Kota Belud Sightseeing - Tour from Kota Kinabalu

This tour is available in two options – coach and private. The private option offers you greater flexibility and you can spend as much or as little time at any of the places that you visit. Unlike the tight schedules of coach tours, the private option allows you to do the tour at your own pace.

Get picked up from your hotel in Kota Kinabalu and set out in a coach/private vehicle for an ethnic sightseeing tour of Sabah. The tour highlights are :

• Tamu at Kota Belud: Enroute from Kota Kinabalu, stop briefly at the hill town of Kota Belud where the locals gather at the “tamu" (weekly market) grounds every week to barter and bargain and exchange news and views. This is also one of Sabah’s most famous ‘tamus’.

• Kampung Sumangkap: The tour then takes you to the gong-making factory at factory of Kampung Sumangkap where you will watch the artisans at work. Gongs are the most prevalent of Sabah's idiophones and are found throughout Sabah. They are made of brass and bronze. Each gong has a name indicating its sound or rhythm it plays and it varies from village to village. Visitors can watch skilled craftsman make gongs at various stages at Kampung Sumangkap.

• Kampung Gambizou (Honey-Bee Village): Less than a kilometre away from Kampung Sumangkap, you can watch honey-bee rearing at this quaint Honey-Bee Village. See the entire process of rearing honey-bees, gathering and preparing the honey for sale. Don’t forget to pick up a jar of honey for yourself.

• Bavanggazo longhouse: Head northwards, passing by vast oil palm and coconut plantations, and visit the Bavanggazo longhouse located in the Kudat district, which is about 160 kilometres to the north of Kota Kinabalu. The Rungus are the main ethnic group living in the Kudat district and the Bavanggazo longhouse is a great example of the cultural heritage of this people. The longhouse is a simple but sturdy structure made easily of materials like palm leaves for roofing, bamboos for floors, fragile barks for walling and flimsy timbers for supports held together by elaborate knots, which the people have been using for centuries to tie everything firmly in place.

At the end of the tour, you will be dropped back at your hotel in Kota Kinabalu.