakfast (nasi lemak), Indian food (roti with curry), and a noodle bar (with various soups – vegetable, chicken, beef, tom yum). I had to start with some nasi lemak (their traditional breakfast) as my first meal here in Malaysia. 

The main reason, we came to KK was to visit baby’s great grandfather. Unfortunately, he was quite ill before our trip here so we had to expedite our flights. Luckily, he seems to be doing better but is still admitted to hospital so our first stop was to Gleneagle Hospital to visit him. It was a good visit and he was very happy that we were finally here to see him. The hospital itself was a privately-run hospital so the facilities seemed very clean and well-maintained. They even have bidets in their washroom and their wards not smell like urine and other bodily fluids (unlike the public hospital in Canada – sigh).

After the visit, we brought the baby back for her nap, while we caught up on some work. Afterwards, we visited the Le Meridien Club Lounge again thanks to our family member’s status. They served coffee, various non-alcoholic drinks and some cookies when we were here. As we didn’t have lunch yet, we decided to move upstairs to the Rooftop Bar. Here we had some cocktails and snacks (chicken wings and fried calamari). I found the batter calamari was a bit soggy but the seasoning was not bad. Rather, I enjoyed the honey marinated chicken wings a lot especially with the accompanying chili in soy sauce. I was intrigued by the bright red colour though. The drinks came quickly but the food service was a bit slow. We ended up staying there until sunset which I really couldn’t complain about.

After the snack, we returned to the hospital for another visit. This time, we used Grab (their local Uber service). It was a short drive and only RM 8 (Less than $3 CAD). This was much more convenient than dealing with getting the car and having to park at the hospital. On our way back however, the traffic was so heavy, it took us maybe ~30mins to get back to the hotel when it should have just been a 5-10 minute car ride.

After tucking the baby in, for our late night dinner, family came over and kindly ordered dumplings and Chinese delivery for us also from the Grab app. Then we were off to sleep with our tummies content.