Arrival in Kuching the city of cats

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Arriving in Kuching I asked a local where the bus departed from to get into the city from the boat terminal to be informed there was no bus although he would take me into the city for free or I could take a taxi. I took his offer. Amazingly his shop was a two minute walk from the very highly recommended Threehouse bed and breakfast down a pretty colonial street where I booked in for one night. Looking around the hostel it had a fantastic rumpus room, a kitchen (the 1st I've seen so far in Asia) and was beautifully set out. However the dorm room was dark, small, cramped and not airconditioned, the beds were extremely uncomfortable. So I was really glad I had only booked the one night here and would look tomorrow for another hostel.
Chilling in the rumpus room I met Zoe, Sally and Lee who were all from west yorkshire. For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant and had some chewy beef curry and a very sugary, pancake like bread with dips. After we relaxed in the rumpus room with Kylie and Garath until we realised it was after midnight and the four of us had decided to check out the next day and head over to Lodge 121 a great hostel with comfy beds and aircon : )
After not waking up until 10 (the latest I have woke up in a very long time) due to there been no natural light in the room and us having a power cut around 2 am we packed our bags back up by torch light and moved hostel. After lunch we took the 50c boat over to the other side of the river and were very surprised by how quick we arrived there in the tin can boat. We visited the Legislative building and Fort Margaret which is now a police museum. Although a very bad museum with little information it had a basket of skulls in one of the lookouts, a picture of a skull on the door, but no information on how old the skulls maybe or why they are there. We then took the tin can boat back and tried to visit Astana further down the river as we couldn't see a path leading to it but were informed by the boat man it is not open to the public. Originally built as a fort it is now a government building.
Temple time! Walking around the city we visited three of the Chinese temples. One having two ponds of terrapins inside it, all wonderfully designed with fine details and relevance to Buddism and Taoism, and i love the smell of the temples so much.
After dinner we walked along the river front looking at the market stalls and trying deep fried chocolate ice cream. Delicious in a strange and interesting way but not a good thing to get addicted too!

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