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Have a few friends from university who hail from various places in Borneo, mainly Kuching in Sarawak, and that is where my friend from "semenanjung" (peninsular) malaysia and I decided to visit in this trip.
Funny enough, my friend from Seremban has never visited East Malaysia and this too would be her first time to Borneo Island.
The trip starts in Singapore where my friend took the opportunity to visit Singapore- brought her to the usual places: gardens by the bay, MBS, orchard road, vivocity etc. Boring stuff...
The flight tickets were amazingly cheap...ryanair cheap. Our Airasia flight SIN-KCH was S$45 each (£23) and KCH-KUL was 98RM each (£20) making the total return trip about S$85 or £42.50. (I tend to think in terms of pound sterling nowadays)
Of course, not as cheap as those dirt cheap £20 return fares from Stansted to Wroclaw, but very reasonable for the 1h20 SIN-KCH and 1h40 KCH-KUL. Never knew until this trip that Singapore is actually nearer to Kuching than Kuala Lumpur.
Interestingly enough, my Peninsular Malaysian friend got a chop at the Kuching Airport. (Needless to say, I of course as a Singapore citizen got chopped) Apparently, Sabah and Sarawak have their own immigration clearance and Malaysians from the peninsular have to get chopped at border controls. This is not reciprocated; i.e. Sarawakians who go to the peninsular do not have to get a entry chop, just their NRIC will do. I am not sure about Sabah, but this is the special case for Sarawak.
Again, the amount I spent this trip was very low, extremely low in fact, due to the very favourable exchange rate of Singapore dollars to Malaysian Ringgit (S$1=2.5RM) and I had free acommodation and transport thanks to our Kuching friends who graciously brought us around.
Including air tickets and souvenirs, I barely spent 500RM in four days. (S$200, £100)
The Airasia A320 that would bring us to Kuching
Seat Pitch on airasia. as per usual on budget airlines.
Sarawakian number plates begin with a Q.
Not too sure about this...prisoners playing golf?!
Kolok Mee... The noodles were handmade, QQ and very filling. A simple, hearty dish. only 2.50RM.
First stop on the itinerary was Jong's crocodile farm, a zoo of sorts whose main attraction are the crocodiles and the crocodile feeding show. They also have a hodgepodge of other animals in the farm.
Admission was quite interesting, it was 10RM for Sarawakian adults and 16RM for foreigners. Foreigners including Peninsular Malaysians. They do this by checking the Malaysian ID cards...Their NRIC incorporates their state of birth I believe. The Sarawak code is 13 if I'm not wrong.
Anyway, we were just in time for crocodile feeding!
Baby Crocodiles
This image does not do justice as to how big this crocodile is. It is absolutely massive.
Can you see the crocodile jumping for the meat? When their jaws clamp together, it makes a sickening loud and hard thudding sound. very scary if you imagine that amount of power sinking into a human.
When we left, the sky looked really threatening.
We then went to one of the malls in Kuching and I realised one important distinction between Western style toilets and Kuching public toilets. Many of the public toilets in Kuching had... no TP. Just a hose. Found that out the hard way when I had to rush to the loo and had to get my friend to buy tissue packs from Guardian.
Funny enough, my friend from Seremban has never visited East Malaysia and this too would be her first time to Borneo Island.
The trip starts in Singapore where my friend took the opportunity to visit Singapore- brought her to the usual places: gardens by the bay, MBS, orchard road, vivocity etc. Boring stuff...
The flight tickets were amazingly cheap...ryanair cheap. Our Airasia flight SIN-KCH was S$45 each (£23) and KCH-KUL was 98RM each (£20) making the total return trip about S$85 or £42.50. (I tend to think in terms of pound sterling nowadays)
Of course, not as cheap as those dirt cheap £20 return fares from Stansted to Wroclaw, but very reasonable for the 1h20 SIN-KCH and 1h40 KCH-KUL. Never knew until this trip that Singapore is actually nearer to Kuching than Kuala Lumpur.
Interestingly enough, my Peninsular Malaysian friend got a chop at the Kuching Airport. (Needless to say, I of course as a Singapore citizen got chopped) Apparently, Sabah and Sarawak have their own immigration clearance and Malaysians from the peninsular have to get chopped at border controls. This is not reciprocated; i.e. Sarawakians who go to the peninsular do not have to get a entry chop, just their NRIC will do. I am not sure about Sabah, but this is the special case for Sarawak.
Again, the amount I spent this trip was very low, extremely low in fact, due to the very favourable exchange rate of Singapore dollars to Malaysian Ringgit (S$1=2.5RM) and I had free acommodation and transport thanks to our Kuching friends who graciously brought us around.
Including air tickets and souvenirs, I barely spent 500RM in four days. (S$200, £100)
The Airasia A320 that would bring us to Kuching
Seat Pitch on airasia. as per usual on budget airlines.
Sarawakian number plates begin with a Q.
Not too sure about this...prisoners playing golf?!
Kolok Mee... The noodles were handmade, QQ and very filling. A simple, hearty dish. only 2.50RM.
First stop on the itinerary was Jong's crocodile farm, a zoo of sorts whose main attraction are the crocodiles and the crocodile feeding show. They also have a hodgepodge of other animals in the farm.
Admission was quite interesting, it was 10RM for Sarawakian adults and 16RM for foreigners. Foreigners including Peninsular Malaysians. They do this by checking the Malaysian ID cards...Their NRIC incorporates their state of birth I believe. The Sarawak code is 13 if I'm not wrong.
Anyway, we were just in time for crocodile feeding!
Baby Crocodiles
This image does not do justice as to how big this crocodile is. It is absolutely massive.
Can you see the crocodile jumping for the meat? When their jaws clamp together, it makes a sickening loud and hard thudding sound. very scary if you imagine that amount of power sinking into a human.
When we left, the sky looked really threatening.
We then went to one of the malls in Kuching and I realised one important distinction between Western style toilets and Kuching public toilets. Many of the public toilets in Kuching had... no TP. Just a hose. Found that out the hard way when I had to rush to the loo and had to get my friend to buy tissue packs from Guardian.
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