Bukit Kokol, Menggatal, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

Bukit Kokol is located in Menggatal town roughly about 40 minutes (taking into account the traffic condition) from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. 

From the Turaran Road you shall then go through the Kokol Poring-Poring Road and then you need to do a little bit of fun hill climbing driving all the way up...

Just to give you the idea, what I mean with fun, see the photos below:

All those photos were taken on my way down actually, so it's the other way round when you go up. As you can see (and what you cannot see) from the photos above, there are plenty of cornering to do and it can take from just a mere within 15 minutes and all the way to over 20 minutes depending on the type of car your drive and your driving skills as well as traffic conditions. I'm quite familiar with the route and I also use additional GPS map guidance from Waze and thus I tend to go up and down quite fast, but then again, there is no need for you to rush, just drive carefully and enjoy the ride.

There is this "Kokol Heaven Resort" up here, a place where you can stay and they offers great view of the Kota Kinabalu city spanning far beyond 5 Islands of Tunku Abdul Rahman Parks to the North, and beauty of the majestic Mount Kinabalu to the South. The resort is most famous for its restaurant, Horizon, with delicious dishes like Oxtail Curry, Tuaran Mee and Fried Icecream.

Other than that there is also this home stay type of accomodation called "Kokol Farmstay"  (For reservation, call Mr. Chong 016-833 9508).

Along the way up you basically will see plenty of decent landscape view and local villagers houses and farms and dogs and cats and some school all the way till you reached to this point, the church - well it's rather a chapel actually, located at the vicinity of Kampung Kokol (Kokol Village) and just across it a little bit up at the hill you will also find a protestant church (Basel Christian Church), probably not a church, maybe just a chapel as well, I'm not so sure but it's belong to that Basel Christian group.

This Roman Catholic chapel is called "St. Joseph Chapel", I didn't have the opportunity to go inside but then again the view from outside the chapel is absolutely brilliant!!!

So you should stop at the that chapel area there and get some photos but if for what ever reason that you dislike the view at the chapel area, then go further up the hill till you arrived at this area:

Yes, this food stall by the roadside, I don't the name but for the sake of reference purpose, I just called it as "X-Zone" simply because of that banner I saw there:

Just park your vehicle at the road side and then you should grab some hot or cold drinks or some instant noodles and some other snacks and junk foods and enjoy the view of Kota Kinabalu city from this spot at around 600m above sea level (or so according to the Altimeter/Barometer on my Casio G-Shock GDF-100).

As a side note, apparently during the day when I came up to do this particular photography, the stall is closed due to long weekend and some local public holidays in here and thus the owner of the stall is probably having a break enjoying the holidays with their family members, God bless them...

Now for some additional perspective, from the photos below you can see the exact location and position of the chapel above and this particular "X-Zone stall":

And thus, these are the scenery that you can enjoy from this particular spot - the "X-Zone stall area":

That particular tall building is the Sabah Sate Administrative Centre which consist of a single 33-storey office tower and two 9-storey office buildings and will house the state's chief minister's office and other state government cabinet members.Currently it is still under "work in progress" status and when completed, due to its high ceilings design, the 33-storey office tower is expected to be the tallest building in Borneo once topped out overtaking Wisma Sanyan in Sibu, Sarawak.

All the above photos were taken during the morning, after the sunrise and now let's see the scenery during sunset... as always, I started at the chapel:

And then I went up to the "X-Zone" stall area:

And if you not happy with that, you can still go a bit further up all the way to the "Kokol Heaven Resort" and probably you can enjoy a much better view from there, I didn't go there this time around but maybe next time I shall try it as well.

Overall, Bukit Kokol is one of those unique place around Kota Kinabalu where you can enjoy such absolutely astonishing landscape view of the KK City and the surrounding area. If you not locals and wish to come here, get assistance from your smart phone, use those Google Map or Waze and search for Kokol Heaven Resort and I believe without doubt that you shall find this place.

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