Side trips.

My dear Blog and my few loyal readers! I know I last wrote in July and as the saying goes "a great deal of water has run under the bridge" since then. I have decided to start at the end and work my way backwards.

We have just been on a side trip to Kuching, which is in the state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Kuching is known as the Cat island which has several stories attached to the derivation of its name. There is much evidence of cats all over the place, including a museum of cats and many statues of cats not forgetting all the cats roaming around. Joshua, a great lover of cats loved it when we came across a few REAL cats he could play with.

As this was our last weekend in Malaysia, after a two and a half month visit, mainly to take care of Joshua during his school summer vacation, Nick and his fiancé, Elaine treated us to this trip. They had a wedding to attend and extended an invitation to us to join them on this excursion.The atmosphere of the island is great and is my kind of place. It is a clean and interesting city with much of the activities taking place along the River Front. We took a cruise down the river just to get a perspective of the whole city from the river frontage.

Believe it or not these boats are really quite cool!

At the end of the boat trip, as an added extra, we stopped off at a "Kak Lapis" factory shop. This is where this multi layered colourful delicacy originates from. It is a cake with all sorts of delicios fillings. You simply can't visit Kuching without stocking up on Kak Lapis. Evidently after baking very thin pan cakes one uses a special device called a Presser, to flatten the cake.

 

Lapis cake always has more than one colour dough and is so pretty. There are all sorts of combinations of fillers and the best is one I read about on a blog called "Bitter Sweet Spicy". Nutella! The whole process is very fiddly but oh so worth it. Maybe I will get my sister to try this, as she is such a good baker.

 

The Presser. We may need one of these goodies to achieve the final product!

The first night Elaine and Nick treated us to the most amazing fish dishes ever. It was at a restaurant called Top Spot which is a food court with many outlets to choose food from, it is all very casual and child friendly so Joshua was very happy to be there. I love trying new foods and experienced many different dishes! The place is very popular and was buzzing!

(photo from Malaysian Travel Blog)

We also popped in to see Nick's rooms and to meet the staff. What a cheerful bunch and congrats to Nick on his super new Spine and Joint rooms!

Kuching has really looked after their history by preserving its buildings and along the river frontage one can visit several museums. I even found a Textile museum which highlights "Ikat " weaving procedures.

 

These "weavers" we're so lifelike and so eerie!

The city has beautiful trees. This one is eighty six years old! It is a silky cotton tree. (just older than us teased Nick.)

Joshie loved all the canons! It is such fun when the children can touch and climb all over the artifacts.

Thanks guys for a lovely weekend! I would love to return to Kuching one day.