Kota Kinabalu in December
avoid · not the best time to go
The year in Kota Kinabalu
Tap a month for its page
- JanJKota Kinabalu in January: ok, busy
- FebFKota Kinabalu in February: sweet spot
- MarMKota Kinabalu in March: ok, busy
- AprAKota Kinabalu in April: sweet spot
- MayMKota Kinabalu in May: ok
- JunJKota Kinabalu in June: ok
- JulJKota Kinabalu in July: sweet spot
- AugAKota Kinabalu in August: ok
- SepSKota Kinabalu in September: avoid
- OctOKota Kinabalu in October: avoid
- NovNKota Kinabalu in November: avoid
- DecDKota Kinabalu in December: avoid
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
Each site opens on its own search: choose your dates there. A few open on their home page, where you type the place too.
Links marked Ad pay us a commission if you book, at no extra cost to you; most pay nothing, and what a site pays never decides whether it is listed or where. How we rank
Flights from
Flights
Your city is a guess from your time zone. Choose your city
Where are you flying from? Choose your city for its flights and fares.
Book with the airline
Where to stay
Book direct
Luxury
Things to do
Car hire
Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
If the trip needs a visa, the travel agent or visa centre usually sells the cover it asks for.
Mobile data (eSIM)
Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
These are sites people in book with. Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.
The numbers
| Daily high | 29°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 24°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 35°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 16 · 296 mm |
| Humidity | 85% |
| Sunshine | 8.5 h/day |
| Daylight | 11.8 h/day |
| Beach and sea | 15 of 31 days dry and 23–35 °C; sea 30 °C, warm |
| Crowds | 80 / 100, higher is quieter |
Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.
Weather read at the waterfront, the centre, 5 km from the airport (BKI): ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in December
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
Kota Kinabalu in pictures
i
CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- Summer clothes by day, highs around 29°C.
- Rain gear you will actually use: about 16 rainy days and 296 mm.
- Sun protection: about 9 hours of sunshine a day.
- Humidity averages 85%; breathable fabrics dry faster.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type G plugs at 240 V. Drives on the left. The currency is the Malaysian ringgit. UK Foreign Office: avoid all but essential travel to parts. Global Affairs Canada: Exercise normal security precautions (with regional advisories). US State Department: Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions. Everything for Malaysia: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in Kota Kinabalu: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
December elsewhere
- Everywhere in December
- Beaches in December
- Mountains in December
- Southeast Asia in December
- Malaysia in December
In December from
The other months at Kota Kinabalu
Links marked Ad pay us a commission if you book through one, at no extra cost to you. That does not affect the numbers on this page, which are computed before any link is built.