Where-ever I lay my hat

Fortunately it had cooled down quite a bit and become overcast and damp which was a huge improvement on clear and humid so it was more comfortable sleeping and Tuesday morning was pleasant. We had to head to the airport again so got all packed up again. The day was largely uneventful, the flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur long (8 hours) and the descent rather too quick. We dropped 6000m in less than 5 minutes, which was a bit uncomfortable. Then we had a wee unexpected transfer to the low cost airline terminal. It felt a bit like being back in Mexico with pretty dreadful bus terminal and the low cost terminal was also like a Mexican bus terminal which made it quite odd to see a plane pull up outside. Dinner consisted of a peculiar bastardisation of a raisin Danish involving cheese, which must be uniquely Malaysian but clearly not very popular as it was the only food left in the café. The actual flight on Air Asia was pretty good and they were roughly on time so we arrived in Kuching and met Ying and Mao just before midnight. We went straight to sleep and even at that time of night it was pretty hot.

The weather in the morning was lovely and we went out for breakfast with some of Ying's colleagues from the hospital which was really interesting both from the food and company points of view. I learned a lot about the health system in Malaysia, which is quite hierarchical and its more important who you know than what you know (that’s for staff trying to achieve anything new). They are just setting up a rehab service which is outside the normal culture for both patients and staff so is slow going. People just expect if they have a stroke they go to hospital for a few days then go home and the family looks after them. They don’t expect to have health professionals able to help them. They don’t have any idea about physio as they just do any old exercise to get better. And occupational therapy makes no sense at all! Of course the heads of the health service also belong to this culture so setting up a rehab service has a few barriers! The food for breakfast was great – we ate popiah, which are like spring rolls but not deep fried and filled with vegetables and nuts then you dip them in chilli sauce. Steve wants to just keep eating them all week.
After breakfast we went to look at the new community health centre where people come n for the day for a rehab programme and it is a fantastic facility and really interesting to see. They have some good funding for it (somebody knows the right person) unlike the hospital based rehab service even though the same people run them.
Then we went up the civic centre, which is a tower near the centre of Kuching and has great views over the city and right out to the mountains. It was great to get my bearings and figure out where things were from above rather than taking ages to do it from on the ground. There was also a really pretty Chinese cemetery just near it.
Apparently then it was time for lunch, for which we went to the new 24hour food court and had a selection of really interesting foods – dumpling soup (yum), lui cha - vegetarian bowl with rice, spinach beans, nuts and some other salad type things (yum) with a bitter herb soup (yuk) that you mix into it, beef noodles, cha kueh – fried cake made with rice and vegetables (yum). After lunch we drove out to the Orang utan sanctuary. It was brilliant. Orang utan is a Malay name that means man of the bush and the sanctuary is part of a rehabilitation and protection programme. The orang utans are basically in the wild but they feed them every day at 3pm so for a while before that they start wandering in the direction of where the food will come to as part of their daily path around their territory. We saw a mum with baby on her back first although the baby looked far too big to be still carried and they disappeared off into the bush again quickly. They were followed by a couple of young males who hung around in the trees just near us and came down to one of the feeding platforms to get fruit that the keepers put out for them as snacks. Then one of the older males started coming through the bush towards us and he looked big and hairy but apparently we made too much noise (that was the rest of the yabbering tourists not us specifically as we knew we needed to be quiet) and he turned around. Then from the other direction came the dominant male – Ritchie. He was huge and very imposing and you could feel the anxiety among all the people as he came near us. He had huge cheek pads, which apparently only the dominant male develops and is very attractive to the females. He did not stop at the snack platforms unfortunately but lumbered on over the bridge and through the bush to where the proper feeding platform is. We got to follow him there and then watch him moving off through the trees. All the orang utans are fascinating to watch moving but Ritchie in the trees was amazing. He’d go up a thin tree until it bent far enough over for him to grab the next tree. It was certainly not silent creeping through the jungle and probably caused quite a bit of devastation to the trees! There was also a mum and young baby there feeding and we watched the baby playing for a while too, which was really cute. It started to rain (it is monsoon season) and it really rained. We took shelter for a while and were chatting with an English girl who is writing the rough guide for Borneo. Then we braved the rain and paddled back up river that earlier was the road and drove back to town. Afternoon tea was coconuts and coconut and sugar cane drinks and shaved ice with red beans and coconut milk.
We had a rest back at the house before going out for steamboat for dinner, which is a hot broth in the middle of the table in which you cook anything form the buffet table including fish balls, dumplings, mushrooms and other fungi, Chinese greens, quail eggs,
There was also a grill around the side of it to cook fish and beef of several varieties. There were also other dishes like spring rolls, lamb curry, fried rice, cockles and lots of prawns and crab. We ate far too much but it was all delicious. Dessert was papaya and ice-cream and the ice-cream flavours were interesting! There was sweetcorn ice-cream, chocolate rice pudding, and a couple of others that we couldn’t identify. The setting was lovely sitting outdoors by a pond and just all lit up very pretty. When we got home we had a taste of Durian, which is the famous very smelly fruit that people either love or hate. It has a hard spiny shell and is really big but once you break it open there are bits of yellow fruit inside mostly white shell. The yellow fruits have a big seed in them too so there isn’t a huge amount of fruit. It tastes like a rich egg custard so is really quite nice but the aftertaste is not. We both said we liked it but didn’t, but in retrospect have no desire to eat more. It doesn’t smell as bad as I’ve heard but I also have little sense of smell and did smell that there were some nearby the next day once I knew what the smell was.

On Thursday morning we got going about 8 and had curry for breakfast. It was really interesting that we can’t drink coffee in the morning because it makes us too hot but eating curry in the morning was fine. It was actually mostly Indian breads (roti) with small bowls of curry to dip in. we tried all the different breads to see which we liked best. There was roti chanai (a loose flat bread), roti bom (small round with many layers), roti thosai (a thin crepe like thing), chapati (dryer flat bread), murtabak (omelette with corned beef) and roti tissue (sweet with condensed milk drizzled over it and a much more western flavour for breakfast). After breakfast we headed out to the Sarawak cultural village at Santubong. It has a traditional house from each of the seven main ‘races’ that live in Sarawak with traditional crafts or cooking happening in each. We tasted sago cookies from the Melanau, and tapioca cookies from the Orang ulu longhouse. We saw both of these being made and also the sago palm being ground and made into flour and sago balls. We played congkak - a cool stone game in the Malay house which was naturally air conditioned by being off the ground and very open to catch any breeze. The game involved moving stones around a board of 2 rows of 9 holes to get the most stones into your ‘home’ hole. When you land on an empty hole you turn ends and the winner is the one with the most stones in their ‘home’ at the end. The houses were all really interesting. We went to the show as well which was at least cooler inside and was very interesting. A man in warrior costume shooting blowdarts invited me on stage, but I declined which was very fortunate because his next shot missed badly.
Then we went to Santubong resort when Ann Ann had a room for the night so we used the facilities and went to the beach and soaked in the pool for a while, which was lovely and refreshing. We had dinner at seafood restaurant in a tiny fishing village called Kampung Buntal. It was a very pretty little village on a nice beach with big nets set just offshore. We a huge feast again including steamed pomfret fish, butter prawns with caramelised oats (very yum), salted prawns, curried bamboo clams which are like Orcadian spoots or razorclams, midin - fern fronds cooked in wine (yum), oyster omelette (yum), and 2 noodle dishes. Dessert was egg tart when we got home again that Mao had bought from the best place in town.

Friday was a much quieter day and we went for a look around Kuching city. Kuching in Malay means cat and it is named after the Kuching river which had wild cats living along it but now the symbol of Kuching is a pussycat and there are lots of statues of cats around the city. We strolled along the waterfront, which is really quite pretty and has a nice gardened promenade. There are pretty little boats that go across the river for 30 cents and the views across the river of the palace and new assembly buildings. There are food markets along the port area of the waterfront and further in shopping streets with cloth and souvenirs and jewellery. There is an interesting contrast between traditional Chinese and Malay shops and English colonial architecture. There are a huge number of cafes and food stalls everywhere and most people eat out for most meals. Its actually easy to see why as the amount of work in preparing a lot of the food is huge and it would be more expensive to prepare yourself as well as very time consuming. In addition eating out gives you lots of variety and no dishes to do and all the food is really tasty. If you choose carefully – or have a good guide! – the quality of the food is also very good and quite healthy. We had lunch in a Taiwanese restaurant and had bubble tea – which has sago balls in it (yum), Taiwan beef noodles, sesame oil noodles – which were quite like satay, herb dumplings, tofu and preserved eggs and Taiwan sausage fried rice.
The afternoon was nice and relaxing back at home just staying out of the sun and heat for a while. Steve and Mao had a game of badminton before dinner which was simple rice porridge with lots of things to add to it. We had a drive along the riverfront to look at the lights on the way home.

Saturday was a long sleep in before breakfast at the green noodle house where we had green noodles, green dumplings and cha keuh. It was delicious as usual. Then we did some shopping for electronics with were pretty cheap and tried to find some shoes for me but apparently I have bigger feet than anyone in Asia. Ying had been at work for the morning so we picked her up and drove out to Bako to visit a beautiful Chinese temple in a Malay village. On the way we stopped at the coconut farm for a look around and saw lots of local vegetables and tea growing. The temple was on a hill above the fishing village and had lovely views to the mountain and was also gorgeous in itself. There was also proof beyond all doubt of what I have long believed - that umbrellas are dangerous weapons - the 'gods' guarding the temple door each were weilding their sacred wepons - on eof which was an umbrella! We had a rest back at the house before going out to the Sunday market – I know its only Saturday but the Sunday market starts on Saturday evening! – It’s a weird country. We strolled around the fresh food markets for a while and then the cooked food market and bought lots of bits and pieces to try. We ate some snacks along the way like fish crackers, chickpeas and peanut pancake things. The rest of the food we took home and sat on the balcony and ate which was extremely pleasant.

Sunday was a very quiet day when I finally decided the bug that I had been fighting for two days was going to win if I didn’t relax a bit more. We slept in then went out for brunch and had a look at a few shops for some more bargains then went home and Ying and I spent the afternoon just gossiping while the boys went out to look at wine shops. We had long discussions about the culture here and differences between western and Asian cultures. In some ways there are a lot of differences but in some ways they are very similar. The discussion started because we are uncomfortable with the fact that we can’t pay for any meals – everyone wants to treat us. They are equally uncomfortable if we try to pay. Eastern culture has an expectation that the host looks after the guest in every way. It is considered a matter of pride to ensure your guests are fed well. When it involves eating out that makes us uncomfortable but eating out is more normal because of how easy and cheap it is. However, western culture is similar in that the host often cooks for the guest and I certainly understand the whole thing about pride and feeding guests. It becomes different when there is money involved. We concluded that the major difference is in the attitude to money although its not really more important in western culture but perhaps more significant. The Malaysian people certainly are very open and generous people and we saw lots of examples of this including being offered accommodation next time we visit by a Muslim couple we met in the airline queue. The people are generally friendly and can queue in a civilised fashion and are generally much more civilised than western cultures – until they get behind the wheel of a car. Then chaos reigns. It is perfectly acceptable to drive straight across three lanes of road even when they are full. They change lanes whenever they feel like it regardless of if someone else is already in the lane. Motorbikes – whose riders wear their jackets back-to-front to protect from sun and wind and impair their reaction speed – zip through gaps that are not there and pass things from one to the other mid flow. There are frequently 3 cars and 3 motorbikes all trying to get into one small piece of lane – just like the pictures of big cities in china! A couple of other things that amused me about the culture is the thing where people always take their shoes off when going indoors. That in itself is not unusual but the skill with which they walk out of their shoes without even slowing their stride is fascinating. I also suddenly understand the Asian obsession with showering several times a day. It just gets so hot and a shower cools you down although not for very long. I guess that’s more of an issue at the moment as its monsoon season so really humid. The monsoon rains are also interesting especially the management of them. The monsoon drains are huge and run everywhere and you really don’t even see them after a couple of days but when it rains it really rains and they fill up pretty quick. The ground is saturated and any grassy area is a complete bog.

On Sunday evening Ying’s mum wanted to take us out for dinner and we went to a Thai seafood restaurant, which was pretty good. The prawns we had were more like crayfish or lobsters and the soft-shell crab was fantastic. There was also another fern frond dish, which is proving one of our favourites. The dishes just kept on coming because they wanted us to try everything. We made a valiant effort.

Monday was a quiet start again, as I had not slept well and was still feeling a bit poorly. Also we had planned to go out to the organic farm and it was raining. We went out for roti chanai and roti tissue for breakfast again and Steve had a couple of curries too, then we chilled out at the house for the afternoon until we got a test to say the flight had been changed again and was now later. That caused a panic that we wouldn’t get our connection to Dubai. The panic continued the rest of the day and by the time we got on a plane we had made two trips to the airport and the flight we were on had been at 5 different times. The check in queue was huge and we going to check in then go to dinner but the queue took over an hour so we had to say a rushed goodbye in the airport, which was unpleasant. The flight was late too but with a few minor hiccups and some incredible changeover by air Asia we actually made it to the international terminal and onto our flight to Dubai.