Saturday 7 June Kuching town

David has walked the soles off his sandals and needed a new pair so we hitched a lift into Kuching, the main town in the area, to see if we could find any. We had been intending to wait for one of the irregular buses which take an hour for the journey when a Chinese man in a comfortable 4x4 stopped to offer us a ride into town.

Kuching, which means cat in Malaysian, is the now usual mix of architectural styles which we've seen throughout our travels; British colonial, Chinese mid twentieth century two story and the very recent international 21^st century built with oil money. The heart of Kuching is still there with a new riverside walkway, a new State Legislation building called 'The Lemon Squeezer' from it's pointed shape and modern hotels around the centre. There was a new State Legislation building out of town which is now a museum dedicated to cats when it was thought to be not central enough.

David found his new sandals and I found time to visit a couple of the very good textile and artefacts museums. If we'd had more time there were more museums we could have visited but the bus left at three and we needed to be on it.

Tan Tungguh museum

ikat weaving