绿野晨曦: 出差砂州猫咪城 (Kuching Work Trip)

Though I am a Malaysian, I have not step foot on the land of Sarawak til I am 21 years old. It was a family trip to Miri and Mulu. The mountains, caves, rivers, forests and greenery Sarawak has to offer is something very refreshing to the eye and soul of a KL girl.

It never occur to me that I would then visit Sarawak continously 3 times within a month due to work. It is kinda funny for someone who rarely travel by plane like me, would be heading to airport every week that month. Though it is tiring to be flying so frequently, the Sarawak experience was love at first sight.

My current company has quite a few branches at Sarawak and Sabah, as there are no nutritionists based at East Malaysia, the headquarter nutritionist team was asked to support the heath check roadshow at Kuching, Miri and Sarikei.

Nutritionist uniform while performing health check

Fulfilling 'doctor' dream in a 'doctor-like' white coat

It was my 1st time ever being in Kuching. The roads and traffic looked quite similar to KL, with fly overs and wide roads. However, it was the people there that interested me. Here in Kuala Lumpur, it is usually just 3 types of races. Yet in Sarawak, there are other races like Ibans, Bidayuhs, Penans and so on. Mixed marriages are common there too, producing wonderful features.

While performing health checks on the local people, I found myself observing their facial features too. Most of them have deep set eyes with double eye lids and sharp straight nose. Thus, not surprising, I saw many handsomes and beauties there. I would call those 3D features :).

At night after work, colleagues and I strolled along the Sarawak river, taking in the night time river view as well as the nicely constructed walkway along the river. This is such a nice dating place for lovers. To me, the atmosphere is romantic, what could be more soul linking than sitting shoulder to shoulder on the pavement, facing the flowing river, with the winds blowing at your face and sharing life stories ? Haha maybe i am simply easy to please. There plenty on-the-floor stalls along the river, selling glow-in-the-dark items. They looked beautiful like twinkling stars on the ground. I bought a rubbery caterpillar there that lights up when hit on the head.

Evening view of DUN Sarawak

Night view of DUN Sarawak

I had Kolo mee almost everyday throughout my stay at Kuching. It is a very plain noodle with not much add-ons, just such minced meat and few slices of vegetables. Yet the noodles is different from the yellow noodles, it doesn't have such chemical taste. Besides, it is smooth and doesn't stick together due to the secret weapon ---> animal oil.

There is one unique view at Sarawak restaurants or food stalls. Instead of hiding everything in kitchen, they display all the cooking ingredients on the outside and customers got to choose and pick their food. It was like supermarket!

Display of cooking ingredients at restaurants

Pick whatever you like

Almost everyday, we ordered 2 types of vegetables that were almost unique to Sarawak cause in KL, we don't get to eat that. Birin and Money Plant. Birin looks like those ferns or paku-pakis, they grow wildly after rain. Money Plant is usually cooked with pan mee here in KL, but there, it could act as a dish by itself. But my favourite of all will be Oh-Jian. The Oh-Jian I am familiar with is usually softer like fried egg. But look at the Oh-Jian I found in Kuching, it looked cute like a bowl and tasted like junk food. Crunchy!

Due to time limit, we didn't get to really tour around the Kuching town and tourist spots, much to my regret!!! However, I did drag my colleagues to Sarawak Muzeum and we were there for 2 hours. I simply love historical staffs and ancient designs.

Sarawak Museum with English design

Interior of the Sarawak Museum

Fossil Museum

A walk into the past

Arch window

There is a beautiful looking garden just right next to the museum. Too bad the sun was too hot and we didn't want to get any darker. So just got to snap a few photoes before leaving.