Family Photography Trips at Kota Belud Sabah

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Family Outing at Kota Belud Rice Field | Sabah Malaysia North Borneo

I’ve always wanted to get a photograph of my family against a beautiful backdrop of paddy field, I like the rustic feeling of it. The closer that I can get it from Kuala Lumpur is heading to Sekinchan or Sungai Besar located at Selangor approximately two hours drive from Kuala Lumpur, but after five month, since my third child were born, we didn’t manage to get there.

So when we are on a holiday in Sabah, visiting my mother-in-law, my friend, Azman Jumat suggested to us to visit Kota Belud and here we go. Kota Belud is known as the rice bowl of Sabah. Most of the paddy field are quite small in size, so they still need to imports some 70 per cent of its rice requirements (For Sabah).

Kota Belud is located approximately one hour leisurely drive from Kota Kinabalu, the view along the way is a great introduction for Sabah countryside.

The best time to visit here is in the early morning, so you can get the Mount Kinabalu as your background and the foreground is the paddy filed. We arrived here on a late Sunday afternoon, so the Mount Kinabalu were nowhere to be seen because it was covered with a thick mist. Sometimes you can see the Mountain in the late afternoon but it is quite rare.

We didn’t have much time to play around here, because we did not plan to stay overnight here, so by 5 P.M we pack our things, head to Kota Belud small town, have our dinner and head back to Kota Kinabalu.

To those of you who really wanted to get a beautiful picture of this place, I highly recommended to you to stay at least one or two night here. So you are well prepared during sunrise and Mount Kinabalu does looks great from here, that’s the view that they were using for Sabah Flag, it was the view from Kota Belud side.

I did not have much time photographing anything here other than my very own family. This place has a lot of photographic opportunity to offer if you have the time.

“If these picture have anything important to say to future generations, it’s this, I was here, existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture”

– Robin Williams –