Tawau is a timber port in Sabah’s southeastern corner. It is a busy commercial centre and transport hub and the main entry point of Indonesian workers into Sabah. A great contrast to the newly built hotel and business area, the waterfront has plenty of colourful markets and foodstalls and some picturesque views across the bay, including to Kalimantan.
Tawau centre has been cleaned up and has a few decent hotels and restaurants as well as daily air connections to KL. With the development of a new road cutting across the south of Sabah towards KK nearing completion (passing just to the south of Maliau Basin), Tawau is set to receive more foreign visitors.
Now that the Sandakan area has been almost completely logged, Tawau has taken over as the main logging centre on the east coast. The forest is disappearing fast but there are some reforestation programmes. Tawau is surrounded by plantations and smallholdings of rubber, copra, cocoa and palm oil. The local soils are volcanic and very fertile and palm oil has recently taken over from cocoa as the predominant crop. KL is now an established research centre for palm oil where there are studies on using palm oil as a fuel.
The airport is 2 km from town centre. Regular connections with KK and KL with Air Asia and MAS. MASwings has a daily flight to Sandakan.
Airline offices
Air Asia at the airport. MAS, Lot 1A, Wisma SASCO, Fajar Complex, T089-765533. Tawau airport, T089-774005.
Bus
Station on Jl Wing Lock (west end of town). Minibus station on Jl Dunlop (centre of town). Direct service from Tawau to Kota Kinabalu leaving at 2000 to arrive 0500 in KK.
Bumiputra, Jl Nusantor, on seafront; HSBC, 210 Jl Utara, opposite the padang; Standard Chartered, 518 Jl Habib Husein (behind HSBC); exchange kiosk at wharf.
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