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Ku-Ching!
Day 11 Kuching, means cat in Bahasa and is the capital of Sarawak in Borneo. It has an eerie sort of ring to it. We stayed at Four Points by Sheritan, which is like the best hotel we’ve been in. It was only 5mins from the airport which was good because we got their very fast. We checked in and all that usual stuff then went out to dinner. Luckily dinner was convientiently situated just outside our hotel. I had some Noodle soup, some roti canai and MILO while watching Soccer. My actual intentions for watching though were quite different. I only watched it to keep in “rhythm” with the Oohs and the Uhhs. From there we went to the hotel and so to bed.
Full Day- Orang Utans yay!
Day 12 We woke up and had breakfast. Their were a lot of people that were very hungry and to neutralise this, there was a lot of food. And I mean a lot of food. I had Pancakes w/ maple syrup (as usual), orange juice, hash browns and some pie.
After this large breakfast, the first thing we did was we caught a taxi into the city.
We then walked for a while and went to the Sarawak museum. We went into the Natural History Museum first. There were no dinosaurs or anything like that, only fossilised tree-stumps and I quickly got very bored. We went on to the next museam, the Art museum which thankfully wasn’t so boring. There was actually some pretty interesting stuff here including birds made out of aluminium cans and roofs. Then we went to the next museum - I wasn’t sure what it was called though. It had a lot of stuff about Sarawak's and Kuching’s heritage. There were also a lot of native animals (stuffed) and (replica) buildings.
We then left the museum and took an extremely long walk to find some transport that would take us to Semenggok (An Orang Utan rehabilitation center about 20km outside of Kuching). We finally found a taxi and about half an hour later we were there.
Too bad the Orang Utans only actually come out at feeding time and eating time was still 2hrs away. I had to wander round for 2 hours, I know really boring. I had a look at the feeding area, then the crocodiles, then the place
where you could get a drink but no food. There is no food at the centre because the Orang Utangs would probably kill you for it and because people, knowing people, would probably litter. Anyway, eventually it was near feeding time and I spotted one. We were looking at it for 5mins before the fat Americans from the bus scared it away.
I saw it again and recognised it as the one called Dilema (there were photos of the Orang Utans posted around the place, with their names). If you think that's weird, that I can recognize an Orang Utan by name, just remember that I spent an hour looking at their chart of info and there are only 26 in the actual reserve. When they finally came up to us it was pretty amazing. Dilema had her baby on her and she was HUGE! There was also another one that came over to the eating area by rope, like 15m up in the air. A cool thing about Orang Utans is that their feet are like hands. We also went into the feeding area which was about a 5min walk into the reserve and that was really cool.
There were about 8 of them here and they came up close to us. After 15mins we went back because they really get boring after you’ve memorised their routine.
We then caught the taxi back into the city and had some food at KFC. It was very different to what I have seen of KFCs in Australia. This was because all the staff spoke in
sign language which was really weird. I then bought a Bird Whistle for 1RM, about 30c in AUS. After browsing for a while we went on a boat ride down the river. By the end of the ride we were friends with everyone who was on the boat. One of my new friends on the boat, John, told me about the culture in Sarawak and Kucking, and a lot about its buildings. I finally found out what that weird building was that I had kept looking at, it was the state parliament, and the fort place was the Governor’s residence.
After the boat ride we had a a group photo taken and John asked us if we wanted to have dinner with him and his family. Of course we said yes and we
went to the restaurant in his car. It was really, really awesome!!!! It had video cameras at the back which displayed a picture on the screen in the car. You could unlock the car by pressing on the handle with your ow personal hand print.
We had a great dinner, and we moved tables twice. I had fried rice and some satay sticks. Everyone talked a lot especially about the recession (boring :! ). There were 7 people at dinner ( there had been 9 on the boat but 2 left before dinner) and sadly I can’t remember everyone’s names. I do know that John was in some type of high position at Shell.
We then went back in John’s car to our hotel. He lived about 3 mins from our hotel (coincidental or what?). As usual we went to bed.
National Park
Day 13 I slept in happily for a long time before having to wake up. We missed our appointment with Agnes from the night before, because I felt sick half an hour before we had to get up (what I thought was 12 midnight was actually 6 am). Breakfast was good as usual.
First we took a taxi to the boat station. From there we took a 15min ride to the remote Bako national park. We saw a crocodile sitting on a rock so I wasn’t particularly comfortable on that boat. When we did get there though it was really cool.
My Dad decided we would go on the (I can’t remember the name of it) walk because he had been on it before and he reckoned it was really good. I can however remember that it was 3hrs rand 5km return. So it was like a 20min climb up then a 50min walk across the top of the mountain and then a final 20min climb down, to the beach.
The beach had a lot of rocks that looked like they were smiling, or sad, or angry. It also had a mischeivous
monkey that scampered across the rocks and also hermit crabs. My favourite animals though, were the mudskippers. They are fish and they can literally jump on water and it was so much fun chasing them in the shallows. They can also climb on to rocks. We had a swim, something to eat, and by this time there was hardly
anybody left anywhere. We caught a boat back to the park HQ.
We then took the boat back to the stopping off point and the engine got clogged up with weed (the boat man got it started again) and it was a bit worrying with the crocodiles there. When we did get to the boat station it was ½ hr until the bus came so we had ice-cream. They were 30c each so I got to have 3. Sadly I didn’t win the PSP or free ice-cream advertised on the wrappers. My Dad ate some weird stuff which he said was like stale soggy cornflakes that tasted of fish. After this I chased a cat under 3 cars. Then we took the bus back to Kuching City and went to the shops again and Dad bought something and then finally, after a long day, we went back to the hotel and watched TV for roughly an hour.
For dinner I had chicken soup, crab, rice with a chicken wings and some MILO. It was in the place just outside our hotel that we had eaten at on our first night. We then went back to the hotel and
got our complimentary 2 Popcorns and 2 beers (my dad had the beers). For the rest of the evening I wrote this blog. Then as usual I brushed my teeth and went to bed.
Stupid Early Morning Grrr!
Day 14 Today was the day we had to leave to go back to Singapore and we had to wake up at 6:30.
As usual we had breakfast, but this time since it was early, there was hardly anyone there. This was good because we usually come in at about 9:30 and there's only a small amount of food left and it's not very hot (they do make more but some foods such as cake have to be baked etc.). Also this morning, instead of croissants, they had chocolate croissants (Pan au Chocolat). I had some apples and pancakes as well before we checked out. As the airport was only 5mins away it didn’t take us long to get there. The airport in Kuching is really boring. There are no shops (or at least no shops that I saw) and no computers to go on. We got on the plane and we were on our way once more to Singapore.
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Irmeli Goller
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Kuch-Ing or Ku-Ching
Loved the rocks showing different emotions and your Dad's "soggy cornflakes tasting of fish" :-D I was left wondering how you recognised that particular orang-utan? Was it because she had a baby? How DO you describe the differences between them? x