Day 46: Last day in Kuching

As per the title, today was our last day in Kuching. We've been in the area for 8 days now, far longer than we ever expected I think! We celebrated with a sleep-in, which saw me struggling downstairs for "breakfast" at 10:30am. Bumped into Keith and Maria while I was down there and organised to do dinner again tonight.

After breakfast we headed out briefly in the morning with no real plans; we had a coffee and cake in a nice looking cafe at the colonial-era courthouse building which we'd seen earlier in the week and meant to come back to. And of course Keith and Maria were there finishing their coffee! This town ain't big enough for the four of us.

Almost immediately afterwards we decided it was lunchtime (it was midday at this point), so we found a cheap Chinese food court where we loaded up on bowls of noodles again for a ridiculously cheap price (two bowls of noodles, a soup and two drinks was about $5 AUD). Shandos convinced me to re-visit H&M in the nearby mall where she looked at hats, but nothing particularly took her fancy.

Wandered back to the hotel where we spent the rest of the afternoon in the common areas on laptops, browsing the internet, doing various things and spending some time on Skype with parents. Headed out around 6pm for a sundowner beverage at a nearby pub and had a couple of beers before rushing back to the hotel to meet Keith & Maria for dinner.

Tonight's venue was TopSpot Food Court - a huge outdoor food court on top of a parking garage (!!) which is basically a fish market. You pick your seafood, tell them how you want it cooked and they bring it over. Malaysian prices of course, and since we'd so far had a very cheap day we splurged on a lobster (grilled in black pepper sauce), half a kilo of king prawns grilled in garlic butter, a plate of stir fried Bornean ferns in chilli sauce and two serves of steamed rice. All up - 125 ringgits which is about $40 AUD. I don't think you'd get half a kilo of king prawns for that price in Australia, let alone cooked and with a fresh lobster and sides! I just can't get over the price differences.

Not much to report after this, we left the food court and stocked up on cash for our next leg, Gunung Mulu National Park.Read more