Kuching:Day 2

Day2(15-4-2004, Thursday)

we woke up at 8am....most of us did. somehow, our lifestyle for this trip would be a pretty healthy one. early to sleep, early to wake up.by 9am, we were on the road to breakfast.how many of us actually have breakfast in Cyber?? ;) see! breakfast was at ben's aunty's shop. food in Kuching is slightly cheaper compared to Peninsular. a lot of noodles. our table ordered all kinds of noodles. ok here's the thing i was told about sarawak's 'kolo' me that's different from the mee we find over here: sarawak's mee is more wrinkled....yes..just imagine if our normal wantan mee grew old, very very old....yeah, that wrinkled. something like how old people's face would look like without Botox treatment. yeap. that's it! the other thing that sets sarawak mee apart from it's Peninsular counterpart is that when u use a chopstick to lift the mee up....only whatever u have picked up will be seprated from the whole chunk of mee. it's pretty kewl! unlike here, whenever u eat those kinda mee, u have to struggle using ur teeth, spoon, whatever to break the loose strands so that in can nicely fit into your mouth. that's 2 point for sarawak mee and 0 for Peninsular.

ok,moving on, we went to DBKU (Dewan Bandaraya Kuching Utara), a big shuttle cock-looing building. the other funny part about Kuching is that eventhough it's such a small town, it has too Majlis Perbandaran....imagine Subang Jaya having 2 Majlis Perbandaran, nuts! one is DBKU, the other is MPKS (Majlis Perbandaran Kuching Selatan). Kuching North is populated by Malays while Kuching South is mainly the Chinese Community. anyways, the Cat Museum, yes u heard rite! the CAT Museum is in the DBKU building. it's all about cats....cats here and cats there....shucks...even Hello Kitty and Garfield are in there somewhere. u can find nearly about anything to do with cats in there. They even had one section dedicated to 'Whiskers', the household catfood brand. on top of that, there was a a brief history of how Kuching came about and how the city progressed till today. other than that.....it was jsut cats. the coolest cat in there was this mummified cat all the way from Egypt;) something i saw on a Cat Poster ," I may not be able to do great things, but i can do small things in a great way".

next was the Orchid Garden.....as the name says it all....plainly loads and loads of Orchids everywhere.......big ones, small ones, colorful ones, dull ones.....it's beautiful! a must for Orchid Lovers!

then we headed for Fort Margherita. i hope i spelled that correct...or is it Marguerita.....nvm. yeah the fort was beside the police headquarters. it's something like A'Famosa, except it looks way nicer. the fascinating part of this Fort to me was the Skull Room. urm, there was this picture of a pirate skull in a room, along the walls of the Fort. and i opened to have a look inside. i didn't read the Police report at the door.i just stepped in and saw this basket hanging from the ceiling. there were some black looking stuff inside. i tot it was some rotten rattan....then i realised they were REAL OLD Skulls! darn! nearly freaked out. i was staring at it real close when i realised it. The Police report said that during the war, soldiers heard laughter from the room in the middle of a rainy night. so they went to check it out, but found no one except those skulls...freaky!

after that, we went to sit the SArawak River's water taxi.some kind of sampan with a roof that ferries people across the Sarawak River to the north or south side of town. it's a mode of transport, and u see alot of ppl using it. my goodness, each sampan even had advertisements placed on their roof...one was Lipton, the other was Fair and Lovely...mien! the extremes of advertisements.it was 30 sens a ride one way.after the boatride, we went to the MPKS to have a look at the building, then off to lunch at one of the MPKS centers.
We ate Belacan bee hoon. first time ever. never heard of that before. tasted good. what was more awesome was the drinks. u know coconut drink, sugarcane drink and lime juice? imagine mixing them up together, either 2 at a time or jsut everything. that's it. wonder y no other shops ever did that? had a few round of drinks.
{coconut+lime},{coconut+sugarcane},{lime+sugarcane},{lime+honey sea coconut}. awesome!

next on the list was the Sarawak Museum.....it's a museum.....so nothing to say about it. pretty nice....reminds me of the Perak State Museum located in Taiping.there was also thing 'palang' thingy.....gross. after that we went to the aquarium beside the Museum.

got to say that Gerald and his Dad did a great job in taking us around. Imagine Uncle Simon took a week off just to take us around. splendid!

anyways, we went back to rest after that. the thing about this trip i noticed, was that we always had evening rest for all the days. so,we had tome to rejuvenate and recharge before we started out night exploits;) so today, we went back and slept abit..well,most of them. i didn't. me,charis, nicky and desmond decided to take a walk around town to get some essentials. so, 4 of us headed out into town, not knowing where is what...jsut walked and walked. our first stop was Kuching Plaza....reminds me of Fajar Melaka. like that....checked out the cybercafes and shops..nothing much...then headed into town...seriously kewl experience.....like tourist....cross roads also like tourist....sesat man! manage to find the stuff we wanted, then headed back.

when we got back,there were some changes in room arrangements. one other thing i noticed, we were the only malaysians as far as i could see lodging in the guesthouse. the rest were the 'armolangs'. the place we stayed was basically a stop point for most of them. lodging at a reasonable price and good comfort. our current room was booked before hand, so me and nicky moved out to another room while boss bunked with benny and desmond. the girls didn't have to move.

at 7pm, gerald and ben came to pick us up for dinner. we had dinner at Hornbill's BBQ and Steamboat. something, like steamboat and bbq on the same stove....for those who've never seen this before....liek restoran Talipon:p it was fun....ben and gerald were really surpised that we ate and ate and ate and ate....2 hours straight.they said that ppl usually gave up after and hour.

mien...you should have seen the look on the other patrons of the restaurant...they thought we were nuts.....we seriously took loads of food. there were lots of 'armolang' customers and i wanted to laugh when i saw the expressions they wore on their faces when they saw the stack of meat i took on the plate!

things that i found out while having dinner:

1.Peak Yin sure can eat.....she's a silent eater....as long as there is food, she would finish it off. so the more u put the more she eats....never stopping:P

2.Boss is the ice-cream king. he took plates after plates of ice-cream. we're not talking bowls.....imagine the plates we eat on, those big round ones, yeah....those kind of plates! he just happily helped himself to them. and instead of using the tiny orange little spoons to scoop the ice-cream,he used the big metal spoon used for dishing out soup. hehe.

3.Benny is the ice-cream cone king. he jsut took stacks of ice-cream cone and started munching on them. so in between cooking, he was just whacking all the cones he could find.

4.Poh Yee and her obsession for tissue. u should have seen the amount of tissue the used up....enough to make Scottex bankrupt. after the meal, there was this pile of tissue stacked up in front of her. the owner would be wondering how come they were facing a loss.

5.Mama Liew aka Charis....(this is the name coined up for her coz during the trip, she was like our Big Mama, calling the shots and taking care of us) she was into frying vegetables for all of us,making sure we had our daily intake of fibre so that there will be easy output...get what i mean;) i think she finished up all the vege they could offer:p

6.Ben was the fire man. he thought us how to use water in the frying pan to make a fire....u know all those 'char kuey teow' fellas making those huge flames in their pan while cooking? yeah, he thought us jsut that. we made small flames, big flames....one so big i could feel the heat coming at me...

after dinner.....we were seriously stuffed up! we headed for the Waterfront, the walkway beside the Sarawak River. it was a nice walk....pretty romantic! but then too bad i didn't have a date! we took a stroll around and after awehile, decided to check out the hotels nearby.....so we walked in and out of hotels......and last stop was 7-11. haha....imagine,all the way to sarawak just to lepak at 7-11;)

after a long day's exploration we retired back home.....this time equiped with Ghost Buster equipment. since this was the 2nd nite, we were pretty used to the place.getting comfy and cozy. i guess the 2nd nite was easier to sleep...after all that walking...nitez......darn.....my nose was running ......boy, did it ran.....sneezed like mad....must be the dust....

ps: in my opinion, Kuching reminds me alot of Melaka. the old town of Kuching resembles Jonker Walk while the newer part of Kuching looks like Melaka Raya....just my opinion.
the other thing, it is customary to ask for tissue paper in Kuching food stalls. they provide u all the tissue you ned and don't charge.....now u understand y Poh Yee swiped up all that tissue;)