古晋的热情

5 月20日

I became the 1st one who woke up in the morning, unbelievable! That’s because I used to snooze my phone alarm for at least ½ hour or turn it off and sleep for another 2 hours at home. But now, I could bath and change my clothes before waking up Wong Ya Shin.Wahaha…this seems like Yaya is lazier than me! Haha.. so,we were punctual, we reached Carpenter Street as decided the night before at 9am. The hawker stalls are situated right opposite of a temple, between shop lots along a historical street. We were not very sure which food is famous here,cuz Matt was the one who suggested. Yup,Matt’s gang hadn’t turned up yet,15 min and 15 min delay, duno the actual time they reached. Then, half of us ordered Kolo Mee and another half ordered Sarawak Laksa.


1st time: Eat Kolo Mee and Sarawak Laksa

Kolo mee, erm…I think the texture is different from the mee we can find in West M’sia.it’s very pale yellow and it curls in different way. The kolo mee actually depends on how the chef cooks and the ingredients they have in the bowl. Today’s Kolo mee is with Char Siew and Char Siew oil. Sarawak Laksa,TOTALLY different with the yellowish-orange “santan”ish laksa we have in West M’sia. Why? There are a few differences.

• The only type of starch Sarawak Laksa has is Bee Hoon. No kuey tiaw,no yellow noodle,just Bee Hoon.
• The soup is just medium coloured red without much santan. For ours, yellow + red + orange. But both of them have similar laksa flavor.
• The price for a normal bowl of noodle in Sarawak costs only RM3, though the bowl is not really big. For West M’sia, esp KL, I ordered a wantan mee before going to LCCT yesterday,it costs me RM4.5!

3rd destination: Main Bazaar

in front of bishop gate

We walked under the hot sun along Carpenter Street and took some photos at the Bishop Gate.Then we turned left, passing by a colourful cinema building into the Main Bazaar street. This is the souvenirs haven for tourists like us.There are lots of sarawakian style souvenirs range from ordinary keychains and fridge magnets to sumpit and antique.The patterns are almost the same for every shops, either with the tribes or animals like Orang Utan or Hornbills. Maybe u would like to get urself a piece of table cloth,or a jong kind of tradisional musical instruments.But for us,most of us bought bracelets at Luke’s friend’s shop.

4th destination: Chinese History Museum

5th destination: DUN and Fort Magheritta

我们都姓黄

Then, we walked along Kuching Waterfront. we visited a Chinese History Museum nearby while enjoying the air-conditioned environment for a while. The museum uncle was quite nice. Although it’s almost his lunch break,he still allows us to enter. Jia Jia them joined us there and we watched a short video about how Chinese migrated to Sarawak. Later,we managed to cross the Sarawak River using a “engine-oriented” Sampan. They said that there are crocodiles in the river. May not be reliable.hmm~ when we reached the opposite bank, we headed to DUN (Dewan Undangan Negeri) of Sarawak and Fort Magheritta. There is nothing much to see there. Just DUN isn’t that nice when look closer and Fort Magheritta is like an abandoned church. Then,we took a sampan back to Waterfront and hoped to fill our hungry stomach.

6th destination: Aquarium

Our lunch was not actually a lunch, it was just like a teatime because we ordered Char Kuey and Metahorn. Here pops another two new vocabularies of Sarawak Food. Char Kuey, Chinese translation maybe 炒粿，it’s an East Malaysia version of Lo Bak Go萝卜糕.it’s not really delicious compared to what the locals had a few days ago. Metahorn is a species of ABC (Air Batu Kacang),the difference is that it is more towards sour,not sweet. Luke and Yaya went to airport to fetch Yee Teng and Wai Ping who came from KL today. After the light meal, the other went to Sarawak Museum. However, while it was already 4.3Xpm, the museum was closed. Then we just spent some time visiting the aquarium nearby. Jess came and joined us for a while. I wanted to go for a walk before Luke came and fetched me in the park behind the aquarium,opposite St.Joseph, but didn’t have the time. Leaving Roland to drive his dad back from working in traffic jam, I followed Luke and M14 classmates to Civic Centre.

7th destination: Civic Centre

Another not in time visit. It’s a quarter past five and it is closed. So now it’s our Drama Queen time! “Excuse me,boleh kami pergi ke atas?” pointing at the lift asking the Jaga there. “Tak boleh.sudah tutup la,datang esok.” He said. Huh,we came all over here to go up the tower for Kuching Aerial view but now..we cannot miss the chance!Ming suggested we tell them that we are going back 2mr (a-huh,Ming is the liar). “kami datang dari Johor la, ingin ke atas tengok. Besok sudah nak balik la” “Besok datang pagi la,buka dari 9 ke 5””Besok? tak boleh la,hari ini last day di Kuching.Esok pagi pukul 10 kami sudah nak balik ke Johor””Encik,boleh lar,bagi kami ke atas tengok,sekejap sudahlah” Our tipu helah works! The jaga discussed with another man beside and finally they agreed to let us up for 5 minutes. Hihi..another three lucky ppl came and they followed us up to the tower. The lift scared me for a while when it went up,not really phobia. Above there,we see the alien buildings, Santubing & Serapi Mountains, Sarawak club and Sarawak River. What amazed us was actually Kuching is a very green city,there are still many trees scattered in Kuching. No wonder it’s peaceful and not polluted.

We went back to Spring Mall again and we bought two hampers for Roland’s and Luke’s family there. We also bought some snacks for tomorrow outing. Matt suggested that we go to watch Sunrise on the next morning! Ahah..then,we went to a tiny western restaurant “Fork and Knife” for our dinner. During the dinner, I kept laughing with Roland,Luke and Ek Wei.they kept mentioning “Main course” “main course””babe”…aiks~ after that,we went to a bakery n supermarket nearby. Oh ya,miss wong ya shin and jie hui crashed on each other there. Wong ya shin hurt her nose while jie hui hurt her chin. If I was involved,I would definitely hurt my forehead bcuz I m the shortest.

When we were back, Roland’s parents came in our room and chat v us. The topics include they studied together in Aus and why Roland doesn’t understand Mandarin well.hihi… Gain as much sleep as possible, tmr alarm: 3.30am

第二晚，

古晋的气候很热。但他不是Shah Alam那种燥热，也不是那种吉隆坡参杂着污染物的热潮。我们走很多，留很多汗；但我们也笑声很响，很热情。开始喜欢古晋，喜欢他的宁静，喜欢他的热与冷，喜欢他的很多很多。

more photos availale at FB AWESOME-cool-shuai