Gaya Street Market: Kota Kinabalu Travel Guide (4.4★)

A street that changes shape three times a week

For four days a week, Gaya Street is just a road through Kota Kinabalu’s old commercial grid. It has shophouse arcades, kopitiams and parked cars. Then on Friday evening the tents go up, and the same asphalt becomes one of the most-visited markets in Sabah.

What you walk into is a long, straight corridor of canopies running down the middle of the road, with stalls facing both ways. Covered shophouse walkways line each side, and in the tropical sun they are the shadiest route. The market is consistently well rated, and it is no secret: expect company, and plan around it.

Two markets, one address

The schedule is the thing most visitors get wrong. Gaya Street hosts two quite different events, and it matters which one you come for.

• Friday and Saturday, 5pm to midnight: the evening edition. It leans towards cooked food, snacks, drinks and casual browsing once the day’s heat has gone.
• Sunday, 5am to 12:45pm: the long-running Sunday market. This is the one Kota Kinabalu is known for, with fresh produce, plants, household goods, handicrafts and souvenirs.
• Monday to Thursday: closed. You’ll find the street and its shops, but no stalls.

If you are only in town midweek, you haven’t missed a hidden trick. There is simply nothing on. Build the market into a weekend, or rearrange your island day around it.

The Sunday dawn shift

Sunday is an early-riser’s market, and the 5am start is real. Vendors set up in the half-dark. The first people browsing are shoppers with baskets, buying greens, fruit and plants for the week before the sun gets hot.

Getting there early is simple reasoning, not a secret. Kota Kinabalu is close to the equator, so by late morning the heat is heavy. Tour groups and late breakfasters also build up as the hours pass. Aim for the first few hours, eat breakfast from the stalls, and you can be finished before the heat sets in.

Things to look out for on a Sunday:

• Tropical fruit, with whatever is in season stacked by the heap
• Potted orchids, herbs and ornamental plants
• Sabah-grown tea and coffee, along with jars of local honey
• Handwoven baskets, beadwork and other crafts from around the state
• Fried snacks such as pisang goreng (banana fritters) and sweet kuih, eaten as you walk

The stall line-up changes week to week, so treat that list as the kind of thing you’ll find rather than a fixed inventory. Mid-morning is the time for souvenirs. Early morning belongs to the produce.

Evenings on Jalan Gaya

The Friday and Saturday market suits a different traveller. It’s the one for people who spent the day on the islands and want dinner without planning it. The evening air is cooler than the Sunday midday heat, and the whole thing moves at a looser, snack-by-snack pace.

Go hungry and graze instead of sitting down to one meal. It helps to know a few Sabah dishes by name, whether they turn up at the stalls or in the kopitiams along the street:

• Tuaran mee: springy egg noodles fried with egg and char siu, named after the town north of the city
• Ngiu chap: a Sabahan beef noodle soup
• Hinava: Kadazan-Dusun raw fish cured in lime with chilli and ginger

Because the market runs until midnight, you don’t have to rush. An after-dinner lap once the early crowd thins works just as well.

Getting to Gaya Street

Gaya Street is in the city centre, on the flat grid between the waterfront and Signal Hill. Kota Kinabalu has no metro. Most visitors walk from central hotels or take a Grab, which is widely used here and saves you the argument over a taxi fare.

Parking nearby is hard on market days, because the stalls fill the road itself. Get dropped off at one end and walk the length. You can easily tie the market to nearby sights:

• Atkinson Clock Tower, built in 1905 and one of the few structures that survived the Second World War, sits at the foot of Signal Hill
• Signal Hill Observatory Platform, above it, for a view over the town and the islands
• Jesselton Point, the ferry terminal for Tunku Abdul Rahman Park, a short walk away

A Sunday that pairs an early market with a late-morning boat to the islands makes good use of the day. Check the ferry times first.

Paying, haggling and moving through the crowd

The market is very popular, and that shapes how you use it. The central aisle gets congested, so step under the shophouse arcades whenever you want to stop and look. Leave the middle for people who are moving.

• Pay in ringgit cash, with small notes ready. Some stalls display a QR code for e-wallet payment, but don’t rely on that across the market.
• Don’t haggle over food or produce. On crafts and souvenirs, a polite request for a small discount when buying several pieces is normal. Hard bargaining is not.
• Ask before photographing a vendor up close, particularly the older stallholders selling produce.
• Bring your own bag. A foldable tote makes carrying fruit and plants much easier.
• Keep valuables in a front pocket. Crowds this dense are ordinary pickpocket territory anywhere.

Some Sunday stalls sell live animals, and some visitors find this uncomfortable. It’s part of the market’s long role as a place where locals shop for their homes, and you are free to walk past.

How long to give it

An hour is enough for a single walk down and back with a snack. Two hours is better if you want to shop for crafts properly or eat your way through a meal. Many people make the Sunday market their whole morning and then head for the coffee shops in the old town.

Whichever day you choose, check the time before you set off. Friday and Saturday stalls don’t open until 5pm. On Sunday the market is finished by early afternoon, closing at 12:45pm, and arriving after lunch means walking down an empty street.