cat city, aka kuching!

part three of kuching! after our jungle adventure, we had just over 24 hours to spend in kuching. here are some thoughts about the city:



in bahasa, "kuching" means cat. so, the city is filled with cats, both real and statues. pictured above is THE "kuching cat," welcoming you into the city. he was decked out for chinese new year!



the fact that we visited a highly-populated chinese city over chinese new year would prove to be problematic. the city was pretty much shut down. it wasn't until tuesday morning that we started to see some of the shops open up. still, we found ways to keep occupied. we ventured through some of the opened shops, which had lots of firecrackers and little chinese new year necessities. we walked down to the waterfront both in the evening and the morning. the waterfront was CUTE!



kuching has defended itself from many invaders. we didn't get a full story on the little fort, but it was pretty cool.



we took a boat ride on the river, which let us see just what life on the river is like! much different from america. everything looked a bit run down. i guess that's the same as america, it's just a different standard of "run down."





the little chinatown area was kind of odd, since the chinese population's influence is seen throughout the city. still, it was cute. and featured a very old temple.



kuching was interesting. definitely done in a weekend, as i'm not sure even if everything was opened up there'd be much we could do. there's a sarawak cultural village which everyone said was interesting, but we never made it out to see if it was open. we had a very relaxed pace, and it was much needed after the jungle time. i'd say this was another successful adventure! it was also by far my CHEAPEST trip. the jungle trek was the most expensive at about $100. i maybe spent about another $100 in taxi fare, food, hostel in kuching, and souvenirs. not bad at all. the airfare wasn't the best, as it was a quickly planned trip so we didn't get any special deals, but it still wasn't bad.

Categories: borneo, kuching, malaysia, sarawak, touristy things