A Purrfect Getaway to Kuching

After breathing my days and nights in Peninsular Malaysia (West Malaysia) for 21 years, after spending about 1 hour 45 minutes on plane, I took my very first breath in Malaysian Borneo (East Malaysia) on the 16th August 2011 for the first time.

There are a few version of story about the name of the city, Kuching. What I learned from the tour guide, many of the locals refer to Kuching (Malay word - kucing, meaning cat) as the Cat city but it more likely comes from the Chinese word for port (Cochin).

Kuching is small enough to walk around and interesting enough to keep you there for several days. It's safe and relatively clean compared to KL. It's a good base for exploring Sarawak. Beside being stared like we are Aliens from Venus wherever we go, generally, many locals we met are very friendly. The bartender we met in the pub explained to us that they were actually wondering where we from that's why they stare. They don't stare at the Western tourist like how they stares at us, probably because they seldom see Asian tourist like us? Guess we just too loud or the way I wear too exposed to them? No freaking idea. Funny thing is, two of my friends noticed someone took picture of us! :-O

First day in Kuching, we do not have any plan yet. So we just sightseeing around the town. At night, we went to Food Festival at Dewan Masyarakat. Quite a long walk from our hotel. Don't really want to talk much about the food there because... I awake middle of the night and vomit out some of the food I ate :(

1.

2.

3.

4. Some day the sun won't shine for you.

4. Shopping in the dark. No electricity due to the heavy rain.

5.

6.

7. An event was going on in this park near by Dewan Masyarakat.

8.

9.

Laughs, fooling around with my buddies, friendly tour guide and bartender, talented live band singer, helpful tourist police, random European, cultural learning, jungle trekking, food hunting, adventure.. I had a great time in Kuching!

This track got stuck in my head when I was in Kuching for so many days. I can't get rid of it, started since I was in airport killing time with my MP3. So addictive!

Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People