Malaysia & Singapore: Touring Kuching, Day 2

Today we awoke early, ate breakfast, and were down to the bus by 8:30 a.m. We drove through the city, suburbs, and at last, countryside, to find the Malaysian Cultural Center. If you've ever been to the Polynesian Cultural Center on the island of Oahu, picture a Malaysian version of that. So many cultures interact in this beautiful country, and this center highlights the unique facets of many of these cultures. We were able to tour through an Iban longhouse, as well as traditional homes from other tribes and cultures. For example, we also saw a Malay house and a Chinese farmhouse. At the end of the tour, we watched a dance show that included traditional tribal dances plus a "Malaysia" song that is still stuck in my head. (I read this to Nikki, and now she's singing the Malaysia song. *sigh*)

After the Cultural Center, we went back to Kuching to an open-air food court for lunch. The food court was situated beneath the Mosque and at the edge of Little India. We got delicious noodles that were very similar to Pad See Ew. (Yay for something I can recognize!) We also tried a salted plum drink that tasted like sea water that may or may not have flowed under a plum tree. For dessert we tried Ice Kachang again, but this time without the beans. It was basically shaved ice on top of different kinds of jellies, all drowned in coconut milk and condensed milk. What's not to love?

From there, we walked through Little India on the way back to our hotel, where we got some down time before our afternoon outing.

The afternoon outing was a Sampan cruise along the river. There isn't actually a bridge across the Sarawak river in the center of town, so these Sampans act as taxis. We have 18 people in our group, so we rented two Sampan boats for the afternoon. We divided ourselves into a 'girls group' and a 'boys group' and filed into the small boats. The boats have an option of stand-up paddling from the bow or simply motoring around. For the full experience, we were to paddle the boats (and give the boat driver a rest) and make a lap from our dock towards the Astana (a white castle built by Charles Brooke for his wife) and then back towards the dock on the other side of the river. To make it even more interesting, we challenged the boys to a race. The boys began with a sprint led by Matthew Reeves, while we got off to a bit of a floundering start. ("Hey girls, shouldn't we be going past our dock? I think I see our starting point up ahead of us...") Building on skills developed in many a volleyball practice, we created cheers for our boat and were soon so loud that we had gathered quite a crowd on both sides of the shore. We also succeeded in distracting the boys. After some practice, we started gaining on the boys, and when Tessa got her second turn at rowing we overtook them! We kept up our pace until the end, and cheered the boys on from the dock. (I'm not sure that they actually appreciated that.) I think their boat used the common "shaming" method of motivation, because I was later told (jokingly) that many friendships were ruined during that fateful boat race. Positivity wins! In truth, our boat had a slight advantage because it ran on GIRL POWER. I'm proud of our victorious rowing team, can you tell?

After the race, we spent some time on the other side of the river and were able to see the older Malay community. The houses were built on stilts, and were brightly painted with the trim and shutters in contrasting and highly saturated tones. We tried a popular Malaysian dessert, which is a rainbow layered cake, and then went to the open-air food court. Nicole ordered lots of dishes for us to try, and once again, our favorite was the same type of Pad See Ew noodles we had tried at lunch. Another treat was the watermelon lychee juice. YUM. There were so many cats at the food court, which we tried to avoid like the plague. Kuching means "cat" in Malay, and the city lives up to its name.

We took a Sampan back across the river (this time we didn't have to row!) and went back to our hotel for a little while. Then we met up with some friends from the Kuching SDA church for ice cream. It turned out to be a little bit of a fiasco, actually. The problem with all the food being so cheap over here is that I have gotten out of the habit of looking at prices. When an entire meal, drink, and dessert consistently costs less than the equivalent of $3 USD, it can be easy to gloss over the price section of the menu from time to time. On the way to meet up with our friends, we passed a gelato shop. When we realized that we were all craning our necks to see the flavors, we decided to take a closer look. The flavors looked so delicious! They had mango, cookies and cream, chocolate marshmallow, coconut, and many more flavors. We were all practically drooling. We decided that we should meet up with the friends and then come back to the gelato shop. So off we went. It was only a short walk to the mall where we met them, and soon we were back at the gelato shop with the entire group. We looked at the case again in awe, then glanced up at the prices and had to do a double-take. Could that be correct??? $14 Ringgit for a single scoop (approximately $3.50 USD) and $18 Ringgit (about $4) for a double scoop? We had some serious sticker shock. It was back to LA prices! It was a good lesson to learn -- just because we can typically find inexpensive food options, it doesn't mean it is an absolute rule. Especially in the more touristy areas, we need to look out for the prices. Another lesson we learned that evening is that it is not a good idea to simply skip over words you don't recognize. Nikki and I ordered a double scoop of ice cream, with the coconut flavor and a flavor called "Tuak". It had rice on the top, so we assumed it was sticky rice ice cream. However, Tuak is the name of the rice wine made over here, so we were in for a shock since we were expecting the flavor of condensed milk and rice. ("Has this ice cream gone bad? Oh, wait...")

Anyway, we walked back to the hotel in time for curfew and said goodbye to our friends. Thank goodness for Facebook so we can keep in touch!

Tomorrow, it is off to the longhouse!