Cat City

Hello blog follower, so we meet again!

If you’re reading this at your place of employment, tilt your VDU away from the prying eyes of your boss, and enjoy the escapism of South East Asia for a couple of minutes, whilst S/He isn’t looking…. 😉

So, Emma and I bailed KL at some hugely unsociable time of the morning, caught a bus to the airport, and were soon on a flight to Borneo. Air Asia flights are ridiculously cheap, which makes travelling quite substantial distances simple, and convenient.

Travelling Trent stays ever vigilant, looking for wily strangers, whilst on the move!

Once we had landed in Borneo, we took a taxi into the capital city of Kuching. Kuching is the Malaysian word for cat, by some fortuitous coincidence, and in fact, Kuching is known locally as ‘Cat City’ 🙂

We decamped to a random guest house, which whilst clean and affordable, was largely deserted, save for a mysterious coughing woman in the room next to ours. The two guys who ran the place were OK, but they often remained silent for long periods of time, didn’t play any music, and as a consequence, the place felt a bit sterile, and within 24 hours, Emma and I began plotting to find somewhere else to stay.

None the less, we made a resolve to explore the waterfront more or less immediately, and I was soon to encounter one of our feline cousins, of the wailing/scrounging variety, lurking near a promenade cafe;-

We also discovered a local Lebanese restaurant named Hubbubba’s, which served some excellent falafels, veggie burgers, humous platters, and lamb wraps which Emma loved, and the restaurant was to become a regular haunt of ours, for the duration of stay in the area…

The local people take their status as Cat City quite seriously, and Kuching is adorned with a variety of statues of cats, and numerous felines roam throughout Chinatown, where we were staying.

A look at the local tourist guide revealed that Kuching boasts a Cat Museum, and of course, being a cat lover, I suggested to Emma that we go and take a look!! Emma read up about the place on Trip Advisor, as she was concerned that the museum might fall into the catagory of ‘tacky tourism’.

Not tacky at all…

None the less, the reviews seemed mixed at worst, and a number of cat lovers had given the place some excellent reviews, so we decided to go and check it out!

Trent refused to stand behind this and have his photo taken…

No, not tacky at all..

In short, I thought the Cat Museum was great! Sure, it did have its tacky moments, but it also had a variety of cat collections/models, scientific information about cats, and some fantastic cat inspired art work;-

Apparently if you monitor the positions of a cat, you can gauge the room temperature

Horror B movie now on Trent’s to see list

No really, it was not tacky…:)

The museum itself is located in one of the local Malaysian state Federation/Council buildings, which is raised on high outside of the city, and thus affords the visitor some excellent scenic views of the city below;-

We discovered quite quickly that as it is ‘shoulder season’, a glorious day can suddenly give way to a heavy downpour in the afternoon, but unlike Blighty, once the rain has passed, the climate can rapidly improve after an hour or so, and it is dry and sunny again!

Kuching has its own Little India, only a stones throw from Chinatown, and one afternoon we stopped at another Lebanese restaurant, the ‘Little Lebanon’ (which I liked to jokingly call the  ‘Little Lesbian’) and it was in there that we ate one afternoon, and before we knew it, the Heavens opened, causing all and sundry to run for shelter!

Whilst we were eating at the Little Lesbian, we spied some Australian women with children in tow, who unbeknown to us at the time, we would get to know a day or so later.

In the meantime however, here’s a shot of Emma sheltering from the aforesaid downpour in Little India.

After ten minutes or thereabouts, we backtracked to Little Lesbian, abandoned our exploring, and had a few beers as the lightening and thunder raged on above us! Emma remarked that Sister Margaret would be unimpressed with the storm as she is scared of thunder, and I must admit that it was fairly hardcore!!

I’d thoroughly enjoyed the Cat Museum, and Emma had thought it was at least tolerable (!) But thereafter, Emma immediately had her heart firmly set on visiting the Orang Utan Resettlement Reservation!

Our next post will be written by Emma, who I know is excited to share the Orang Utans with you, in both text and photographs!!

Trent */X