The weeks in brief: 22 July – 4 August

Kuching sunset

Well, we’ve been away for the past two weeks (we’re on our way back home today – hooray for prescheduled posts – thanks PastAgnes) so there is a fair bit to this update. Hi! Strap yourselves in!


Kuching

Alastair and I spent the past two weeks in Kuching and Kota Kinabalu and friends it was warm and we ate all the things. Except for when we got to KK and I became Not Quite Right. 😐

Kuching sunset

Kuching was cool though. We had an awesome view from our room and watched a lot of sunsets.

Kuching sunset

In Kuching, our routine was mostly: go out in the morning for an activity, have lunch, head back to the hotel in the afternoon, rest for a couple of hours, have beer and snacks hour (very important, everyone needs beer and snacks hour during a holiday), watch the sunset, go out for dinner. Repeat repeat.

DUN

What else did we do? Errr… walked along the waterfront? This is the New Sarawak State Legislative Assembly Building.

Kuching waterfront sunset

Prettttty.

Kuching food

We ate the food.

Shrimp

Ate the seafood.

Kuching seafood

Ate more seafood.

Bako

We visited Bako National Park and saw monkeys and bearded pigs and wandered through the jungle in inappropriate footwear.

Orangutan

We went to the orangutan sanctuary and saw the orangutans (!!!).

Kuching food festival

We found a food festival! (Actually, our driver who took us to the orangutan sanctuary told us about it, but it sounds better when I say we found it.)

Kuching food festival ondeh

We went to the food festival twice – it ran for three weeks or something. And on both nights we went there were tons of people there and so many stalls. Amazing.

Kuching food festival food

Ate all the things again.

Kuching food festival piggy buns

Including these piggy buns. So cute, they were so hard to eat. 🙁

Kuching market tour

We also took a cooking class in Kuching, and the morning started with a wander around the market.

Cleanest market ever.

Kuching cooking class

And then we cooked lunch. It was so fun!

I will write up the cooking class properly. It was great.

KK sunset

Then we flew to Kota Kinabalu. The weather in KK has been all over the place – hot (always) but super sunny one day, cloudy the next, pouring with rain another day. So only one sunset shot from KK.

KK seafood

In KK we also ate the seafood.

Kinabalu national park stream

And we went to Kinabalu National Park.

Waterfall

It was the pretty.

(Not these scrawny guys – the park in general.)

Rafflesia

We also saw the world’s largest flower – the rafflesia – which only blooms once every year or so and the flowers only last for 6 days.

KK market

In KK Alastair spent several days diving, while I pottered around.

I basically walked the length of the town (and can I say that it’s not a town that’s pedestrian friendly. Neither is Kuching for that matter.)

KK hyatt

Aaaaand I got a bit sick (just a general Not Quite Right-ness) so apart from Alastair’s diving, activities were very limited. We mostly just enjoyed our flash hotel (an upgrade from our original rubbish hotel where the toilets didn’t flush properly. We became best friends with the maintenance guy, poor fellow. Thankfully the SFBS group and Alastair talked sense into me and we changed hotels.).

KK food

Okay, here’s some food.

KK drinks

And here’s some drinks. See that coconut? I swear it had like a litre of (not very good) coconut juice in it.

watermelon

Yellow watermelon. It’s just like red watermelon but yellow…

Anyway, the NQR feeling is why there’s very few pictures (food and otherwise) from KK. Ho hum.

KK flash

And soon… we’ll be back in Melbourne. It feels like we’ve been away for AGES and AGES. I hope it’s not cold… 😐