Kuching (pt 3)

It seems like we've been here forever in Kuching as the weather has been tropical to say the least so it scuppers any plans to move afield or set up day trips into the hinterland.
In our last installment, Kath had contracted a leech that was caught mating passionately with her leg. We were concerned about infection to the leg and I proposed the best thing to do was to amputate the leg below the knee to prevent the spread of any jungle fever. Kath seemed to agree to the idea in principle but when I produced my Swiss army knife we soon realised it was indeed not sharp enough  to carry out said task and having watched that film where the guy in America gets his arm trapped while canyoning and has to chop it off to release himself,  I remembered he had tremendous trouble hacking through the bone so we decided to leave it to nature and luckily Kathy made a full recovery. Hurrah!

BoatyMcboatface's very unstable cousin.

  The rain comes down in buckets here and it can rain anytime. In between it is blistering hot sunshine and the nights never dip below 25c. It could start sunny and hot, you go out for an hour and then its lighting, thunder following by biblical rain down pours, Noah will glide by in the ark then the clouds will part and it will be back to a hot sunny day or it could rain non-stop for 2 days and everywhere gets flooded which happened more often unfortunately. To combat this we would hang out in the air conditioned shopping malls like naughty school kids playing truant from school, just milling about buying nik naks, scoffing McDonald's and KFC, playing on these electronic massage chairs which they have everywhere,and going to the cinema. We went to see Stephen Kings 'IT' which was O.K. to kill a bit of time as it was just over £2 a seat so a bargain. There is no nightlife here and all the bars are dead. We did find a nice bar around the corner that played decent music on and off and they sold super strength beer so we used to do our washing at the launderette then go and get merry on a few drinks while waiting for the dryer and washing machine to do their thing. It actually made me look forward to doing the washing!

Tiddles suspected the Whiskers had been tampered with.

  One day we hired a taxi to take us to the Cat Museum (yes that is correct, a museum dedicated to cats, entrance photo above) and when we got there we were informed that it was a public holiday and the museum was shut so had to pay double fare to end up where we started. It's amazing how many public holidays they have here. I counted 27 a year. Not a bad deal really. We tried again next day and this time it was open and to our relief contained not one stuffed cat on display but an eclectic array of feline associated paraphernalia which was bordering on surreal to say the least which was entirely funded by the Malaysian government which was even more surrealist.

Cathole cover

 I should explain though that Kuching means cat in Malay and was named by the British when we landed here to claim the lands of Northern Borneo and was actually a mix up by being lost in translation between the languages and was not called Kuching at all but the name stuck and now the city embraces the name fully and exploits it when ever they can to attract the tourist dollar making roundabouts everywhere full of cats and even the manhole covers have cats on them!

Pussy galore!

It's a catastrophe!

   Another highlight was getting one of the traditional wooden boats to cross the river which are very unstable and when a particularly large local boarded the boat it banked over in a sprightly fashion and we thought we were going for an early bath in the murky water until Kathy's shriek of terror alerted the rotund lady in question which made her correct her stance and balance the boat out with her shifting mass. There was also an orchid center which was disappointing and some other drab buildings not worth a mention but the Sarawak museum was a gem as there was a whole section on how the nasty British came over and basically helped themselves to whatever they wanted and killed anyone who apposed them. It went on to narrate how awful it was under colonial rule as the British introduced all these new laws to stop all the in- fighting between the native tribes which had plagued Borneo for it's history. Those dastardly British sounded like very mean bounders by my reckoning and deserve being kicked out in 1957 when Britain gave Malaysia their independence. We made sure we signed the visitor book of course.....Daz+Kath from U.K.!
Next we have a flight to Kota Kinabalu,Sabah which is in northern Borneo.