Kuching culture

I will miss Kuching. We made a great choice, we have a lovely room close to a lot of food options (all wallet friendly and taste bud happy). It's close to the official riverfront walkway, and China town. It's an interesting and lively walk to the bridge and to the big mall. It only takes one month for me to start to feel like I understand things and can find my way. All that will end, I don't think we will spend that much time in one place for the rest of our trip, which ends in the middle of July.
There are a few things that a girl like me notices. Kuching is on the island of Borneo, and is part of the country of Malaysia. If you look at the island we are basically on the top of the left side.
I love how the men are just as likely to be holding their little ones as the moms. Lots of Daddy love in the first years. When I am in the States I notice a lot of very overweight people. Here there are a lot of very underweight people. And under-height. I get asked once a week or so to have my picture taken with someone. Every time I am so much taller than everyone. I love the way the women dress here, I love their head coverings and their style.
There is a museum here that we visited and it started with a fantastic movie about "mythological cosmology". I love that term. It's about how different tribes viewed the earth and stars and gods.
Like one tribe thought that there was an upside down mirror of this earth inside the planet. People go there when they die. They can see what's going on in the 'real' world by what flows from the real world river to their mirror river. Which right now must be frightening. In Kuching is the Sarawak river, and it's quite polluted. We stood on the banks on both sides last night, riding a boat across and back cost $1 for both of us combined. There were all kinds of mankind's garbage drifting in the current. It was very disappointing, just heartbreaking really.
That was was a down side. Let me leave you with a plus side. The people are the most friendly I've ever seen. In Costa Rica you could walk by people and they would say hello, but here they will stop and ask you where you are from. A bonus of people who learn English. I suppose the Costa Ricans would talk to me if they thought we shared a language, I will never know.
In the upcoming months I will be able to compare the people from Malaysia to the people of Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam! Of course the State of Sarawak and Sabah are special, Malaysia asked those parts of the island of Borneo to join them. Malaysia became a country in 1957, and the 2 States on Borneo became part of Malaysia in 1963. It also leads to the more general question of what makes a country a country. Don't get me started. Or how we are not in Borneo, since it's an island we are on Borneo. Right? It would be odd to say you were in an island.
It's not just about the food I ate. It's how it made me feel. We found something at a food stall to try called trojak. The stall only sold 2 things, traditional trojak and fruit trojak. I don't know what it is, we thought we would give it a go based on how strange it looked. I recognized 2 of the ingredients: cucumber and pineapple. The other things listed are tauhur pok, sengkuang, and char kuey. One of those things had the texture of a sponge, and it was very strange to eat. I guess it's raw items. There was something crunchy like a crouton, spongy, and the pineapple was sweet. The sauce didn't have much flavor, really. Which at that point was a relief. It's my first comeback after the Great Durian Disappointment. I didn't love the trojak, but that's still a certain kind of victory to not completely hate it. Covering it in chopped peanuts helped. The cost for one big serving that fed the 2 of us was $7 ringgets which is under $2 USD.
The best part about the trojak was not just choosing to be brave again, it was eating it at a table in the biggest restaurant I've ever seen. It was the outdoor restaurant, and the sun was setting, and people were enjoying food everywhere in a happy noisy crowd way. It reminds me of the difference between if I had seen this place on a TV travel show versus being in the thick of it. Hearing the buzz of voices, feeling the humidity on my skin, seeing how old and trashed all the chairs are, working with toothpick logistics and slippery chunks of food. It felt like being inside a beehive.

We saw another memory making sunset. We had a big debate about the landscape picture or the portrait picture. I took the portrait picture, but I see the value of the picture Ron took that was landscape. I have a fondness for silhouettes. I love that bridge in the background, getting there is a lovely riverfront walk that makes my heart sing.