“TAMU” GAYA – Gaya Street Morning Market.

If Kota Kinabalu has intrigued you one way or another, you might want to start the friendship right by an evening stroll down Gaya Street. It’s the epicenter of post WWII nostalgia.

A row of 17 shop houses made Bond Street back in the day, the oldest strip on Gaya Street.. or to better put it, living history as nothing much has changed since their opening in the late 1940s.

But Gaya Street truly comes alive on Sundays. Stalls stretch over half a kilometer with a stellar line up of local produce, travel knick-knacks, handmade crafts, Chinese medicine,clothes.. everything from unusual household widgets to cute bunny rabbits to weird looking fragrant plants that claim to repel mosquitoes.  

Visitors will never go hungry as food stalls are abundant along the line of make-shift tents. Be spoiled with an endless selection of freshly made local snacks, delicious fried treats and thirst quenchers.

Towards the northern end of the market strip, there is a corner where disabled people sell their services and products in the form of paintings, handicrafts, song and foot massages.

Gaya street is a bustling yet quaint and charming side of Kota Kinabalu, essential to the whole “Borneo” experience.