We really weren't expecting to find such a beautiful and stylish modern city in Borneo such as Kuching. Like many other countries we have visited it has had a complex history of meddling from mainly European colonialists. With its long, pretty river front esplanade and lots of greenery it was a very pleasant city to spend a few days in. Unlike some of the other large towns in Malaysian Borneo much of Kuching's historic buildings survived intact during the Japanese bombings of WW2.
We took in the view of the waterfront, with the new state assembly building being built on the right. There was a lot of debris floating down the river on our first day. It made the fast moving, swirling currents in the water look even more wild.
The tambangs (water taxis) navigating their way through the floating branches and tree trunks.
Along the waterfront there were beautiful tropical gardens that made for a more peaceful walk, sheltering us from the city traffic. Here, the first of several encounters with cats...Kuching is Malay for cat, and they are more than happy to celebrate the city's namesake...
...With increasingly shocking monuments. What a sight! Painted concrete is never good, but this was even blessed with the crest of the city, that also had cats in the design.
At the Coffee bean and tea leaf internet cafe Wiji was feeling festive in the tropical climate (the air-con was on). Mmm, what about a Yule log? This one looked harmless, but seemed to be primarily made of lard.
Further into our city walk we came across another monument embellished with cats. In the scheme of things this was the least offensive of the day.
Hi five that massive concrete moggie! This is actually 'The Great Cat of Kuching'. After accidentally being exposed to the other monuments, we sought this one out just for laffs.
Blue Peter protruding wire whiskers added to the freakyness. Someone who likes garden gnomes would probably go for this too, we imagined.
A Camden-esq street light in front of the easterly Chinese gate to the city.
'Fo-sho' bean curd. Where is my giant tofu swan?
Laters, back at the waterfront we noticed that the new water feature looked a lot more impressive in the dark, and when it was covering the whole walkway in a jet wash stylee.
The next day we set our sights on exploring Chinatown and made for Jalan Carpenter, the street that it all centres off.
The Hong San Si Temple in all its glory. Sadly some of the magnificent ceramic decorations are lost to the clouds. The sky in Kuching seemed to always remain white until the afternoon when a bit of blue might give way to incredibly bright, burning sunshine and then an incredibly heavy downpour would come out of nowhere. The Hokkien Chinese temple was in existence on this site before 1848 and was restored in 2003. Stone masons were brought in from mainland China to assist in the renovations. Check out the pilars in the glass cases!
The interior was breathtaking, with multi layers of wood carvings on the pillars and ceiling.
The 'good luck' pineapple candles and the Buddhist alter in the background. The host deity worshipped is the figure in the middle of the setting, Kong Teck Choon Ong, from Southern Fujian Province, China.
Inside the temple, two large stone carved panels with floating relief.
Looking up at the ceiling.
The temple's history was one of repeated subsidence, renovation and destruction. In 1966 the Red Guards destroyed the temple completely. Donations from China paid for the rebuild of the present temple in 1979.
The exterior roof.
Worshippers burnt their folded paper prayers here. This man was a tourist and insisted on tapping everything, including the carvings.
Further down Jalan Carpenter...you never knew what you would come across here. This time its a woman setting fire to the plastic that the paper for the prayers was delivered in...It was a one way street.
Looking down one of the side streets off Jalan Carpenter to the new State Assembly building. Jalan Carpenter was full of Chinese street eateries, with a few Malay and Indian-Malay ones thrown in too. There were a lot of jewellers, stationary shops and even some workshops with men hammering galvernised metal into funnels and containers.
The next temple that we visited was Sang Ti Miao.This was quite different, and a bit run down.
3D mosaics.
Looking towards the alter...
Paper prayers folded for ready for sale in the temple.
The deity.
Part of the old courthouse, with fountains. It was incredibly hot and humid now and only about 11am. The perfect time to eat a roti bread and small bowl of hot curry from the Lebanese restaurant, (in the background of this piccy). This being a typical breakfast that we had read about. Locals eyed our sweaty faces with fascination as they passed through the outside courtyard, but gave us a smile and a hello too!
After our quick brekkie bite we wandered off to the Sarawak Museum to see some of the indigenous crafts. Sadly cameras were not allowed. We did eventually find the football sized hairball from a man eating crocodile, and also a watch from its stomach contents...We marvelled at the idea of a crocodile being 4ft in width and 17m long...We also made a mental note not to swim in rivers, mangroves, rivers near mangroves, rivers near the sea, and indeed any place where water was naturally flowing. Some of the croc skulls on display were enormous, it would have been fun to get a photo of Wiji's head in one, but it just wasn't that kind of museum. It was, of course, the kind of museum that had a lot of tired, faded and misshapen stuffed animals. Why do they always make the monkeys look so vicious? We did our best to skip this section, give or take a little voyeurism, and moved onto the actual Iban Longhouse complete with real skulls, hung in the roof from the head-hunting days, aaaah, back in the day.
We marvelled over the intricate bemban, bamboo, pandanus and raffia weaving, and backcloth products. There were some pretty scary carved wooden mask for rituals and ceremonies on display. It was here that we got good insight into the Iban, Orang Ulu and Bidayuh cultures through their artefacts.
The textile museum housed in this gorgeous colonial building (no photo's please, boo-hoo) held a wonderful collection of tribal wedding garments, jewellery and finery, and explained how the different fabrics were woven and worn (with the aid of some freaky manikins). Everything was immaculately presented and annotated, combined with the luxury of air-con, we were set for a couple of hours of wonderment.
Later in the day we made our way the Saturday market across town. This took us past the Mosque and intriguing cemetery with carved, wrapped wooded markers.
It was a real hoof of a journey over the dodgy pavements, rat infested open drains, massive roads, underpasses and flyovers to the market, but what a journey! The rain held off and when we eventually got near to the market we were delighted to find that it really was epic! A perfect Saturday activity and a great place to start in a new country...
Wiji strokes the Duran fruit, breadfruit, or jack fruit, a fruit by many names, all confused together by us...
This stall owner offered us some that he was cutting up with his machete. He told us that it was the jack fruit and full of vitamin B! Aaaah, how gratefully we were that English is spoken widely here! Each large stone was covered in a pocket of fragrant fleshy fruit, similar to the texture of mango. He cut all that away, before I could stop him, so that it would look good in my photo!
A Wiji fave of the day and trad Malaysian dish called 'Apam Balik', a hot pancake folded over and stuffed with butter and peanuts, cooked on the spot.
Its all very well asking what it is, but pointless if you just can't pronounce it! Lol. These were a bit like lychee, but with a smaller stone that the flesh did not want to come off. They were sweet and sour and needed a lot of force to get the thick outer layer off. Very beautiful and sold by the branch. I loved them. The boy that we brought them off was very amused by us eating them.
There was even a garden section to the market with a huge array of orchids. We hurried through the sad pet section, for obvious reasons. We did see a spotted ray in a cool box, just about able to swim around, but didn't establish if this was a potential food item or pet, for fear of insulting.
'Kek Lapis', a Kuching classic. We tried some of the immensely brightly coloured sponge, it was nicely moist, but I couldn't help being concerned by the strong food colourings!
A gorgeous display, pumpkins and lemon grass. I asked the old man if I could take a pic, saying how beautiful it looked. He smiled and said, yes he knew.
I really like this fungus and eat it in Chinese food whenever I can.
Dragon Fruits galore, on sale all over the place.
There was a massive seafood section, with an impressive array of fish heads, dried and fresh that feature in a lot of advertised meals on the street. I was taken by the grotesque eel heads and the slithering plastic boxes of muddy snails, but we were in big competitive crowds wanting to buy, not take pics.
On our tasting tour of the market we had to stop and try the coconut rice that was inside these pandanus leaf origami style parcels. Perfect for 'on the go eating'. Wiji found some curry filled pasties...can you believe it?
After trying and tasking we took our purchases back to the Fata hotel, only to spot this sign in the entrance! God, yeah, they really would make an awful mess, lol!
The next day, back at the Lebanese Cafe, for breakfast, Wiji tries the Laksa and I have the curry and roti. Trad.
The west end of Chinatown is marked by the Harmony Arch.
Trying to get as many foody pics in here as poss for you Pete Gotto! Wiji goes for the egg and onion filled roti, with dhal and a side of green leaves and pumpkin and one of sweet and sour fish...Street eat deluxe!
Food stalls a plenty, all looking pretty much like this, gas canister, tick, lots of plastic utensils, tick...and amazing food, for sure. I am making a point of avoiding the 'fish porridge' and local speciality of 'pig entrails stew' (no, I haven't even sexed that up).
Food again! Opposite the Fata Hotel, this amazing supermarket. It was here that we brought chilled cans of 'Sour Sop' juice, Iced Tea and prune juice that unfortunately contained way too much salt...yuk. Nice old skool sign.
After learning more about the city we decided that we would have to visit the cat museum, no really, an actual museum dedicated to cats...How random could it be?
The views across Kuching, from the Civic Centre (where the cat museum was located)...
In actual fact quite far out of town...
The Civic Centre itself. In the orchid lined foyer swifts were swooping around catching the insects.
It was question of who could be broken by the museum first and who could find the most pointless display...This was pretty pointless and actually quite typical of what was on offer... There were also letters and gifts that had been sent in, hilarious for all the wrong resons.
Some we enjoyed...
Some we couldn't even contain our silent screams...Others we laughed out loud at, and then realised that no one else was laughing. Everyone else did seem to be Japanese...
Jane Yap Jian Yi's collection of drawings and... errr...stuff....
It made us laugh...And ask the question 'why?'
According to Jane this little (office-chod) motto accompanies the above batik...'Yesterday: There is nothing we can change but we can make sure that we do not make the same mistake again today. Its hard not to look back or feel bad for what has happen, so I always ask for strength to look forward for tomorrow.' Wiji liked that one.x
The end results of far too much fabric being left over, from what was probably an even more hilarious effort. Lol
Stop now, this is too much! Eventually it was me who was broken first.
Picasso: Lobster and Cat. Pure genius indeed.
Thank god we asked the taxi to wait.
Outside we breathed a sigh of relief...In the distance, some more rain on its way...
Later we spotted more of the infamous tail-less Kuching cats, this one was much more normal looking. Others looked very miserable, and tail-less.
An especially stunning tree in front of the Merdeka Palace Hotel, for scale.
Jalan Carpenter street was full of curious little places, store rooms, homes, furniture shops and our fave coffee place 'Black Bean coffee and tea house', that served freshly roasted Sarawak coffee with a tiny peanut and yam cookie. We tried 'Kaya' a sweet Malay coconut based spread that goes on buttered toast, there too.
An all women run veggie Chinese buffet on Jalan Chan Chin Ann. They were very welcoming. Here we tried the trad Malay drink of lime juice, sugar and salt...super refreshing. The sign on the door warned 'No meat allowed'. LOL.
On Christmas eve we checked out some of the funky restaurants on Jalan Wayang, ... Here's Wiji with his 'Borneo Adventure' and my 'Lychee vodka' cocktail at 'Bla, bla, bla'. It made a very pleasant change to the Rifleman's! Lol.
The outside of 'The Living Room'.
The rain poured... We had some more drinks...
Eating sashimi at 'The Junk', with their novel/disturbing soft toy table centre pieces...
We spent under a week in Kuching and loved it, a super introduction to Borneo.
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