Cat city

Having made the decision to fly to Italy from KL to avoid the bottleneck in the Australia-Europe routes, and also to reduce jet lag, I was glad to find a cheap fare to Kuching via Singapore. Despite a few hours stopover in Changi Airport, I arrived mid-morning and was pleased to find little traffic to the city at that hour.

Kuching means cat in Malay and the city has adopted the animal as its mascot. This is a roundabout featuring cat statues. It's not the only one, there's a larger one you'll see later.

The city centre is fairly compact and it's possible to walk everywhere. It felt like I had stepped back in time to an earlier version of Kuala Lumpur. There were the old style Chinese shopfronts. The traffic was moderate.

A temple on Carpenter Street I came across on the way to getting lunch at the Plaza Merdeka.

A simple lunch of chilli cuttlefish with rice.

The nearby Padang Merdeka with museums in the background that I didn't visit. I also didn't visit the Cat Museum on the other side of the river because it was a bit of a hassle to get to and only featured artistic depictions of cats, not real cats.

The much more prominent cat statues near the waterfront.

View of Sarawak River from an upper floor of my hotel.

Waterfront close to sunset.

On the way to the shopping centre to eat at the food court again, I passed this Sri Lankan restaurant but it was too busy and I wasn't willing to wait.

Dusk seems to make a commonplace scene more attractive.

The Legislative Building on the other bank of the river.

Another view, and just in case you don't know what city you're in.

Dinner was unremarkable but I enjoyed a dessert of various sweets in syrup (ais campur).

I returned to my lodgings via the waterfront again. Locals were enjoying the evening air.

There was a light show with lasers playing on the water jets.

It was quite pretty and a suitable end to my first evening in Sarawak.