short trip (1) - kuching

kuching, the capital city of sarawak, has always been an hour flight from singapore. however, with the advent of budget airlines, it now seems nearer, more affordable and convenient to visit this place in east malaysia, which is just a hop away. to make sure that you will have a pleasant and an enjoyable visit, it is best to do some homework to find out more about the place before embarking on the trip.

we should not assume that things and systems will be the same. in kuching, for example, you can hardly flag down a taxi on the street. it is not that there are no taxis in kuching; there are, but they are usually stationed outside the main hotels and the airport. the bus service is also not as frequent and the network is not as well connected as ours.

if you are planning a weekend trip, i would suggest you do the kuching heritage walk around the waterfront, take a 50-sen sampan ride across the sarawak river to kampong boyan and enjoy some of the local delicacies.



in a previous posting, i have mentioned some of the food unique to kuching. i realise that you also need to tell readers where to find the food. so, in this post, i am going to introduce some of these makan places. after my last visit, someone asked if i had eaten seafood at topspot. i told him i had been to the spot but i went there only to see the food.

topspot is located on the sixth level of a car-park complex next to the standard chartered bank and two blocks away from the 5-star hilton hotel. this place is popular with both locals and tourists. when you are there, you should try the midin with belachan or garlic, bamboo clams, black pepper crabs and the giant prawns.

another place listed in the official travel brochure as a top place to go for local cuisine is the lao ya keng hawker centre. it is located on carpenter street, just opposite the huang thian siang temple, a teochew temple dating back to the 19th century. the food centre can get quite crowded from lunch time onwards.

if you want to try the sarawak laksa, kway chap and pork porridge, you have to be there in the morning. other recommended dishes are kolo mee, yong tau foo and the satay. the sarawak variety of laksa is different from ours.

when you are in kuching, you have to try the local teh-c peng special. it is quite distinctive. there are three distinct layers - the layer of tea floating on top, in the middle is the layer of evaporated milk and at the base, a layer of gula melaka. the drink is available from the drinks stall at the same (lau ya keng) hawker centre.

in kuching, every coffee shop seems to offer kolo mee, laksa and tomato mee/kueh tiaw. if you stay near the waterfront, you should have no problem accessing the two makan places i have mentioned. if your stay is at harbour view hotel (rm$175/night), which i did on my last visit, there is a popular makan shop called the green hill corner on the row as the hotel. the beef noodle/kway teow is usually sold out by noon.

another popular makan place is the song kheng hai food court located in the padungan area, a mere 15 minutes walk from the main bazaar area. most people go there for the local snacks and drinks including the teh c peng special.

if, like some sarawakians and even singaporeans, you want to 'tar pau' the kolo mee, try getting it from this stall along jalan palm. the stall is located in 'sister coffee shop'. they have had so many requests for 'take-away' that they know exactly how to pack the food for you.

bringing other food back? how about sarawak pepper and the kek lapis? you can get sarawak pepper and kek (kueh) lapis from the many souvenir shops along the main bazaar. there are also some shops on the other side of the river which sell this local delight.

one local told me that the only 'souvenir' worth buying at the touristy stretch of main bazaar is the pepper.

another thing you can do, if you are there on a weekend, is to visit the very popular sunday market at jalan sartok. although it is called 'the sunday market', a better time to visit the market is on saturday evening. this market is about 25 minutes' walk from the harbour view hotel.

foochow food in kuching

it was not difficult to persuade my regular walking kaki to join me on a makan trip to kuching, the capital of sarawak. (however, i have not been successful in getting him to visit melbourne with me.) the purpose of our 4-day trip was to savour some local dishes like kolo mee, sarawak laksa and midin. when one of my walking kakis from the balestier group heard that i was going for kolo mee, she cautioned me about the amount of msg they add to the dish.

my friend's wife was especially interested in foochow food. we could have opted for a 3-day stay but the return fare was cheaper on the 4th day. it was rm$120 on monday but rm$30 on the next day. that is the advantage of being retired: your plan can be so flexible.

my friend's wife is a foochow. i think she came from sitiawan in perak, west malaysia. she was keen on visiting kuching because she had heard that the foochow was the predominant chinese dialect group in sarawak. this is true, especially in bintulu and sibu. my relative was telling us that if you were a non-chinese working in bintulu, you could be forgiven for thinking that all chinese names began with 'wong'.

the first foochow dish we tried in kuching was the chow chai beehoon. normally, the beehoon used for this dish is the thicker type (chor beehoon) but this particular stall uses the variety that we are more familiar with. i did not taste the soup but my friends like it. the chow chai (preserved vegetable) gives it a sweet and sour taste.




for lunch, we were taken to another coffeeshop in the bdc area. we ordered three types of foochow food - kampua mee, ginger chicken and foochow hamburgers. each hamburger costs rm$0.70. the crispy hamburger was stuffed with minced meat. unlike the kampua mee, you will not find this dish at every foochow stall. as my friend observed rightly, every coffee-shop in kuching seems to have a stall selling foochow food.



the kampua mee - a foochow speciality - is quite similar to the hakka's (or teochew's?) kolo mee. the ingredients used in kampua mee include lard, msg, spring onion and fried shallots. according to another friend, who hails from sibu, the best kampua mee can be found in sibu, not kuching.



while my friends had the msg-laden kampua mee, i went for the ginger wine chicken. in singapore, this dish is called the hong zhao ji (red wine chicken). i like the kuching version because the soup was not so bloody (in colour) and the ginger, not the wine, was the dominant taste.

i think kuchingnites do not like their balls to be too big. one foochow dish - which is popular in s'pore - does not seem to be available in kuching. i am referring to the over-sized foochow fishballs. my friend from sibu told me i would be able to get it from some stalls in sibu; not every stall sells this dish.

we were so well treated and feasted by my in-laws in kuching that the three of us spent slightly over rm$150 during our stay in kuching.

footnote: in singapore, my travelling companions (to kuching) usually go to roxy square basement ii for foochow food.

two heritage places in kuching

wow, even when in kuching also cannot forget about heritage. sure sign of a diehard heritage blogger. (victor's comment)

i was in kuching over the hari raya puasa weekend for my elder daughter's wedding. her husband is a kuching boy. this wedding has been a long-drawn affair. after the sarawak's wedding, we flew back for the singapore's celebrations on monday. on thursday, we travelled to melbourne for the actual marriage ceremony at some vineyard in the dandenong mountains.

in kuching, one day after the wedding, while the others in the entourage went shopping and for body massage, i opted to get away from the city to an old village, some 30km from kuching. siniawan is a village with two rows of shop houses. it had a population of about 2 to 3 hundred chinese at the beginning of this century. today, because of development, with the new road to bau bypassing this settlement, most of the residents have moved elsewhere and the shops appear to have been sadly sidelined.



my guide and host, who drove me around, used to visit this area when she was a young girl. her grandfather owned one of the grandest houses in the siniawan village. the house, more than a century old is still in good look and shape. it was a house built big enough to accommodate her grandfather's families of four wives.



we had a light lunch at yong tai cafe, one of the few shops that is still operating. that was when i discovered a strange language peculiarity in sarawak. in kuching, everybody speaks hokkien regardless of his dialect group. however, in seniawan, hakka is the lingua franca. even the dayaks use hakka when ordering their bowls of kolok mee.





this area is prone to flooding. once every three or four years, there will be a great flood. my host, katherine, told me of one she had witnessed. the water level reached the first storey of the grand house. as the rambutan tree was fruiting at that time, her uncle swam from the house to the tree to pick the fruit.

this grand two-storey building in siniawan known as 'tai guan' belonged to katherine's grandfather. today, it is considered a heritage building and it gets visitors from all over the world. the living rooms are all upstairs and the hall downstairs is spartanly furnished because of the flood situation.

from siniawan, we drove on to bau. bau has been a gold-mining town for centuries. katherine's late grandfather operated a gold mine and she related to me how her grandfather struck it rich. one stormy day, a tree at the mine was hit by lightning. when the tree fell, it exposed a gold seam....a literal pot of gold.





bau also has an interesting history. today, bau is the only town in malaysia that has a statue of buddha in the middle of the town. it is customary for every driver, who visits the town, to drive from one end of the road to the other where the statue is located. although my guide is a christian, she also subscribes to this practice.





two attractions in bau are the fairy cave and the wind cave. we did not have the time to explore these caves.

gastronomic adventure in kuching

new parliament building in kuching

at the start of the long weekend, on friday, we took a one-hour-twenty-minute-flight to kuching in sarawak, east malaysia. we returned to singapore on sunday, just when the national day parade was about to begin and definitely in time for the 8.22 pledge.

it was meant to be a social visit but it turned out to be more like a gastronomic adventure even though i am not that adventurous when it comes to eating.

we tried at least four unique and authentic sarawak dishes. first was the wild ferns cooked in garlic and shallots. sometimes, sambal belachan is used to cook the ferns. the ferns are apparently not that wild because, according to one of our hosts, they can be found growing by the road side. we finished the whole plate of crunchy ferns in double quick time. i think the locals call this dish midin.

the second dish was the bamboo chicken (pansoh manuk). chunks of chicken stuffed into a bamboo and cooked with herbs, one variation of which, uses kacang ma. another variation uses tapioca leaves, lemongrass and mushrooms. (kacang ma is a herb promoted by the sarawak state agriculture and food industry. this herb belongs to the mint family. it is believed to have originated in china and brought to sarawak by the hakkas.)



i also tried the sarawak version of laksa. it reminds me of our prawn noodles (hae mee). the authentic sarawak laksa uses fresh rice vermicelli. the soup is rich in 'sanatan' and spices. the toppings include prawns, chicken and thinly-sliced omelette.


of course, you cannot claim to have tried authentic sarawak dishes if you have not eaten the kolok mee - of which there are many imitations in singapore these days. in kuching, you can have kolok mee at any time of the day - for breakfast, lunch or dinner. having not eaten the kolok mee in singapore, i could not make a comparison; i was told that it tasted so much better than those sold in singapore.

more old cars in kuching

please refer to chun see's blog on old beauties at kuching. here are two more cars from kuching to add to the list. the car to identify in the first picture is the white car. the other car, in the picture below, is metallic grey.

the first car should pose no problem but the second car may be a bit tricky because we did not have many cars of this model in singapore. it was more popular in malaysia.