Kuching, meow meow

After a 5.5 hour boat ride from Sibu to Kuching that journey through river, ocean, back to river with some big waves, the rain greeted my arrival.

I headed straight to the hotel I had in mind and the friend from Sibu phone in a reservation for me (apparently he is friend to the owner). They gave me a room on the first floor for 35 riggit (just under US$10). But the room smelled awful, and looked nasty. Not willing to offend the friend from Sibu, I decide to take the room.
For the night 3 nights there, I dreaded to go back to the room to sleep. Luckily I find things to do at daytime, and internet at night so I only spend the minumum amount of time in the room. O, I think there are bugs in the room (even with AC on), my body are all itchy from some sort of bites! This might be the worst room I have since the one in Vietnam (Mekong delta tour).

Anyway it was Christmas eve, but there is only a Catholic church near by, so I tried to attend the service (hoping for to sing some familiar hymns), but I arrived to standing room only crowd, and hymns weren't familiar, and my backpack was heavy, so I left after 15 minutes to go to sleep in the nasty room.

btw Kuching in malay means cat, so the city is decorated with many cat statues. It is the largest city in Borneo I believe. The city is charming by Borneo standard, but the weather here isn't as nice this time of the year as other part of Borneo. Also this city is the only one city that not being bombed by the allied in WWII when Japanese occupied the country. On top of this, it was the capital of the reign of white rajahs in 1800s and 1900s, so there are some colonial buildings remained.

on Christmas day morning, I went to near by Kubah national park to see some more catcher plants for couple hours. I saw couple types and one of them I saw it in Mulu as well, but the walk is short and nice none the less, and I think I might be the only hiker for the last few days for the park. Around 12:30PM I headed back to Kuching for lunch.

Soon as I step out the van in Kuching, I felt something sticky and wet on bottom of my left foot. When I looked closer, it was blood! It took few seconds before it dawn on me, leech attack again!! Since I was in public, I decided to walk to a resturant or store before I take off my sandle and have closer look.

I went to a juice place where bought something earlier in the morning and clean up the wound, the leech was gone. after settling down for a needed drink, I took off my right sandle, and you probably guess by now what I found, another fat leech! The owner pried off with his shoe and step on it. This bastard was filled with my blood.

So the final leech vs me result (I hope no more leeches) is leech 2 and me 4.

That afternoon, I tried to visit the Sarawak museum, but it was closed, so I headed to visitor center to find out its schedule. There I saw Mary (from Uncle Tan and Mulu). She just arrived from Mulu. So we decided to get together for dinner.
Later as we were walking, she saw a guy, Marco (Dutch)from Mulu and 3 of us had a "Chirstmas" dinner. The town was pretty quiet on Christmas night.

On the day after Christmas, Mary and I went to visit the near by culture village that have full size of some of the traditional Malaysian dwellings and culture dances.
The building are pretty authentic and well done although many of the actors for demostration seems to have gone home for Christmas. As for the culture dances, it is like bollywood/vegas show of sound and dance. It ends with sound about Malaysia which has nothing to do the the culture. Anyway we did little shopping around the town, and both of us got ourselves a mid-size blow pipe, so you better watch out when I get back home, I need practice.

Finally Mary, Marco, and I met for a seafood dinner, very good, but portion is kind of small for the price. We had drink at river side bar, and say our goodbyes, Marco is going home, Mary is going to Bako NP, and I going to Bali. But I may see Mary again as she is heading to Bali a day after me.

I was so happy to check out my dump the next morning to catch my fly to KL (the second time) and onward to Bali.