Accommodation in Borneo: Shangri-La's Rasa Ria Resort
This is an ideal place to stay in a comfortable room in a hotel with plenty of facilities and the opportunity to visit the resort's own nature reserve and see orang-utan.
Shangri-La's Rasa Ria Resort, Kota Kinabalu
Our Rating: First Class
Shangri-La's Rasa Ria Resort
Kota Kinabalu
The hotel is situated on an unspoilt stretch of beach 45 minutes north of Kota Kinabalu town.
It is an ideal place to stay in a comfortable room in a hotel with plenty of facilities and the opportunity to visit the resort's own nature reserve and see some younger orang-utan is an added benefit.
The resort is comprised of 420 well-appointed guest rooms in the Garden Wing and the new Ocean Wing.
The Garden Wing offers 330 rooms and suites that are generally aimed at families. All ground floor rooms have small terraces accessible through verdant gardens while all the majority of the upper floor rooms offer private balconies with views of the lush landscape and sea.
The 90 rooms of the Ocean Wing provide a new level of luxury accommodation: they are more than double in size compared to the Garden Wing rooms and have wonderfully spacious balconies with double bath tubs and fantastic sea views from the higher floors. Extra touches in the rooms include espresso machines, DVD players and flat screen televisions. The Ocean Wing has its own swimming pool which means much fewer younger children in the vicinity when trying to relax. Guests staying here benefit from having the exclusive use of the highly acclaimed Coast restaurant for breakfast.
The quiet location of the resort means that it is not easy to get to other restaurants for an evening meal so you should expect to eat in the hotel for most meals. However, there is a shuttle bus that runs into Kota Kinabalu town throughout the day and taxis are available costing around MYR 80 and certainly no more than MYR 100. There are currently five restaurants at the hotel (though when the hotel is quiet, not all are sure to be open); 'Coast' fine dining fusion beachfront restaurant, 'Naan' specialising in northern Indian cuisine, 'Tepi Laut' a Malay food village offering a wide range of local food, 'Kozan Teppan-yaki' with top end Japanese food, 'Coffee Terrace' boasting all day dining with a mix of Western and local options.
At the Rasa Ria's Nature Reserve you can see rescued orang-utan undergoing initial rehabilitation (MYR 50pp charge for access at the two daily feeding times) before they are taken to Sepilok Orang-utan Sanctuary for further rehabilitation. It is worth having a good spray of deet before you enter the reserve as mosquitoes are prevalent. The open reserve is also home to a wide spectrum of Sabah wildlife and although this can be harder to spot than in areas such as the Kinabatangan River or Danum Valley you may see species of deer, long-tailed macaque, pheasant, civet, bear cat, masked musang, monitor lizard, water hen, porcupine, slow loris, pangolin, pitcher plant, fruit bat and many species of birds.
Please note, the reserve is incredibly popular and there is a limit of 50 visitors for each daily feeding session at 10am and 2pm. Bookings are taken three days in advance, costing MYR 50pp and we would strongly suggest you do this to guarantee a place. You will need sensible footwear and light clothing for the 10 minute steep walk in the forest.
More about Shangri-La's Rasa Ria Resort