Photo: Wong Fook Yee, 22 Nov 2018
eTawau.com · Sabah · Ranau District · Kundasang
A Kadazan-Dusun farming village in the hills of Kundasang, near Mount Kinabalu, with vegetable plots between the houses, a village school, a church and a few homestays.
Home › Ranau › Kundasang › Kampung Kinasaraban
A story told about the village explains its name. Hunters once sheltered under a large fig tree here; a fire they forgot to put out burned the area, and later settlers moved onto the cleared, fertile ground. The place was then called Kinasaraban in Dusun, explained in Malay as bekas kebakaran, "the place that was burned".
The story is given as told in a photograph caption by another visitor (see Sources); it has not been checked with the village.
Sekolah Kebangsaan Kinasaraban is one of the primary schools of the Kundasang area. The area has 12 to 13 primary schools and two secondary schools.
Source: Wikipedia, Kundasang.
Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bundu Tuhan, Peti Surat 242, 89308 Ranau. Photographed by the photographer in January 2016; see the Bundu Tuhan page.
The old SMK Kundasang building became unfit for use after the 2015 earthquake, and Kundasang pupils had to go to Ranau for secondary school. In December 2018 the Chief Minister announced RM43 million for a new SMK Kundasang on a new site at Kampung Mesilau. Whether the new school is now open has not been checked for this page.
Source: The Borneo Post, 8 December 2018.
The government health clinic for the Kundasang area. A government dental clinic, Klinik Pergigian Kundasang, works from the same address (postcode 89300 Ranau).
Source: HokuCare clinic listing, Klinik Pergigian Kundasang.
The district hospital, in Ranau town. In July 2026 the state government said a new clinical block for the hospital was still at the stage of finding a suitable site.
Source: Daily Express, 23 July 2026.
In an emergency in Malaysia, call 999. Opening hours and services of the clinics have not been checked for this page; please confirm with the clinic before travelling.
Kundasang is a highland farming area. Its hill slopes are terraced and planted with highland vegetables, and the town's vegetable market, wooden stalls along the main road, is open seven days a week, with a weekly market on Fridays. Bulk buyers come from across Sabah, from Sarawak and from Brunei.
Not far away is the Desa dairy farm at Mesilau, with Holstein Friesian cattle.
The Kundasang Valley lies where regional fault zones meet, and slow ground movement has been mapped here since 1958. Clearing of land for farming has also made the area noticeably warmer.
Source: Wikipedia, Kundasang Valley.
The village has a Catholic church, noted by the photographer in 2018 as St. Cladius Catholic Church. Across the valley, Bundu Tuhan is where the Catholic community of the area began, in 1952. The Kundasang area as a whole is mostly Muslim, with a large Christian minority.
Sources: the photographer's 2018 notes; Archdiocese of Kota Kinabalu, Ranau parish page; Wikipedia, Kundasang.
The Kadazan-Dusun celebrate Kaamatan every year in May, with public holidays in Sabah on 30 and 31 May. The festival honours Bambaazon, the spirit of the rice. Rice farming, on wet fields and on hill slopes, was long the main way of life of the Kadazan-Dusun.
Source: Wikipedia, Kadazan-Dusun.
Foods such as bosou, noonsom and tinamba are popular among the Dusun of Ranau. The sumirid dance belongs to the Liwan Dusun of Ranau District, and the Kundasang Valley has its own form, modtomu sumirid.
Source: Wikipedia, Kadazan-Dusun.
Kinasaraban has homestays on the slope above the village centre. The photographer's 2018 photographs show Kinabalu Valley Homestay and Rania Lovely Hut.
Homestay names are from the photographer's 2018 photographs; prices and bookings have not been checked.
On the night of 21–22 October 2026 the homestay veranda light attracted several flying insects. In the morning most of them were still on the floor. The largest was a stag beetle, later identified on iNaturalist as Odontolabis sommeri, black in front with plain tan wing cases and short toothed jaws. After photographing it, the photographer released it into the flower garden.
