Kuching:Day 3

Day3(16-4-2004, Friday)

today we woke up at 8am as usual and left for breakfast by 9am....the same pattern repeating everyday..healthy;) anyways, went to this shop....ordered tomato mee....while waiting for my mee to come, UNcle Simon ordered a few other specialities of the store for us to try....mien! there were so many types of mee...and dishes and all...and i ate and ate and tried this and tried that by
the time my food was supposed to come, i was stuffed! anyways, my food didn't come:( so much for my tomato mee....manage to curi some from nicky just for tasting purposes. after a hearty meal, off we went.

1st stop, Bau. this is an area near Kuching....remember we used to learn in form 3 geografi:'Bau terkenal kerana mempunyai lombong emas'.....or was it timah...or petroleum....argh! can't remember la...but all i know it's somewhere in the textbook:p yeah that place. we went to Gua Angin(Wind Cave)....our trip to Sarawak didn't permit us to check out the famous Mulu Caves (that everyone else said is a must to visit if ur in sarawak), but this was the closest cave we ever got to....not to forget the closest to bats and loads of 'guano'! (guano is something that is tasty and good to eat). the trip inside the cave didn't take too long as the cave wasn't that big. but it did give us a taste of how caves feel and smell...and tasted..... it was pitch dark in there...there were premade wooden tracks to help us get by throughout the cave.....thank God for the torchlights we brought...though it didn't help much other than shed some decent light just a few feet on front of you. and sad to say, we couldn't avoid the 'guano' plastered everywhere on the floor.there goes my nike! shining the roch up to the ceiling, we could see stalagmites....or is it stalactites....those pointy stuff sticking out from the roof of the cave. neat artwork of God! and bats were jsut clustered everywhere on the ceiling. u could say that nearly the whole roof had bats on it. and their eyes shone red whenever they reflected out lights. kinda eerie sometimes. jsut had a feeling if we had pissed them off....the whole swarm might jsut get us and turn each and everyone of us to BatBoys and Batgirls.*shudders* ....so much for LimpBizKit's Batman song! it was a really kewl experience....the sound of the bats by the hundreds...maybe thousands, reminded me of rushing waters. imagine how many bats there could be?
along the way into the caves, we came across a lil' baby squirrel sprawled on the path. it looked pretty helpless, so we took it with us to the Park Rangers office.so cute!....and edible:P The Ranger told us we could take it back and keep it as a pet........sounded like a nice idea....but then....how could we care for the squirrel during this holiday...i mean, we gotta feed it, and clean the poo and all that stuff.....so after thinking it through...we decided to just leave it there......darn....could have made a nice squirrel soup for us all...too bad.

after the Wind Cave, we wanted to to explore anther cave, the Fairy Cave. after some thought, we didn't go there at all, coz this cave was further away and required more hiking and trekking...we might lose poh yee along the way....so after much thought, we jsut went to check out thsi site beside the hills where they harvested bird's nest. the walls of the hills were so high and the instruments used to harvest the nests were so dangerous. we were told that people have died trying to collect those nests....sighz....the trouble people go to for money;)

up next was a drive to another small town nearby which had the Tasik Biru (Blue Lake). this lake used to be a mining pool...now a tourist attraction.it's a pretty small but very deep lake. the lake looked really blue and serene, unlike all those green algae-filled lakes. the reason y it looked blue was the water was very clear, and the bottom very deep. so the darkness at the bottom gives it a nice shade of blue. u could see .......till it was blackness. alot of fishes though. the lake is not usedfor anything else, due to the high arsenic level contained in it's waters. so u can't drink it, or u'll die of arsenic poisoning......can't fish in it.....the fish will kill you as well with it's arsenic content, neither can u swim in it....you might just mutate into the 'swamp' thing'. who knows? better safe than sorry.

we were still full when lunch time came. so we left Bau, and headed for another part of Sarawak. Next stop was Jong's Crocodile farm....yeap buaya farm.....with some birds and fishes.... alot of crocs were being fed shark meat. could see the carcasses of the shark all over in the croc ponds. there were pictures of the legend Bujang Senang, a man-eating croc that terrorized the villages and killed some people. they had really gross pics of a little boy found in the belly of that croc.urgh! bad stuff to see! not to forget, there was this terrible stench lurking in the air of the farm....but after a while we 'had' to get used to it. we saw some sun bears in there with some ducks and peacocks..... monkeys from different families....and the best....Croc Feeding Time! yeah...they kept some dead chicken for i think a few days till they really stank, then started feeding the hungry crocs. stinko! at one time i was really about to puke! couldn't take it. but it was
nice to see the crocs taunting each other with their catch of dead chikin' ;) gross!

by the time we got home, we were really zonked out. so sleepla. slept till bout 7pm till Gerald came over to pick us up for dinner. tonight was something different: BBQ at Gerald's house. got to see how Gerald's house looked like. did some BBQ, ate some.....the usual stuff that happens in BBQ. well, the unusual things that happened was eating Durian Flower fried in Belacan.....come think of it, i've never seen how durian flowers looked like, let alone eat them. it was really tasty:) yummy. there goes the durians to be! a new thing. besides that was barbequing brinjal....i've never seen ppl do that before...was kewl anyway....along the way a praying mantis dropped by and scared the s*** out of me and nicky....which brought about the beaheading of the praying Mantis's head with one stroke the knife by Nicky. good job man! that'll teach it to go about scaring ppl:P however, with the head detached from the body, the mantis still could move it's feelers and mouth ........ewh!
the other kewl thing about the house is that they have satellite tv, and i'm not talking astro here. this satellite is like 10 times bigger than astro and can receive nearly all the stations from all the satellites up there in space. so we sat in front of their tv....looking randomly at the 400++ channels offered......now that's what i call channel surfing:p and u dun have to pay for anything else other than ur electric bill. it's supposedly illegal, but it's more lenient in sarawak. kewl man......if ever i move to sarawak....i gonna get one of this!

it's a really nice and cozy house.....very homely....Uncle Simon and Aunty Helen sure put alot of effort to make it a nice place to call home. Aunty Helen even rushed to complete a cross-stitch

with the words 'WELCOME' jsut for us. awesome!

by the time we wanted to go, we were pretty tired. so needless to say....reach home....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz