It’s a little late but I’ll write a post on my trip to Malaysia.
Kuching is located in East Malaysia. It’s the capital of Sarawak and is basically a small city (if one can call it that).
It’s also the home of Kolo Mee, which is basically dry springy noodles with minced meat. Greatest food invented.
I stayed at my gramma’s place. It houses her, my aunt, and my uncle’s family – The people back there are very closed knit, still full of Kampung spirit. Another of my uncle lives just down the road and another aunt lives nearby as well. And that’s a great thing to experience. Almost. Just so happens that I have an irritant of a cousin I have to face every day. Even a person with as big an ego as myself couldn’t take the sort of self-praising bullshit that permeated from the big hole in his face. The worst thing was that he was too absorbed by his own verbal dick-boosting that he didn’t notice the small fact that I did not like him, despite me giving him certain hints (short of saying Fuck Off Please to his face).
I stayed in a fucking villa okay.
Nothing really special about the house, except that there’s this wicked chilli plant my gramma planted outside. The chilli is so damn hot that one slice is enough to make a whole bowl of noodles spicy.
I had the luxury of my own room, on the second floor – comfortable enough. There’s a nice toilet also, though the water pressure was so fucking small I showered most of the time at the first floor toilet, which had no heater. Happy fucking days.
The people there drive ancient cars as well. 20+y.o Proton
‘Town’ in good ol’ Kuching is a random collection of a few buildings near the river.
My relatives would drop me off somewhere and I would just walk wherever there is to walk. By far the most annoying thing in Kuching was that I couldn’t find a place to play pool. One month without playing and I’m back to primary school standard. Fortunately, there was a shady cybercafe, mostly filled with foreign backpackers and local teens, which charged 4RM/hr, not so bad. The locals played CS and I made friends with some of them. Stuff in Kuching surprisingly isn’t very cheap. I bought some mags at 20RM each and a book which cost 40RM at Times (yes there is a Times), and then went over to Hilton (yes there’s a Hilton) to act tourisy and rich read.
The final week was the hardest to get by, with the anticipation of returning home rising and the anxiety of the driving test increasing. Didn’t really get out or do much during the last few days. I even picked up some Christian book my mom sent me to read. Gist = Believe in God or you’re fucked. Remember that kids.
Towards the end of December there was this Chinese festival they celebrated where we’re prayed to our elders.Apparently it’s some really important event in the Chinese calendar. Cue the usual joss paper burning/big celebratory meal. It was something new and enlightening for me, of which I would never experience in Singapore.
Burning paper and stuff
In hindsight my time there was worth it. So much time alone meant I had no choice but to think about stuff, and that really put everything in perspective for me. More importantly, I know how to fucking drive a car now.
