In Kuching, Island of Borneo, Malaysia

Kuching is the Malaysian word for Cat. So, the name of the town is Cat, which is why they have cat statues all over town and have a cat museum.

We took an 8 ½ hour bus ride from Pontianak to Kuching. The bus left at 6:30am, so were we up at 5, ate breakfast at the hotel at 5:30 and left for the bus at 6:15. After the bus left the station, its first stop was right back at our hotel to pick up others who were staying at our hotel and also going to Kuching. The bus company had given us the option of getting picked up at our hotel instead of the bus station, but Jim opted to walk the two blocks to the bus station so he could see the bus and be sure to catch it.

The bus took the “new road”, which was mostly paved, but which had parts washed out where the bus has to come to a complete stop before entering the “pot hole”. It was not very fast going for the first six hours. But, after the bus cleared the border into Malaysia, the road improved tremendously for the last two hours.

One interesting sight was that the Indonesian houses alongside the road generally had electricity and satellite dishes. The satellite dishes were universally pointing straight up. Guess that’s what you do when you live on the equator.

Somewhere in Indonesia a group of motorcycles came down the road from the Malaysian direction. These were not the usual 110cc bikes and mopeds everyone rides but were large BMW, Hondas and others. The riders were all decked out in leather riding gear and they were followed by a sag wagon to pick bikes that broke.

The day after we arrived in Kuching, we went to the Hilton Hotel to check out tours around Kuching and sitting behind the desks in the travel agency office inside the Hilton were two of our traveling companions on the bus. They were the people the bus returned to our hotel to pick up and who we had breakfast with at 5:30am, and they run the travel agency.

Last night we went to the GODOWN AMPITHEATRE WATERFFRONT KUCHING, (Pronounced Go Down) where there was free music and dance performances. Was great fun. We even got recognized because we were sitting next to two other Europeans, and all the Europeans were thanked for being there. The MCs also performed comedy routines, but jokes lose their effectiveness when you cannot understand the language.

The following photo of a group of dancers doing the traditional Borneo dance known as "The Twist", in synch.

There was also the more "traditional" performances.