Friday, 13 April 2018

Kuching, Malaysia

Kuching is located in Sarawak Malaysia or Borneo as it is more often referred to be the locals.Known as the land of the hornbills Kuching means cat in Malay and is home to the worlds first cat museum which you can be sure Eric and I did not visit.  Our drive through the city revealed quite a modern city with more single family homes than we had seen elsewhere on this trip.  The surprising feature was the large amount of brand new multi storied buildings that are standing totally unoccupied.  There were more than a few and one could not help but wonder who has the resources to keep building when the need is obviously not there.
The highlight of our day was a visit to the Semenggah Nature Center to see the orangutans.  Here they are in the wild and there are no fences so there is no quarantee that you will see them but it was our lucky day indeed.  We spent a good couple of hours with permanent grins on our faces first watching three young adults play and eat and then we went for a short trek where we then got to meet the dominant and largest male living at the Center.  Weighing in at over 200 kgs he was quite impressive.  When we thought we were more than lucky and heading out a mom appeared with her two month old baby.  We could not have had a more perfect visit!
As we were in Borneo to make our visit complete we went to visit the longhouse home of the descendants of the Borneo headhunters.  They were not canibals, they collected the heads as trophies when outsiders tried to come onto their land.  They would put the head in a basket in the river and leave it there until the fish had cleaned it to a skull and that is what they hung in ther longhouse.  Thankfully this practice ended many years ago though the longhouse itself could use some updating.


Chinese cemetery in Kuching where each grave is like a giant chair

Some of the remaining heads from the head hunters of Borneo 

Pretty rustic kitchen facility 

Longhouse is raised and the floor is made of bamboo 

Mother and baby coming into view

Enjoying his coconut 

Probably thinks we are all pretty funny looking

The faces are so expressive and darned near human

Aerobics class should be so easy

He is so big I would not want to meet up with him in the forest

He is definitely smiling

You have to love the hair style

Enjoying a bite of lunch

Don’t you dare try and touch my food

I have a feeling that waterfront property is a little more reasonable here than at home


Some of the local fish boats were so colourful that one could not resist taking pictures

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