Day 12 (17/01/2011) Kuching

After taking again a malaria table last night t I felt great this morning, so it must have been something I ate. After all the snacks I couldn’t really figure what it might have been, but because I was fine again my tummy gave the ‘hungry loud’…not in a very quiet and mannerly sound.

We checked out and left our backpacks for the day at the hotel storage as we only left the town in the evening.

We spend the day visiting Jalan India, China and Mosque Street where we looked at some very interesting buildings. After that we still had a few hours to kill and decided to go for a river cruise, which was a nice but not really exciting as we had seen already most of the city, but the atmosphere was incredible. At the end of this trip we got little dances presented which showed the welcome dances from different cultures around Sarawak. After that I wasn’t that sad anymore that I missed the show yesterday.

Day 11 (16/01/2011) Kuching

We had to get up again early as the first booked tour started around 9 am. Luckily we got picked up from the hotel with a little minivan just for us and the driver, no one else seemed to have booked for this day. Unfortunately I didn’t really felt well this morning and spare you the details, however I got myself together and really wanted to do the tours (of course we had paid for it all yesterday).

The driver was really nice and told us a few things about the city and the people who lived in and around it. We were on our way to the Cultural Village, a village that was originally build to present and show the many different ethnics groups that call Sarawak their home. Now some people call it their home and are happy to present it to paying customers.

On the way we told the driver a bit of our plan and the next city we were going to stop by. He advised us to cancel two cities and recommended a place called Batu Niah, which was more worth to see then other ones together. We decided to change our plan and booked later a ticket for a 13 hour bus driver tomorrow evening.

We finally arrived at the cultural city and I barely could breathe, so hot and humid. We run through the city faster than planned and I was able to stand up nearly all the way, just sometimes I had to sit down because I started to feel really sick. Such a disappointed when you were excited to see something so original. I did take a few pictures and tried to take everything in, but my concentration wasn’t the best at that point. We started to think that it might have been the malaria tablets….

There was a planned dance ceremony after most of the people had finished the tour through the village. I decided not to attend the show and rather starred down a water pipe near by the park. After an hour or so the driver came back to pick us up for the next tour. At that point I had collected my inner self again and was ready to go for the next round.

Day 10 (15/01/2011) Kuching

Early in the morning we woke up to make sure we catch our flight to Kuching. Packing the last remaining things we called for a cab to get to the Changi Airport. Upon arrival we had a quick breakfast at Subway and slurped our coffee latte while waiting for departure.

Surprisingly the security wasn’t as secure as we thought and therefore we were quicker than planned. Taking off on time and arriving a few minutes earlier at around 1pm we picked up our luggage, just to queue up again for another security check.

After we bought a voucher for a cab (just after leaving the arrival hall) we were fairly quick in the city. The hotel was simple and clean. Unlucky the guest that had the twin bed room decided to stay for one more night, so we got a double room with one king-size bed. As it was only for two nights we didn’t bother that much. We throw off our backpacks and got ourselves on the way to check out the city.

We quickly realized that Kuching was small and every corner could be reached within walking distance. As we had nothing really planned for the time there we first visited a tour agency and explored our options. Unfortunately bookings needed to take place 24 hours before, so we just booked two tours for tomorrow.

The locals are all very friendly and most of them speak a decent level of English, which made the communication much easier. And we felt like celebrities as everyone was greetings us with a hello when passing us. As you might have guessed, for us grumpy Germans this is pretty unusual and made us smile.