Bongawan

Bongawan is a town in the Papar District of the West Coast Division of Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. The town centre lies about 3 kilometres inland from the South China Sea and roughly 70 kilometres south of Kota Kinabalu, the state capital. It sits on the A2 highway between Kota Kinabalu and the south of Sabah, and Bongawan railway station is one of the stops on the Sabah State Railway. The town is noted for two blocks of wooden shoplots completed in 1939, among the few pre-World War II shophouses surviving in Sabah, mostly run by Hakka Chinese traders. It also has the Borneo Golf and Country Club, an 18-hole course designed by Jack Nicklaus. The name comes from the Malay word bangau, meaning egrets, which are common in the surrounding paddy fields.