Kuching

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Kuching Town

We've now spent a week in Kuching town, with three days out to Bako National Park. Four full days was really too much in this pretty but small town, however it seems to be a place that people end up in for a while stuck between flights. We've stayed in the 121 Lodge which has been great, quiet, clean and helpful staff. Everything is in easy reach as the centre of town is small. Lovely riverfront walkway, plenty of places to eat, the local Sarawak Lhaksa is excellent.
The best thing we've done here is go to Semenggoh Orangutan centre. We've now been three times. It's easy to get to on the public bus and only Rm3 each way and anther Rm 3 entrance fee it's a cheap half day trip. The two times we went in the morning a few young orangutans arrived at the feeding platform near the visitor centre soon after we arrived. Of the three visits we did, in the one hour official feeding time at the main platform we only once saw a mother and baby, the other two times nothing. I think we were unlucky as others have seen more than that. But the best part each time has been afterwards. All the tour groups (and there are a lot of people) leave and the few that took the public bus have about an hour to wait for the next bus. We lingered around the garden and the first feeding platform and each time at least one, and yesterday 4, orangutans arrived there. It's lovely to watch them with only yourselves and maybe two other people still there. Yesterday we were entertained by two youngsters who cartwheeled upside down along a rope, then play fought each other over food whilst the mothers watched on impassively. Yesterday we also had the treat of listening to gibbons whooping away in the background.
We've filled the time in town by visiting all of the museums (except the textile museum which we'll go to later today). They're all free. The Sarawak Museum main part is very old fashioned, with huge Victorian style cabinets filled with rather moth eaten stuffed animals. Just down the hill from this is the Art Museum which is in a well renovated building and is pleasantly laid out with some good pieces, although not many. An exhibition on local beads upstairs was interesting. Down the hill a little more is the Natural History Museum, which has nothing downstairs but a display of fossilised wood upstairs, which is kind of interesting. The Islamic Museum was closed all the time we've been here, it's in a lovely building. Yesterday we did the Women's Museum, which was not really a museum but a small hall of photos of prominent women of the area with lists of their achievements. Then the Chinese Museum on the riverfront. This is in a really nice century old building that used to be the Chinese court house. The curator is quite eccentric. It's well laid out with lots of interesting information about the Chinese community of Sarawak, where they came from and why. There are still some old shop buildings in town that are still Chinese owned and attractive to look at.
We're off to KK soon then back home tomorrow.

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