+ Sarawak | Kuching City

Finally at the Holiday Inn Hotel in the evening. Checked in and found out that our 4 rooms were separated between floors due to full occupancy.

My family got the one on first floor, my parents on the fourth, my sister on the seventh, and my nieces bunking together were on the eighth.

We had our first introduction to Sarawak unofficially from the bellman himself. Sarawak is made out of 90% Chinese while other races at 10%.

It has five native Dayak Tribes, mostly living in civilisation while a very small fraction of them are still living in the remote jungles where long-houses are still inhibited and most of their traditional way of living still being practised. No, no head hunting allowed by the government between rival tribes anymore. That's good.

There is one famous delicacy here that we were advised to try. It is "midin" - a type of fern shoots that are picked out from the wild and fried with shrimp paste.

It was already passed 10:00pm when we decided to venture our from the hotel after we got enough rest. Night life was still alive near and around the hotel. Starbucks, MacDonald's, Kenny Rogers Restaurant and a few more down the road could still be seen with young folks hanging around, especially in the bistros.

Our highlight of the day was having supper at Kenny Rogers and straight to bed to recover fully from the long, boring waiting we had to endure going there. We had hoped the next day to be better.

It rained following morning!

We took our time having breakfast at the hotel to wait out the rain. It finally did at about 10:00am. We explored the shopping lane called Maze Street, where rows of pre-war shop-houses lined the main street.

There all kinds of soveniors especially the replica of a Dayak's Warrior Shield carved with the Dayak's signature patterns, in hard wood that were dark brown, and some almost black colours.

Before reaching there, we walked along the Sawarak River Front where we could see Fort Margherita, which stood grandly in white at the other side of the river.

It was build in 1879 by Charles Brooke and named it after his wife - Ranee Margaret. It had since been converted to a police station.

Further up, was the Astana or palace.

Built in 1870 by Charles Brooke also, as a wedding gift for his wife. Now an official residence of the Governor of Sarawak. Unfortunately both were under renovation, so we could not take the river boat over to visit these places.