Winner Winner (many) Chicken Dinners

Kota Kinabalu.... where to begin with this little gem of an inconvenient place.  For starters, let me add, that we chose to stay here for a much longer time than any place previously. We made some false assumptions that this was a city with beaches close by, so therefore it would make an ideal place to work and enjoy both quality grocery stores and beach life relaxation.  However, our expectations were way, way off and 12 days deemed to be far too long.

Again, I feel it necessary to add that although it seems as though we were gallivanting around Malaysia and enjoying spending the days at the pools and beaches, this was only a small snippet of our day to day lives, especially here in KK.  A typical day started around 9 and finished around 3, and was spent either teaching, preparing for classes, or checking homework (not so luxurious, I know).  We just lucked out in the sense that every single place we stayed at had an amazing pool (this time on our same floor) and was almost always empty!!

This pic for my dad who doesn’t believe I work 😂

The apartment itself on the other hand, was very spacious, but we hadn’t anticipated the massive kitchen to be so ill equipped for cooking. They had provided us only one very small pan, a massive pot, one tiny electric stove top that had to be plugged in and heated up very slowly, and a microwave.  Now the first day we tried our best to be optimistic by ignoring the lack of utensils and equipment and went grocery shopping (I guess in hopes that the whole kitchen situation would magically sort itself out).  There we ran into problem numero dos.... lack of fresh ingredients. SO WEIRD.  Never in my life have I been to a place in which every single grocery store had such tiny fresh fruit sections and even less fresh meat. Again though, optimism got the best of us and we were able to purchase some frozen chicken and ingredients to make Thai chicken curry.

Needless to say the optimism didn’t get us very far and after almost catching the kitchen on fire (no I wasn’t the one cooking) we admitted defeat and decided cooking just wouldn’t be optimal in that apartment. So, we trashed the major dinner fail and quickly changed as we would be dining out that night (and every night that followed for that matter).

Now for the fun part.... we came across one of the many super inconvenient aspects of KK.... their city layout.  The urban design was done SO poorly and unfortunately due to the city’s lack of money they hadn’t really fixed it.  Our apartment was located directly across the street from a massive mall with tons of restaurants, but in order to get across we faced 2 large 3 lane highways.  It was 8 pm at this point and very dark outside, so we timidly stared at the never ending headlights coming at us.  I wish I would’ve taken a picture or video to capture the chaos, but it was always such a frantic dash to get across that I never managed to get one. At that point we were starving and after seeing a very brave Malaysian man walk across so effortlessly, we couldn’t handle waiting any longer.  So, we plunged across the road pretty recklessly and hoped for the best (as the nights continued on I’d say we reached expert levels for dodging cars).







 This first night took a surprising twist as I was introduced to our now go-to restaurant while in Malaysia, NANDO’S.  Apparently they have these all over the world, but I’d never been to one, and now I can’t imagine my life without it! They have so many varieties of chicken made on the grill to perfection and to top it off they have their own homemade “Perri Perri” sauces for even more flavor, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. And alas without any need for further explanation, you have just discovered how we spent 8 of our 11 evenings in KK.................






Kota Kinabalu February 21- March 4, 2020