I awoke in the morning freezing, which made me a little confused about where I was. My brain was telling me Kuching, but my body said we were back in cold Hokkaido. As my thoughts focused through my cold and beer fogged mind, I realized the AC had been going all night and our all cement room with no windows had turned into a refrigerator. I also realized I had no idea how one turned the AC on or off, so I stole the covers back from christophe and fell back asleep.
The second time I woke up, again freezing and missing the covers, I decided to reach out for a clock. This woke me up properly, as I realized we were meeting Lo for
laksa in a scant 20 minutes. I jumped from the bed, turned on the lights to protests from Betsy and Christophe, noted that Jude had already gotten up and was no longer in the room, and announced our time limit.
Laksa is what you eat when you visit Kuching. It's a very spicy soup with a water and coconut milk base, filled with thin noodles, prawns, fish cake, bean sprouts, and whatever else the vendor you go to decides to put in it. There are many kinds of
laksa all over Malaysia, Singapore and I believe Indonesia. Each area does their version a little bit differently, and naturally proclaims their version to be the best. You eat it in the morning as a breakfast, the spiciness both preparing you to sweat all day in the heat, and clearing away your hangover from the night before.
Laksa, like most foods in Kuching, can be found in “coffee shops”. These are large open rooms, resembling really big garages, filled with round plastic tables and chairs. At the entrance and along the perimeter there are various hawkers who sell different foods. There is one who does fried rice, one who does
laksa, one who does kolo mee. In the larger establishments (actually called food courts) there can be as many as 20 different stands, with one for drinks, and two or three for every kind of food. In smaller places there are maybe only two or three, and the “room” sells the drinks (I have inferred this is why they are referred to them as coffee shops). Different hawkers are open at different times and on different days of the week, so depending on when you go you will have a chance at something totally different. I have distinct memories of the coffee shop my family went to when I was young; the blue tile floors, the plastic chairs, the tables I would be stood on to sing a song. I never ate
laksa with them then. Rather, the food I remember was the candy I would buy from the cashier's station. My parents and their friends, men and women who were in many ways my aunts and uncles, would gather there in the morning - it must have been on Sundays - and my brother and I would play with all of the other children in the room. Back then they went to see Laksa Lim, who made
laksa for everyone in the morning. Today Laksa Lim drives a taxi cab, the children have all grown up and are scattered across the world, but my uncles still meet at a coffee shop on Sunday mornings.
Lo showed up at the hostel while we were still running around trying to get ready, but soon we were in the car on the way to a laksa place he told us he often goes to in the morning before work.
“Why eat breakfast at home when it is cheaper and easier here” he proclaimed. I saw his point. At less the a dollar a bowl it was a tough bargain to beat, not that I ever got a chance to pay for a bowl - Lo had it all paid for before we could even find our wallets.
From breakfast we drove to the Cat Museum. Kuching means “Cat City” in some native language, so the city is littered with cat statues - and, naturally, there is a Cat Museum. The Museum looks like what would happen if you just started buying every single poster, statue, figurine, anything that you saw that looked like a cat, said cat, or even rhymed with cat and then put it all in one room together. Posters from Alice in Wonderland (Cheshire cat) to the Cat Burgler hung together with inspirational kitten posters reading things like “hang in there” and over looked statues of hello kitty. The museum was free, but you had to pay about $2 to take pictures - although I don't even know where you would begin with the photos.
After leaving the Cat Museum, Lo just started driving us around. He always tried to take us different routes to things so we could see as much as possible, but this also meant I was never really able to get my bearings. Along our drive we passed a mosque that Betsy exclaimed to be beautiful. So the car turned into the parking lot and we headed toward the mosque. Betsy and I both protested that we could not go in as we were in sleeveless dresses, but Lo insisted we would just “walk around the outside”.
The outside, it seemed, was the open air section of the mosque (about 70% of the building), and the guards seemed to have no problem with us as long as we didn't go into the enclosed part. Should we want to, they told us, they had robes we could put on over our dresses. But we said it was no problem, and simply enjoyed the beautiful architecture of the outside area and peeped the inside through the open doors.
Next Lo drove us by the new city library (which seemed terribly far outside the city, but I didn't point that out), where he noticed there was a wedding going on. Naturally he beckoned us inside to see, again ignoring our bare shoulders, again no one really seeming to mind. However the naked shoulders finally stopped us when he attempted to take us into the book section of the library where we were informed you had to be covered up. Considering the amount of AC in the room, I wouldn't have minded a shawl, but I also wasn't dying to check out the inside of the library so we told the security guard it was no problem and wondered around other parts of the building. About 5 minutes later, the security guard came up behind us, apologized and said never mind the rules, we could go inside the library. He looked genuinely upset at the fact that he had had to turn us away, and we assured him it was really no problem and we really didn't need to go in. This was probably the first time Jude, or maybe it was Betsy, turned to me and commented on how amazingly inviting everyone in Kuching was. I just nodded; we hadn’t even been there 24 hours yet.
After visiting the new golden parliament building and the palace of the governor of Sarawak, Lo dropped us back at our hostel. We ran across the street for a quick meal of kolo mee (one of my favorite dishes of crinkled egg noodles tossed with a garlicky oil and consommé blend topped with some veggies and sweet pork - so simple and so good). We got dressed in shorts, tees and tall socks, packed changes of clothes, and got out only about 5 minutes after Lo showed up for us. We were off to the HASH.
The HASH is a running group that was founded in the 1960s in Kuala Lumpur by a group of British expats who played Rugby on Sundays, but needed something to do on Saturdays. Two guys, the hare and the co-hare, head out into the jungle and lay down a path of squares of white paper. Everyone else heads out an hour or two later and follows the trail, in theory attempting to catch up with the hare and catch him. But the path can be tricky, sometimes heading in two directions with one being a dead end, sometimes ending and not starting back up for 50 meters. And so the people run constantly, stopping and searching, calling out to one another when they find the train (On On) or lose the trail (Checking). In Kuching there are 5 HASH groups: the City Hash on Saturdays, the Men’s Hash on Tuesdays, The Women’s Hash on Wednesdays, The Hazards (a very hard core group) on Thursdays and the kids hash once a month on a Sunday. Oh and there’s also a bike hash that does the same craziness on bikes once a month. When we visit we always go to the city hash, as it is for everyone and not too difficult (there is usually a long and a short option).
Since there hadn’t been much rain recently this run was not nearly as muddy as most, but I still came out of it pretty dirty from sliding down a hill (or should I say cliff) on my butt and tripping on my fair share of branches. Betsy, Christophe and I did the medium run (this time there were three), which had a stop in the middle for watermelon and water (key). The run went through the jungle, out into a pepper field, back into the jungle, through another farmer's field, back into the jungle and finally spit us out on the far side of the village we started from. Just a quick note, when I say “field” I mean a space where things are grown purposefully - but don't think you can picture a manicured farm. These fields are literally surrounded by rain forest, and totally overgrown minus the trees. There are little huts set up by them where the farmer can come and rest when he is needed by them, but if it wasn't for these huts you might think pepper plants just naturally grow in rows.
After the run, we showered with buckets of water, changed into our cleaner clothes, and joined the group to do our obligatory “down downs”. In other words, we went and chugged beers for being new to the run. Once about 15 people had been made to down down (newbies, someone for running the short run, the owner of the hash computer for the fact that the battery died, etc) we all piled into cars and headed to the “On On” - or post running eating and drinking party.
I won't go into too much detail, but there was lots of good food, beer constantly flowing, many more down downs, several songs sung and even karaoke in a big outdoor space. The songs were naturally quite vulgar (me no likey british sailors, yankee pay 5 dollars more) but so much fun with everyone belting them out together. They are all set to the tunes of old Rugby drinking songs, so perfect for group belting. In honor of father’s day all of the single guys had to do down downs, so Christophe was on the hot seat. They sang a special song for all these guys that went like this:
If I were to marry,
I would marry a Mechanic’s daughter,
More then any lassie…
She would screw, and I would screw,
And we would screw together,
Wake up in the middle of the night screwing one another.
Each person doing a down down had a different kind of daughter, and Christophe actually got two. First he had “Jim Ball’s daughter”, cause “she’d squish balls” and after that came “Obama’s daughter” to which Betsy and I heartily sang out “she would change” only to be drowned out by everyone else singing “she would bomb”. It was a nice little reminder that for all the change we hope to see, it sure hasn't changed yet.
So the night went on from there and we somehow were gotten back home and crawled happily into our beds.
Again I woke up in an ice box, but this time I knew how to turn of the AC and return to sleep. The next time I awoke, I found a watch, read the time, and had the slow realization that we had about 30 minutes to pack everything up (we were being forced to change rooms cause I took to long making reservations and the family room was only available for our first two nights), get ready and meet Lo. I pulled myself out of bed, flicked on the lights, noted yet again that Jude was already up and out, and rebuffed the groans of Betsy and Christophe with a warning about all that needed to be done.
showed up before the bride and groom and hung around with Lo, his photography friend, and about 5 other guys with nice cameras waiting for the car to pull up. As we stood there waiting, the security guard of the civic center came over to us and encouraged us to go into the room where the reception was being held, but we declined - preferring to stay close to Lo (our excuse for why we were there). Christophe whipped out his own camera and joined the photography gang, better legitimizing his presence.
e table, sat down, and given the gift fans all the guests had received. I found this totally amazing. These people didn't know us, they didn't even really know Lo, but here they were adding us to the wedding reception like we were family who forgot to RSVP. But what blew our minds even more, is that we weren’t the only ones. Not too far from our table we saw another couple who were clearly tourists. Considering she was in jeans snapping pictures of everything and he was sporting a very uncomfortable look on his face, we concluded they were probably just visiting the civic center when they got kidnapped into this wedding! We slipped out with Lo just before the food was served, despite the protests of our tablemates (“but you haven’t eaten yet!”).
p on lounge chair (“no worries, la”). The Holiday Inn resort caused massive flash backs for me of playing in the “kid's area” where I believe there was an original Nintendo we used to stay glued to when we’d had too much sun, and of the pool bar where I would order Shirley temples, my favorite drink in those days. Funny the stuff that comes back to you.
I awoke in the morning freezing, which made me a little confused about where I was. My brain was telling me Kuching, but my body said we were back in cold Hokkaido. As my thoughts focused through my cold and beer fogged mind, I realized the AC had been going all night and our all cement room with no windows had turned into a refrigerator. I also realized I had no idea how one turned the AC on or off, so I stole the covers back from christophe and fell back asleep.
The HASH is a running group that was founded in the 1960s in Kuala Lumpur by a group of British expats who played Rugby on Sundays, but needed something to do on Saturdays. Two guys, the hare and the co-hare, head out into the jungle and lay down a path of squares of white paper. Everyone else heads out an hour or two later and follows the trail, in theory attempting to catch up with the hare and catch him. But the path can be tricky, sometimes heading in two directions with one being a dead end, sometimes ending and not starting back up for 50 meters. And so the people run constantly, stopping and searching, calling out to one another when they find the train (On On) or lose the trail (Checking). In Kuching there are 5 HASH groups: the City Hash on Saturdays, the Men’s Hash on Tuesdays, The Women’s Hash on Wednesdays, The Hazards (a very hard core group) on Thursdays and the kids hash once a month on a Sunday. Oh and there’s also a bike hash that does the same craziness on bikes once a month. When we visit we always go to the city hash, as it is for everyone and not too difficult (there is usually a long and a short option).
After the run, we showered with buckets of water, changed into our cleaner clothes, and joined the group to do our obligatory “down downs”. In other words, we went and chugged beers for being new to the run. Once about 15 people had been made to down down (newbies, someone for running the short run, the owner of the hash computer for the fact that the battery died, etc) we all piled into cars and headed to the “On On” - or post running eating and drinking party.
