year end trip - kuching

decided to join my friends (ex-colleagues) for a trip to kuching over the weekend. left on friday evening and return on sunday night, just in time before the start of the new year. there were altogether 5 of us - myself and 2 couples. i simply tagged along. here's some highlights of the trip:

• it was another trip back in time for me. the town reminded me of singapore back in the 70s/ 80s. come to think of it, other than kuala lumpur, most other malaysian towns reminded me of singapore back in the 70s/ 80s. having said, i must say the city has this really beautiful charm about it. for a start, i loved the fact that they are modern yet very traditional. and it was so heartwarming to be able to converse with them in hokkien - something that we don't get so often these days in singapore.

• we visited one of the nature reserve and came close to quite a few orang utans. we were lucky that when we were there, quite a few (i think there was about 7-8 of them) came out of their forest hideouts to meet us. the drive to the nature reserves reminded me of brunei jungle! and i was so totally at home with the forest and the natural environment! lovely.

• we passed by this borneo museum of house or something and decided to pay a visit. after all, karen wanted to visit a long house (and i say dwellers of longhouses practice communal sex - haha) but we couldn't find one along our route back to the city from the nature reserves. and so, we decided to visit this museum as the name kinda suggest it will show us the different dwellings found in borneo - include the longhouse. we couldn't be more wrong. we paid rm29 per head and what we found were lotsa paintings of scenes in kuching, food, etc where we could pose with. nothing fanciful about it. but well, we did make the best of it and gamely took tons of photos with all sorts of different poses and had a good laugh out of it.

• we ate lotsa food during the trip. it was just non-stop eating and eating and frankly, the s$100 i changed went almost entirely to food! we had kolo mee, wanton mee, oyster omelette, crispy oyster omelette, fried carrot cake - both black and white, bbq stingray, deep fried chicken wings, pork satay, sarawak laksa, deep fried tapioca, duck, char siu, roast pork, bamboo chicken, hokkien mee, prawn mee, char kway ciao, apom balik, mee sua, ice cream, local chinese snacks (soon kueh, orh kueh, etc)... and many many more. we were literally stuffing ourselves through the trip. crazy right? lol.

• we made a trip to a pasar malam (night market) almost 20km away from the city center. it was kinda crazy to be driving in the dark for almost half the time but we reckon it was kuching and that it didn't make sense to have well-litted roads to many of the outlying areas. the place was kinda interesting. at one moment, we were in the middle of nowhere and the next moment, we were in a small single road lined with old shop houses and on the road were rows and rows of tables filled with people eating and merry making, complete with people that sportingly took their place on a stage and belting out all sorts of old chinese songs.

• we took a walk around the old lorongs near the river and there were many many stores selling local sarawakan handicraft. it was rather interesting and reminded me of singapore's arab street. we also managed to take a sampan ride on the sarawak river. had to negotiate the price with the old man as the sampan was used to transport passengers across the river instead of "cruising the river". the half hour ride was rather nice as we were able to view some of the iconic buildings along the river that include the government office, the istana (they spelled it astana), some old but grand-looking mosques, etc.

• the hotel room was a tat too eerie for me. i walked in, the room looked decent and big enough. but for some reason, the toilet gave me the creeps. it's that kinda feeling where you look in and you feel that something is amissed. i didn't get a good feeling walking in and whatever i do inside, be it showering, brushing my teeth, taking a dump etc, i cannot help but feel there is something beside or behind me. anyway, this was the first time i slept in the hotel room with the lights turned on. i was glad it was only a 2-night stay.

of cos the trip was not entirely about touristy sights cos we also managed to squeeze in a visit to the temple, some shopping, karaoke session and a movie! lol! i had visited kuching once before in the mid-90s and i totally do not have any memory of what it looked like. all i vaguely recalled was that i stayed with kathy's family and she (and ron) brought me around the place to eat their local food and visited some touristy places. anyway, this trip was a restful one with all the logistics and planning done by christy.

it was indeed a good break.