Cats, Bats, Monkeys and a Cooking Class

Our last stop in Borneo was to the city of Kuching; the capital of Sarawak. With it's beautiful old white colonial buildings, small side streets and waterfront it made for a great place to wander and spend some time planning the next chapter of our adventure. We learned that Kucing (the city name is KucHing) means cat in Malay. The city has definitely taken advantage of the Asian cat love to boost its tourism appeal by having some interesting monuments!

The cat fountain.

The cat statue.

And of course there are many stray cats.

Wandering Chinatown.

The village across the river called Boyan was also worth a trip. We paid the boatman RM1 ($0.33CDN) for the one minute ride across.

We wandered the village, had some lunch and visited the small Marguerita fort.

Throughout our weeks in Sabah, we kept looking for Laksa with no luck. We then realized that it's a Sarawak dish and especially popular in Kuching. So we took advantage of this and had it for breakfast everyday.

Laksa (spicy coconut & lemongrass broth with noodles, chicken and shrimp) and Kopi Susu (Coffee with condensed milk).

A typical Hawker centre.

Our Laksa guy.

We also tried the famous Kek Lapis: a 12-20 layer cake made of milk, eggs, flour and copious amounts of butter.

Each layer is then dyed a different colour and "glued" together with some jam. It basically tasted like a generic jelly roll cake and not worth all the excitment in my opinion. Plus, we were both mysteriously sick the next day...

Around the corner of our hostel we found the Bumbu Cooking School where they have classes twice a day and include a trip to the market - perfect!

The trip to the market was so interesting! As we walked down the aisles equipped with our traditional rattan shopping baskets, we learned how to pick the best grade of jungle fern, that there are many different types of bananas and to select our produce economically (just the right size for our meal and minimum waste).

Traditional rattan shopping basket

Grade 1 jungle fern: not slimy or fuzzy.

Pandan leaves.

Wild ginger flowers.

Curry leaves.

Cassava root - starch extracted from this is known as tapioca!

Turmeric.

Small sweet bananas. Our instructor informed us that eating the large bananas is weird...!

Known as smelly beans - can you guess why?

Our instructors tip: Always buy small pineapples and cut efficiently to be economical.

So many spices!

Ground fresh coconut. We made coconut milk for our dessert by adding water to this and then putting through a sieve.

Once back in the kitchen we were reminded that our teachers were home cooks taught by their parents and not trained chefs, which is exactly what we were looking for: Authentic. The class was sprinkled with some interesting tips such as "when foraging the jungle for fruit or mushrooms, always make sure there are signs of fruit flies. If they are not there then it means it is poisonous, so don't eat it." Will do!

We made: Chicken curry with potatoes and jungle fern with sambal sauce for lunch, then a coconut and corn pudding in pandan leaf for dessert. We also learned how to properly cut a whole pineapple (for minimal waste).

Cooking time!

Making the fishy Malay sambal sauce.

Our instructor explained that they always cook with bone in because in the old days they did not have thermometers; when the meat pulls away from the bone - it's cooked!

Making the pandan cups.

Yummy coconut pudding with corn kernels hidden inside.

The right way to cut a pineapple.

Now the fun part: eating! (We had leftovers for 2 more meals!)

An hour outside of Kuching we found two more caves: the Fairy and Wind caves. These were much smaller and a lot less visited then the ones in Mulu National Park. It was a bit of a mission to get here though. WWe had to first take a bus for an hour to a city called Bau to then find a taxi that would agree to take us to the caves and wait for us. Accompanied by John, a fellow Canadian from Abbotsford (the first Canadian we met on our trip!), we successfully made it to the caves where we donned our headlamps and went in...

It was fun to be able to wander through the caves on our own, unlike Mulu where it is mandatory to have a guide. It was also an incredible experience to be so close to so many bats! Imagine the cave was about 3m high and the ceiling was covered in bats all chirping away. When I realized it was about 4:30pm I started to get worried that we'd be inside the cave when all of these bats made their exodus for the evening hunt! I had this imagine of bats flying at my face while dropping guano all over me... Click here for a video I took - you can't see much but you can hear the squeaking of the bats.

Finally, for our last day in Borneo, we went to Bako National Park to see if we can get one last glimpse at some wildlife and a Proboscis monkey. After we signed in at headquarters and picked up our trail map we set off for a full day of hiking through the jungle. After 5 minutes we bumped into a group of male Proboscis making their way around the mangrove trees along the boardwalk, right in our path!

We couldn't believe our luck. An entire group of just male Proboscis, which one of our past guides had refered to as "The Bachelor Group". This is different than the other groups we had seen in the Kinabatangan River where we only saw Harems: one male who...uhm...satisfies a group of females.

The rest of the day was more of a nice walk through the jungle where we got a nice view of the ocean and were able to admire all the wonderfully lush and large vegetation in quiet (no guide and very little co-tourists).

Interesting rock features.

The beach.

Typical...

Tom is always excited to see the BIG plants.

Right at the end of our day we bumped into a group of Silver leaf monkeys (the ones that have the David Beckhem hairstyle) and some Long tail Macaques. They don't call these guys "cheeky macaques" for nothing. As we were enjoying a little snack and drink at the park cafeteria, two macaques jumped on to the verandah and went on a mad food scrap hunt. We watched them lick the inside of a snickers bar wrapper and a couple of ice cream packages including the popsickle sticks. Then while one had overturned an ashtray and was busy being stopped by someone from eating the cigarette butts (ew!!!), the other jumped on to our table and starred at us. We both stood up and all three of us froze, staring at each other. The cheeky macaque with incredible speed and without even breaking his gaze, grabbed the plastic bag, which held our snacks, that was sitting on the table right in between Tom and I!!! Luckily I have cat-like reflexes and also grabbed the plastic bag. He immeditaly tugged his way, then I tugged my way, then him again and then finally me: I won - In your face little monkey! Although I did take a step back because he gave me quite the scowl.

Cheeky macaque.

Our next stop is Indonesia, Malaysia's neighbour. We both really enjoyed our time on Borneo, it is a beautiful island filled with so much wildlife, lush jungles, cool caves and tropical beaches I only thought existed on screen savers.

Click here for more photos.