For a city that is named after a favourite household pet, I was rather disappointed when I left Kuching without catching sight of a single cat. With a history of being under British rule, a Sir James Brooke, Kuching reveals traces of its colonial past in the architecture composed of museums and post office.
Forgoing the plans of what set out to be a brothers-only trip, we made concessions for our dear sister HH and endeavoured not to make things difficult for Gary.
Upon disembarking at the Kuching airport, I saw second-tier highways leading to the city set in a reasonably green milieu of vegetation. Impressive infrastructure, perceivably for a place said to house a mere 600,000 residents. The grey skies helped to provide some comfort from a scorching sun.
While the map on hostelworld has assured me that we are located not far from the waterfront, actually sensing the proximity to the calm waters on the taxi heightened the joy of realizing that our chosen accommodation was well-made. Along the way, we saw live pigs mulling over their uncertain fate in rather cramped quarters. After turning into a rather narrow lane between rows of two-storied shop houses, we alighted right outside our hostel.
With a décor that goes along the theme of rustic Balinese furniture and a red paint job that’s vibrant yet not too intense, Mr Drowsy hostel gave us a run for our money. It didn’t matter all that much to young people like us. At the end of the day, we only returned to catch our forty winks before heading out to take in the sights and sounds of the locale.
The three things worthy of mention are the food, the trip to the Sarawak Cultural Village, and the produce from this rather obscure part of Malaysia.
Being in a consumer-oriented travel group, courtesy of Hungry Gary, we went all-out in the search for the better tasting of the kolo mee in Kuching. Read: we ate many a bowl. From many a stall.
The champion goes to Ryooyi, a black horse in our quest for the best tasting kolo mee in Kuching. Located in a shop house, it was not in the midst of other food stalls, and expectations wasn’t high. The minced meat on top of the noodles provides a subtle salty flavour to accentuate the texture of the noodles as it enters the mouth… It has earned the status of the KL beef noodles.
I would put Kuching’s laksa in between that of Penang’s Assam style and Singapore’s rather heavy style. Its soup is not as thick and saturated as Singapore’s laksa, and not as watery as the assam convention. Ingredients are slightly different as well. Where the Katong laksa serves a bowl with Chinese parsley on top, the Kuching style does not have that. They also do not spoil their customers in Kuching by snipping the noodles into spoon-sized servings.
Seafood dinner at Top Spot was gratifying. Sea bass and squid deep-fried with condensed milk. Not to mention the local fern that the locals stir-fry – a herb called midin. While some may be turned off by the fact that a mucus-like substance resides inside the crunchy stems, it does have a redeeming fragrance about it. OK. Enough of food.
A motif of this trip arose from our visit to the cultural village. In addition to experiencing how 3 tribes of people lived and fought for their turf expansion, we were treated to traditional performances by Sarawakian warriors and maidens. Gary noted how the flailing hands of the womenfolk resembles the gesture for people to “wait a minute”, and it became the accidental highlight of the trip. Throughout dinner and beyond, we imitated the dance move much to the amusement of ourselves, and yet another lady in our group.
Getting my hands on the traditional instrument found at the longhouse of the Orang Ulu, I realized how fortunate we are to be born in an age of 6-strings, Marshall amplification, and compact analogue effect pedals. Strumming two open notes and being restricted to one single scale at the highest string wasn’t my idea of lead guitar playing. A precursor to the ukulele, perhaps.
Always interesting to see what a country sells in its souvenir shops, above and beyond the traditional woodcraft hand-me-downs. In Kuching, the order of the day was bird’s nest, pepper, and ironically, cat-themed trinkets. In the cultural village, we were walked through the process of grounding pepper, and how black pepper tastes more spicy and is rougher compared to the white pepper which has the pepper seed’s outer layer removed. We also saw a time-lapsed demonstration of separating birds’ saliva from their feathers, and a bleaching process to add that all-important cosmetic touch to the product.
Journeys are always fun. Whether or not you take something back with you is another matter altogether. My main takeaway from this brief yet succinct 3 day 2 night trip is that I should learn to increase my tolerance for the flaws of the human condition even more, especially when faced with such bathos where the eponymous city of Kuching actually has no cats.
