Drove from the kampung back into Kuching this afternoon, or more accurately, were driven. Thanks to the members of the kampung who chauffeured us there and back again.
Arrived at the Holiday Inn Kuching about 4:30pm. This place is right on the Sarawak River. Top spot. The most dominating feature looking across the river was the new Sarawak State Legislative Assembly Building in the throes of construction. This thing is massive. It’s going to be quite incredible when it’s finished. 9 storeys, 114 metres high and about 48000 square metres of floor space. Not a bad little hut!
Another building up a little further turned out to be a palace, called the Astana. Built by Rajah Charles Brooke in 1870 as a private residence, it is now the official residence of the Governor of Sarawak. Couldn’t get a real good view of it from across the river but it still looked pretty flash.
Went across the road for dinner to the Topspot foodcourt. The court here is similar, I guess, to the ones we have in our shopping centres except it’s probably about 10 times larger and they actually have waiters out serving the tables. The thing is that there are waiters from each individual food outlet who basically fight it out between themselves to get your custom. They can appear quite pushy (as ours was) but at the end of the day it’s all about competition. You could order different dishes from several different outlets if you wanted to but we ended up getting the lot from the one. And this is the best bit. We fed 6 adults and 4 kids for around AUD$60. And we certainly didn’t go away hungry.
