Tuesday, November 10th
Today is our last day with Sian in Malaysia and it has been quite a visit so far. Packing is always such a sad thing and it seems we have only just begun to see this place. The laundry from last night is still wet but we packed it anyway.
Picking up on what we have missed we walked down the street to finally meet Sian’s parents who were now, thankfully, in. They are a very pleasant couple who invited us to sit then served us tea and fresh fruit - Pineapple, watermelon and the slightly under-ripe papaya from the garden that Sian had wanted us to try a few days ago. We had been told that they do not speak a lot of English but we found it very easy to talk to them and I made sure to comment on Sian’s father’s bonsai along the gate which he laughed about. Their house is quite large and comfortable with big comfortable furniture in the lounge where we sat. Sian’s mother spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen putting together some things for us to nibble on - Very nice. Regretfully Sian told them that we should get going as we were headed out for breakfast. We thanked them for their hospitality as we left.
Breakfast was in a small shop in the middle of the city. We had congee (rice porridge) with chicken, and “kaya” - pineapple spread on toast (delicious, truly!) while Sian had some udon noodles, again avoiding the meat in our food.
The restaurant was basic with plastic chairs and plain tables. In one corner was a counter selling desserts with a sign on the wall beside it with a picture of a durian fruit and a big red diagonal through it - Durian is not welcome here. We laughed a bit at this - The fruit is notoriously smelly though, supposedly, quite tasty. The only negative about our visit here was that something bit my right foot while we were eating…I brushed it away without seeing but it has left three pinpricks. Ouch.
Mopeds are everywhere here and we had a closer look at them while we waited for Sian in a back alley for a few minutes. They are small and quite cheap looking but they do a great service to the people here with the stereotypical images of local people overloading their bikes simply a fact of life here. The alley was interesting in that we could see the backs of some of the builds and surprisingly many of them had narrow concrete spiral staircases leading up to the second and third floors. One was a hotel so one can imagine struggling with the luggage up those stairs (though later we saw the main entrance, thankfully, at ground level).
Between the buildings was another hawker marker - These open market places are quite popular and always seem to have people in them whether they are eating or simply spending time. A very social thing to do.
Sian showed us the shops of the old town – They are quite narrow and very deep, indeed one of the traditional sweet shops where Sian picked us up something to snack on while on the plane we looked into the back room to see that they were making it right then and there on the spot.
This area had a number of furniture makers in the past but now Sian says that many of the furniture is imported and no longer hand made. The pavement/side-walk outside the shops is covered with an overhang where, presumably, people live and the road has parallel parking which makes the place seem much more personal than it otherwise might be. Often the goods of the shops spill out onto the pavement/side-walk so walking through is a bit of an obstacle course.
A roundabout we passed had a high plinth in the middle with some cat sculptures around the base and later a mural on a wall showed a cat reaching into the cosmos symbolising the determination for the local people to develop and move their culture forward.
As we passed the first McDonald’s in Kuching Sian remembered going there for the first time and how magical they all found it - Very different food and experience from what they were used to. In the roundabout beside the mall containing the McDonald's is yet more cat statues, so, of course, we had our picture taken in front of them with the golden arches in the background.
We continued along a busy road making our way down to the path along the river with several large and modern hotels in evidence as well as new ones being built.
The riverside walk was much busier during the day. It is very pleasant following the curve of the river along the wide patterned cobbled path. The exotic trees provide shade and there are plenty of benches as well to sit and just take in the tranquillity of the river.
All of the pieces of art we saw were all modern. There does not seem to be anything that looks terribly old. Even the shops generally all seem to be made of concrete or, at least, that is what you see from the street. Calling it the “old town” seems a bit odd to me as nothing here looks terribly old though, I suppose, it isn't really, perhaps a maximum of 120 years or so.
Sian wanted to show us the small Chinese History Museum which a small building in the park with a few rooms that we walked through quickly showing a history of the Chinese in Sarawak. Sian is quite proud of her history and it was nice to see this even if we did not linger.
Mel and I were more interested in the temple opposite that we saw the other day - Tua Pek Kong Temple. It sits on a curved corner in the road. The street level walls immediately grabbed our attention the other day as they are magnificently decorated with dragons.
Passing through the small entrance gate a series of steps leads up to the entrance into the main part of the temple with large incense burners outside (reminding us of Po Lin monastery in Hong Kong where you can’t see much for all the burning incense).
Sian went off on her own to make her prayers as we wandered around to look the garish decorations everywhere. But, it still does not look old. Sian later told us that they continually update it so while it is the oldest temple in the city it does not look it as bits have been upgraded or replaced over the years.
We stopped by “The Museum Café and Shop” which was a bit of a culture shock after the shops on the street - Quite a fancy boutique and café with expensive local art and crafts on sale. Evidently the owners are amateur photographers so they had several monitors that I watched while sipping on my massive mango smoothie while reclining in a rather low leather chair. Sian and Mel both had a frozen ice latte which they said was wonderful as well. Looking up I saw that the plants beside me were actually under a rectangular hole in the roof that would, obviously, water the plants whenever it rained. A brief trip to the small toilets in the back and we were once again on our way.
Around the corner we paid a brief visit to the Sen Wang Kong Temple for a few minutes.
Perhaps not as spectacular as the Tua Pek Kong Temple, Sen Wang Kong does boast a pool of live turtles that thrilled Mel. The story is that it is good luck to save a turtle from the cooking pot so many people leave their turtles here. The turtle is also the symbol of the temple, as I understand it with a festival every year held where children eat pastries in the shape of turtles (there was a bit of confusion for a few minutes as I thought Sian was saying they ate the turtles…). The turtles were attracting more attention than the temple itself with many people peering into their elaborately carved stone enclosure where an attendant was hosing them down (it was very hot).
As we continued walking through the old town the buildings did indeed start to look quite a bit older but with the same basic design as what we had seen earlier. The pavement/walkway did get a lot narrower as we made our way around stopping occasionally for Sian to point out something of interest (mostly involving food - fine by me!).
As I do collect stamps I had requested we visit the post office so this was next on our list. This is in an area where there are a lot of older fairly nondescript colonial buildings. The other day we had driven around the area so it was better to have a slower, closer look at them. The post office was fairly typical colonial utilitarian style that thankfully had a dedicated stamp collecting window where I spent a few minutes going through a pile of first day covers (envelopes with stamps on them that have been cancelled on the first day the stamp was issued, often very colourful) to put some aside. Sian picked up a couple too…
As we left the post office the heavens opened so we quickly put up the umbrellas to continue our walking tour of Kuching. We passed alongside a street that was completely under construction - Sian was looking for a narrow alley she remembered as a child that she wanted us to see. We passed through a number of small shops, up, down and around the various displays. When we eventually did find the alley Sian was disappointed - It is not as narrow as she remembered and/or it has been changed since she was last here. Going through the alley we passed by a small mosque with the shoes of the worshippers arranged outside the walls then by several Indian shops selling sweets and spices.
This area is the “India Town” section of Kuching. The spiced are in colourful piles on top of their sacks. We were amazed to see tall sticks of cinnamon - By tall, I mean 4 or 5 feet - available for sale. The area is also noted for black peppercorns which we also saw for sale in large quantities. As we are headed to Australia reluctantly we have been having to pass on any food products of any kind rather than risk the Australian customs people ceasing it when we arrive in Sydney. Sian has indicated they are normally pretty flexible but we are playing it very safe by not purchasing anything that might be taken away from us. Pity as the spices here are absolutely incredible and at amazing prices.
Reluctantly we returned to the car on the other side of town taking some last minute pictures as we went. It is interesting to see how colourful everything is here and how happy the people generally are. We will miss it. Sian had a bit of an upset as she found she had overstayed at the car park and had to go into a building to see about paying her fine (we felt more than a bit guilty about this). You purchase these cards that you put in the front window of the car that you mark with your time of arrival and are good for something like two hours (I think we were something like 3 or 4 hours…).
We had a bit of a schedule to keep so heading back to the house we managed to wash a bit of our sweat off of ourselves in the shower before finishing our packing. It was a sad trip to the airport with all of us apologizing mutually for the breaking of the toilet (us for breaking it and Sian for the embarrassment of it not working for us). It has been sitting on our minds ever since we broke it…(sigh)
We gave Sian a hug at the departures entrance and waved goodbye as she left then made our way into the terminal to check in. We used a check-in machine then passed through some security to drop our bags. Then we left security again into the main terminal then through another set of security to get to the actual gates themselves. Very confusing.
There are only about 9 or 10 gates here and they are arranged in a line with large glass windows looking out from the lounge area on the left with restaurants and shops along the right of the long hall. Mel tried out another massage chair but it did not work very well for her though seeing someone use the chairs later who had it reclined and obviously making far better use of it than Mel we figure we did something wrong. While Mel was being not entirely happy sitting in her mechanical device I had a look at some shirts in a local stall but was watched by the attendant quite closely which always tends to put me off - Just let me look!
I always like to be early for planes, at least the recommended amount of time early if not earlier - You never know what can happen so it is better to be early than late. So, we had a bit of time to spend here which I often spend by eating. In this case we visited a chicken chain, “Marrybrown” fried chicken (http://marrybrown.com.my/) where we had the “lucky plate” which had fried chicken (quite good), mashed potatoes, french fries and coleslaw. I guess our food quality is somewhat diminishing now.
Mel had the window on this trip to Kuala Lumpur. The views of the surrounding countryside were amazing as we took off with the pointy peaks of the mountains poking up through the clouds. When we had flown in it had been dark so we had seen none of this. Very pretty.
On the plane I finally was able to finish watching the Steve Jobs movie which I had started watching on our flight to Kuching a few days ago. As the flight is only an hour and a bit long it is difficult to make really effective use of the inflight entertainment systems though we still managed to amuse ourselves…
We had been talking to Sian for several days about Kuala Lumpur. We had about 5 hours between flights so the question was whether it would be worthwhile going into the city. But, knowing that the city is at least an hour away by any sort of transport we could take we figured we would not be able to see anything anyway and would likely worry about getting back to the airport on time so we declined on this and stayed in the airport instead.
We returned from the domestic terminal to the international terminal by the automated train and once again passed through customs. Even though we were arriving from one part of the country and going to another part of the same country they do seem to want to keep track of people making these trips. We just managed to finally walk through the outdoor “rain forest” in the middle of the spokes of the airport before it closed at 6 pm but it was quite dark by that point. It still was quite amazing leaving the general noise of the airport into the quite tranquillity of this small outdoor space (probably about 20 m across) just by passing through some doors. It was quite humid though so we did not linger too long…
Again, more time to spend so we had another bit to eat this time at “Nooodles”. We chose it because it was food we liked, they had a nice seating area and they had waitress service. We were thinking of the Malaysian restaurant but looking at what they had to offer we were not as impressed as it did not look as good as what we had been eating in Sarawak. I had the “Hong Kong Style Wantan Mee” dish dry, that is, not in a soup. Mel had the “Beef Ball Noodle” soup. The best bit was the drinks: I had a “Passion Fruit Sparkler” and Mel the “Watermelon Juice”. Ok, the watermelon was, probably expectedly, quite bland but my sparkler was delicious. We were quite full and at 73.60 ringgits (about £11.50) it was, as always, quite a cheap meal - The first we had paid for in some time!
We were amongst the first at the gate and we took the opportunity to charge our phones while we were waiting at the free charge point they offered. It was one of those gates where you enter off the main airport concourse, pass through a security scan for the gate then wait in a lounge area before boarding the aircraft. There was a rather odd older later who kept insisting she was going to New York City despite there being no flights leaving to go there from anywhere near the gate - She got a few odd looks. Thankfully we did not have to wait for long and 45 minutes before the flight were allowed to pass through the security.
The seats for this flight were pretty much all taken up as we could not check-in on-line last night (my phone was still not working in Kuching) so we ended up telling them to seat us right in the middle of the aircraft so that we would not be disturbed on the flight and could sleep. This is a good choice though we won’t be able to see anything when we come in to land (since it is 11 pm we would never be able to see anything on take-off anyway).
We are both trying to get comfortable and sleep but I am not sure it will be that easy. No dinner for us thank you…very full.
If you are interested, click here for our pictures from Malaysia.