Kuching (25-28 June 2009)

Kuching, Malaysia (25-28 June 2009)

This is one of the trips that I’m looking forward to, because mid year is so boring, June is so hot, and the most important is I expected to have good companions..

When traveling together with friends, sometimes I can see certain personalities I’ve never seen before; journey brings out the worst and best of the people. If they used to mask it under normal circumstances, a trip is a good way to know someone better, the real personalities are shown, that is why a lot of couple breaks up doing Amazing Race. He he he..

My companions turn out as what I thought they would be,, fun and real, no drama, and I love it. We share a lot of common interest and same crazy attitudes. We are like bunch of kids regardless our ages.

We decided to go for this trip in less than half an hour, that was the first good sign, no wishy-washy. The location was also chosen by the cost of it. All we need is a getaway among ourselves, the activities and attractions can fit in later. I’m going with my whole department,, totaling only four of us. We have been friends for over a year yet we click as we have known each other for very long time, two of my colleagues have actually known each other for sixteen years.



Thrusdays, 25th June 2009.

It’s not easy to work on that day. We were excited, and we did some quick checks to see where we can go in Kuching. After lunch, we took cab to the airport and spent some waiting time by playing cards. The flight took about one hour and fifteen minutes before we reached Kuching.
Kuching is the capital city of Serawak, the most vibrant and largest city in Borneo. Cat’s city, although in modern day spelling (in Malaysian and Indonesian language) it’s spelt without h, Kucing. If you imagine a city full of cats, you’s be disappointed.

The name could come from Cochin, Indian name for port, first settlers in Kuching.
Or could come from the abundant “cat’s eye fruit” or “mata kucing” tree at the river bank.
Or could come from a stream called Kuching River.
Or originated from Chinese language means “Ku” for old and “Ching” for well. During the Rajah Charles Brooke’s time, the British adventurer who became Rajah of Sarawak, there was no proper water supply and water-borne disease were common like Cholera epidemic. Fortunately, clean water from a well at present day China Street saved the people, therefore “Kuching”.
(Wikipedia)

I’ve never though that Kuching is so modern. It has a very nice airport compared to, uhm Pontianak, my home town. Since my childhood, I’m familiar of hearing this place, one of the famous destination for medical, business or leisure, it’s eight hours away by bus and probably half an hour flight away from Pontianak. I‘ve never been there but I pictures it to be similar to Pontianak. I’m right in someway, but wrong in another way. Kuching airport, road, facilities are way above my expectation.

We stayed together in a service apartment consists of two bedroom, two bathrooms, living room and kitchen. There were washing machine, dryer, ironing board, dvd player and that’s wow to me. It’s spacious for four of us, the master bedroom even has so-called walk-in wardrobe. It also has great view from the window even though it’s only as high as six storey.

We went out to catch seafood dinner right behind our apartment. It was on the rooftop of a carpark and there were cluster of seafood stalls offering a lot of variety. One of my colleagues did the ordering, the food was okay. Getting later in the night, the place got more crowded.
We went to a shopping mall nearby to get the necessary; tidbits, drinks, snacks, bottled water and instant noodle for adding some midnight oil. It was almost closing time already.

That night was the first night that we officially opened our Scrabble game, with my ‘virgin’ Scrabble. We have been addicted to Scrabble from my Pocket PC for months, this is the first time we play physically, four of us. It’s good to finally found kakis otherwise my Scrabble board will be virgin forever.
We whacked the night playing until 3 plus, with instant noodle as the power supply. It was a fun night. I had trouble sleeping for a while, and woke up too early.

Friday, 26th June 2009
Bako National Park.

Woke up in the morning, we heard the news about the death of MJ from the Teve.
Departing for breakfast, we found a stack of newspaper outside our door. Neat!
However, the headline almost made our jaw dropped. It was written there that the passenger of flight so and so have been informed because there was a case of confirmed H1N1 victim on the same flight. It was out exact same flight. Our minds worked fast thinking of million possibilities. I found it odd that we ‘were’ not informed although the newspaper said so, so my panic had not sunk in yet. The incomplete article never once mentioned about which day of flight with the case.
In breakfast lobby we found another newspaper that explained better with the day of the flight, which was three days ago.

We hailed a cab from the road and negotiated the price to go to Bako jetty terminal. The cab cost us 45 Ringgit and it fit us just nice. The journey was long and a bit painful because the driver kept talking very loud and drove like a turtle. But when we saw the riverside, all the excitement came back.

Good thing about Kuching, there are not much room to cheat tourists. Everything has clear pricing. Airport cab, and the boat that we could take to various point of Bako National Park. From the jetty, we need to take boat to the headquarter in the island, from there then we could take another boats or land trekking to various locations.

Bako National Park was established in 1957, million years of erosion have created coastline of steep cliffs and carved rocky headlands into sea arches and sea stacks. It’s the final pit stop of Amazing Race Asia season One. Waw.. It had 16 color-coded trails with its rainforest, wildlife, jungle streams, waterfall, vegetation, secluded beach.











We took the boat for 9RM per person and had a good 15-20 minutes ride. I sat in front with a colleague whom we both enjoyed the sun and the wind, something I really miss when I’m back in town.
It was the lowest tide of the day, we had to walk through water because the boat couldn’t not land any closer to the shore. The water was greenish brown, because of sand and silt, not mud. We were giggling like kids when our feet touched the soft sand and water. Look what city had done to us, look how we miss the nature. The sand look like volcanic sand that reminded me of Bali. The scenery, beautiful rock cliff, gigantic display of sand, and bright blueeee sky.



The low tide brought the largest patch of sand I’ve ever seen. The shore was sooo wide and so peaceful because except few boats and few groups, no one else was around. The ultimate peaceful was when everyone except us had dispersed away.
We walked to the HQ and signed in our self, decided to take Paku as our trail.



We followed a track that led us to a bridge with wet earth on both side with numerous colorful crabs. I want to curse myself for not bringing my macro lens. Four of us squatting around and left the butts hanging on the air, trying to get better look and pictures of the crabs. There were so many of them among the wet mud and vegetation, together with the hermit crabs. After a while, we move down to the wet land until the mosquitoes started to bite. Mosquitoes! I haven’t recovered fully from my outdoor photography few weeks back, somehow I got bitten so bad that it left scars on my feet, but it’d be gone. What we could do was moving our legs often.
After quite a boardwalk under the direct hot sun and beautiful blueeeee sky, we reached the jetty we were supposed to be to catch the boat back. We caught a group of tourist staring at the distance with Proboscis Monkey! Wild Proboscis Monkeys! A while back a colleague I just known shared her story about seeing this exotic monkey in the wild and I imagine how fantastic it would be. It must be like seeing pelagic underwater, with a sudden appearance of shark, manta ray or whale shark. The feeling was quite similar although nothing can beat the world beyond the water. Again, I cursed myself of not bringing zoom lens, but I felt grateful just to be able to see them on the tree and walking on the wet land on the georgeous jetty.





The walks and everything was energy consuming, but we hadn’t even started, so we moved to track the Paku trail, the trail was covered well with shade.
It had been a long time since I did quite serious trekking like this. It sure did bring back memories and I love the smell of the forest. A long the way we encountered some insects, flowers and interesting tracks. The track was only 800 meter long, but it’s no ordinary 800 meter. At the end of the track, it led us into something, this…


The secluded and beautiful beach of our own. Except few boats, there was almost no one else. There were beautiful rock formations, shallow tiny pool in the rocks, cracks full of tiny snails, shrimps and crabs and again blueeeeeee sky. I have to emphasis on the blue because it was so blue, the Borneo sky. Blueeeeeeeeeee! Blueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Love it!

We hung around, taking pictures and decided to go back to HQ by boat instead of walking back the trail. It was small sampan with motor and without life jacket. I have to give my Croc a very good credit here. Since the only shoes left that is suitable for trekking had given way few months ago, I figured it that there was no use of me to bring ordinary shoes and counted on the croc instead. It’s proven to reduce the rate of me, Slippery Feet Queen, accident from slippery floor. So I took a bet that it should sustain the trekking and it really did! Amazing… I have slave this shoe for so long, and it was all heavy duty activities, now it survived trekking, worth every cents, it had never gotten as dirty as that day.

We went back to the canteen near headquarter, savaged the fridge for cold cola-cola for a must needed refreshment. We sweated like crazy, and our cheeks were burned red by the sun.
The canteen was almost full house from all the ‘trekkers’ combine together. There are 16 six color-colored trails in Bako. Four of us chose a table near the deck railing and threw our butts on the chairs. Then it happened. My friend opened a pack of waffle and suddenly something passed by the table and he was sitting there wide-eyed, without the waffle. It happened in split second that we were not sure what was that about until we saw macaque sitting on the tree eating the wafer. Dasar monyettttt!!....

Lucky we decided not to have lunch there, otherwise a bunch of monkeys might be hugging our heads now trying to pry open our mouths for food. After a while, another monkey climbed up the table, in front of our nose literally, picked up a can of empty coca-cola, threw it back to the table in disgust, picked a leftover Fanta, and drank it in front of our eye, obnoxious about its crime victim’s feeling.

We sat there for a while, our boat appointment was still two hours away. I was expecting a boo when I suggested another trail, to my surprise, everyone was on. We picked the shortest trail, 500 meter although we need to walk almost twice the distance to reach the trail. We went by the beach and couldn’t see anything but the cliff. Jokingly I said 500 meter is probably up to the cliff. We still joked about it until we took the track and realized that the joke came true and the track was leading up up up with steep rock formation, tree roots or man-made wooden stairs. It was quite a enduring trek, until we reached the top and rewarded with this…

Too bad we had to rush down again, because we needed to count the tracking back to the start, the loooong walk along the beach, to pass through head quarter , then reached the jetty when we first saw the Prosboscis Monkeys. It was a significant distance.

We took a gamble to walk by the beach all the way to the jetty instead of tracking back the boardwalk because we could actually see the boat from distance. The sun was glaring on top of our head, but our spirit was really high and we enjoyed the day, we even did very mini sprint running competition. It’s irresistible, the beach was gorgeous, and the sky was blueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Going back, I got to seat in front by myself and …

Along the way I was imagining dolphins and whale on the horizon. It could be fat hope, but who knows. Maybe some flying fish? I got none of those but none less, because I got my favorite wind and sky.
We spent sometime in jetty cooling down and taking pictures while waiting for the bus. All of us were burned by the sun and survived the whole long day with breakfast only, we sweated a bucket each (sort-of) and now we were hungry.




Taking bus was a good experience. It only cost us 2 Ringgit and we got an hour ride with the wind slapping on our face, such a nostalgic time with the time when my life was wasted on the road of Jakarta, trying to get from one place to another. I missed the slapping wind, it was a shiokkkkk one-hour ride.


We got kicked out by the driver when it was the end of the journey. Good thing about backpacking, everywhere is alright to us. Kuching didn’t give me dangerous impression and I let down my guard unlike everytime I visit somewhere new. We alighted at something like a terminal and dropped by to the food court and ordered few types of local food to try. Like Pontianak, there are a lot of Chinese in Kuching, with richer diversity in languages. We ordered rujak, laksa, kolo mee, char kuay tiaw, ice kachang, soya milk and shared it among us. Kolo mie and laksa got my vote, the ice kacang was also not bad, specially made from the traditional ice chipping machine.. put a block of ice, turn the handle.srot..srott…

We tried to walk around for a while, after that we navigated our way back to the hotel, by foot. The two guys did a great job navigating. We passed by Indian and China ‘town’ but most of the shops were closed. We then walked pass some kind of Farmer Exhibition and proceed to the Waterfront.

We stopped by a few shops before going back to apartment. We had tapau KFC for dinner.

With company of tea and instant noodle (now with added luncheon meat, yummy!)from midnight time to 3 plus, again, we closed the day with stack of clean laundry of the day and Scrabble again.

Saturday, 27th June 2009.

Today, we had light ittenary, shoppings and museums. Therefore we took our time and didn’t rush it. After breakfast we went back to the apartment and still got the chance to played cards before we went out. We decided to do everything on foot. Starting from waterfront to the museum that we saw along the bus ride. Again, the guys did the navigation, with everyone’s help of recognizing the landmarks along the way. After Waterfront, we stopped by for lunch at Sugarbun area and tried the rice with fried chicken, beed stew and fish head.

We passed by a tourist center and found out there are a lot more things to so in Kuching, including diving and kayaking with Irrawaddy dolphins. How we wish to have more time there to do more things.

We then proceed to the Sunday market that open longer hour in Saturday.
It started with wet market and I was starting to wonder why on earth people recommended tourist to go to wet market. I enjoyed wet market, that is one of place I love to go back then, but there was nothing a tourist can buy except what we could consume over the days we were staying.

Luckily, going deeper, we found the market also sold fish, plants, books, toys, clothing, souvenirs etc. We walked for quite a long time, bought a lot of mini cactus plants, then exited the market, crossed the street for something that looked like a shopping mall.

There were toy shops in the mall…and cd shops that sell great fake originals, I didn’t even know that it might not be orginal. We spent some time and went in to sit in a purple café that served extremely sweet tea. Outside the mall, we were attracted to enter a MerryBrown, Malaysia’s own fast food because we wanted to play with the swing seating. While swinging, we tried their banana split.

After the rest, we crossed the bridge back to the market to buy even more plants. At the bridge, we could see all the birds flying to perch on the electric cable, just like what I remember from Pontianak. Every dusk, there would be thousands of bird flying and filled the entire electric cable for all directions that I could see. I actually missed the sight in Jakarta and Singapore, how nice was it to see it here again, practically the closest city to my home town, with the blueeeeeeee sky.

We found post office, garden in the city, interesting building and scenery along the way to the cluster of museum with the highlight of Museum of Serawak. It was interesting and fascinating, too bad it's prohibited to take pictures. It has collection of dried animals, shells, authentic model of Borneo long houses, and even the replica of the house inside the museum with what I think to be authentic human skull. Creepy. The replica house was consisted of two storey connected by a tree trunk ladder next to the hanging skulls.
We decided to skip the seafood dinner because we were too full of food, and tapau serious (unlike yesterday ‘snack’) KFC for our last dinner there. It was long queue, we had a lot to order.

Sharing our dinner, we shared about our dream destinations and things we wanted to do before we proceed to last night Scrabble until wee hour in the morning, close to five o’clock. Along the trip, I slept only around 13 hours in total. Somehow the caffeine I got from my drinks kept me up, or probably, it was mostly the spirit of the holiday.

Sunday, 28th June 2009

Despite the will to wake up late, I still wake up early because of nature calls and decided to finish my packing. We went to three shopping malls for quick look around and managed to buy quite a lot of things, toys…! They have toys.. and we found Elepig, a creature that me and my two friends share. : )

We walked back to the hotel, freshen up, final packing and final Scrabble game continued with final cards game at the airport and plane.

The plane schedule was a bit late, but amazingly we reached Singapore earlier, I counted it around 45 minutes flight instead of what is supposed to be 1 hour 15 minutes. Hmm…speeding pilot??

So, what makes this such a memorable trip...

Beautiful places.

Great experience.

Blueeeee sky.

Wind on my face, sand on my feet, dirt on my shoes, burnt on my skin.

Companions. Companions. Companions.

I'll keep this in special place. : )

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A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
- Lao Tzu

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see
- G. K. Chesterton

I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it
- Rosalia de Castro

I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine
- Caskie Stinnett quotes

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware - Martin Buber

Not all those who wander are lost - J. R. R. Tolkien