says the mass.

Roti chennai

One of the redeeming qualities of the hotel. Good chennai (prata). Especially fantastic when you get them to custom it with cheese.

Santubung

Post-trip note:

For those who don't know, there's a story to Mt. Santubong. There's even a song on it.

I'm too lazy to type, so I'll just lift it from a Googled site.

http://nadge.org/?p=184

Long ago when Borneo was a young island, giants and spirits were known to humans, moving back and forth between earth and kayangan, the celestial kingdom. One day the King saw that there was fighting among the people down on earth. So he sent two princesses, Puteri Santubong and Puteri Sejinjang, to make peace between the villages. These two lovely princesses used their charms to get the people to finally stop fighting. Peace returned and the area was called Damai, meaning ‘tranquil’.

The people were so grateful that they begged the two to stay, which both graciously did. Puteri Santubong took up cloth-weaving, while Puteri Sejinjang pounded rice padi. Their beauty remained and they were known far and wide. But Puteri Santubong became more sought after by handsome suitors throughout the land due to her delightful cloths. Soon she got married and became pregnant.

Puteri Sejinjang unfortunately became jealous, claiming she was more beautiful than her sister. Santubong would not agree and a huge argument ensued between the two. In the end Sejinjang became violent and hit her pounding pestle on the head of Santubong, who fell to the earth and grew into the mountain that bears her name. But just before Santubong fell she threw her weaving loom’s beam at Sejinjang, breaking a part of her body, which scattered into the sea, creating the islands in the area (Pulau Kera, Pulau Burong and so on). Meanwhile, the rest of Sejinjang’s body also fell to the earth and became the other mountain near Mount Santubong.

The villagers had also taken sides instead of helping to make peace between the dueling princesses, who had then placed curses on each other’s supporters, turning them into the monkeys and other animals that now roam the mountains, jungles and islands.

Today, if you look at Mount Santubong from the sea, you can see the outline of a pregnant woman, and even the gully or crevice where Sejinjang hit Santubong’s head with the pestle.

Guess who conquered this?

The feeling you get after conquering this...

Post-trip note:

Each step is narrower than a foot. I've discovered that the best way to climb down would be to climb down sideways. It goes up to around 1.5 storey's high. Inside the house, there is another set of stairs to the equivalent of attic, where newly-wed couples are allowed to "honeymoon".

The honeymoon suite

For those not too adventurous, they had normal staircase at the centre of the building.

Rumah orang Ulu

Post-trip note:
We spent a good half of the fourth day at the Sarawak Cultural Village.

This tourist attraction is located at the foot of Mt. Santubong, and is basically like a brief summary of all the indigenous people of Sarawak.

You can see the different types of long-houses and some offers "home stays" as well.

In my mind, this is a circus. I wonder if it's just me.

2nd & 3rd day summary

2nd day:

We headed to Pasar Serikin, Bau, at Sarawak-Borneo border, 1.5 hours' drive from Kuching.

The road passed by one of the tourist caves (wind or fairy, can't remember which), and got kind of bumpy towards the end.

There were some interesting goods, and if you know what to look for,  there's some cheap stuff.

It was sweltering hot, and there were many people, which made it a formula for a headache. I gave up after an hour.

We stopped at Spring for lunch (ah... Air-con), and bought dinner to go as well.

A little bit on Spring - Spring is the biggest shopping centre in Kuching.

It has some standard mall shops like Starbucks and the ubiquitous department store.

3rd day: Morning was at Semenggong Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre where we saw orang utan.

We had a try at clay, which was kind of fun, but hard. They sell a fair amount of goods as well.

Followed by lunch at a random hut somewhere. I've finally know what's the deal with "Mee kolok". It's like fried Maggie with Soto as soup.

City tour was next and we saw a few main attractions such as Kuching museum and the Brooke castle.

The poor throat needs a break...

Dinner was at Ipohtown across the road. We were going elsewhere but it it rained pretty hard, thus the change of plan.

Sarawak tea

Hmm. I wonder how this tastes like...

Post-trip note:

Like black tea.

Mee kolok

Post-trip note:

Mee Kolok here tastes like friend maggi / maggi goreng with soto soup. I tried mee kolok from another shop and it tasted like boiled chicken noodles.

So I guess, we'll never really know what Mee Kolok tastes like...

Pepper is a thing

Apparently, one of the things that they push to tourists is the Sarawak pepper. There are pepper sweets and pepper butter biscuits...

Post-trip note:

And pepper tea, pepper coffee, pepper chocolate...

Semenggoh wildlife reservation

Looking for orang utan...

This person is l337

Ever the news bug

I was quite delighted when I opened the door to find a complimentary copy of the newspaper.

Post-trip comment:

Unfortunately, complimentary copies of the local newspapers are really random.

Borderland market: pasar serikin at Bau

The Rambutans were awesome looking.

Post-trip note:
The 3G sort of failed me towards the border. And yes, we really went all the way out to the border. Serikin is physically really Borderlands.

The driver actually entertained us with stories of how "Bau" (lit. smell) was given its name.

I'll try and appraise my memory. Somehow the story is along the lines of this:

When some of the people rose up against the Brooke Monarchy (or government), the soldiers chased the rebels to the mountains. The rebels hid in the caves in the mountains (Sarawak is full of caves).

The soldiers set the surroundings on fire, and killed the rebels through carbon monoxide poisoning.

Days/Weeks later, the remains of the bodies started to rot, thus, the smell, and the name "Bau".

Kuching in my eye

Caption: inspired by the charming rainforest in Sarawak, this sculpture uses round bronze plates to form the dense foliage of the rainforest. This "foliage" stretches into a shape like an eye. It signifies that Kuching will always be watched over by Mother Nature.

1st day Kuching

And thus the sun sets on my first night in Kuching, Sarawak.

Dinner was fried prawn with rice at a coffeeshop around 10 minutes walk away from our lodgings.

This was followed by a little shopping at Parkson beside Riverside Majestic Hotel.

Note: Grand Margherita does NOT provide toothbrush.

Note 2: Swimming pool is bloody small. There's a jacuzzi pool though. Or what looks like it.

The strangely delicate balance of banana fritters, condensed milk and cheese

Grand Margherita

Pleasant ambience, with lobby decorated with tree trunks

Touched down!

Kuching, Sarawak... Phillipines?!

Last day

Have I ever mentioned that I find uploading holiday photographs to  a pain? That's the reason why I love to do live blogging so much - snap a photo, upload to facebook directly, type some random comments, and that's it.

Similarly, with a smartphone and blogger, you can snap a photo, type some words and email to the blog as a post, which was what I did during the Terengganu trip, with a-not-so-smartphone.

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I think it has become a tradition of sorts to hang around the resort on the last day, and start snapping away to make up for the mbs that we did not use up during the earlier days of the getaway.

Breakfast buffet again, for the last day, followed by this tradition.

 

Breakfast with a spot of kitty anyone?

 

Harris Waterfront Resort. I didn't notice the peak until the last day!

The other "FC" I was referring to. Taken at Sekupang Ferry Terminal.

 9 minutes into the ride, we could already see Marina Bay Sands. The trip back was quite fast!

It was extremely windy, so it was a tad worrying. I predicted a Merlionisque return trip.

Luckily though, nothing of that sort happened.

I was at the top of the boat, outdoors, so I think the wind really helped stave off that seasickness.

I did, however, felt like chucking some people into the sea, because the sign already stated "No Smoking" and guess what they were doing?

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Well, generally the trip was alright, though I could do with less shopping and more outdoor activities. Traditional fare was cheap, A&W was nostalgic. Oh, that reminds me, their mugs are HUGE. I actually asked for half the size. I think the girl serving me must have thought that I was crazy.

The resort was alright, but I didn't get to try the pool :(

I think though, Sheraton Langkawi was still the best resort I've stayed in. Or maybe because I was young and impressionable at that time...Haha...

And it rained...part 2

So apparently, Sunday was pretty happening in Singapore too. I heard there was a storm here, while we had heavy rain in Batam.

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So we went for lunch on that Sunday when the rain lessened from a downpour. The taxi ride was...I have no idea how long it was - only that it was long enough to fall asleep in. (According to Google Maps, it's 51 min).

The restaurant's name is a mouthful - Saung Sunda Sawargi. It serves Indonesian fare and it's quite nice and cheap...In fact, I think it's cheaper than A&W!

Prices are around $2.50SG onwards. The fried beancurd, by the way, is to die for. Apparently the chicken is supposed to be good too, but just thinking of chicken makes me want to throw up, so yeah.

After that was more shopping, though this time, it was for souvenir. I don't know where the taxi driver took us, but it was a sleepy complex where only like 3 shops were opened - woodcraft shop, keropok shop and ...counterfeit goods shop (I did mention that they prevalent)

Then off to Megamall to find more of those drinks.

On the way back was a mosque - apparently this is the biggest mosque in Batam. It's near Megamall, if anyone wants to try see it.

And it rained

This is something I realised on my second day in Batam -

Paying with SGD is more worth it than paying by IDR. I don't know why, and it doesn't make any sense.

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So, after the go cart activity, we headed back to the resort, all hot and sweaty, where a nice soak in the stone tub was waiting for us.

Except that, minutes after stepping into our room, it started raining - heavily. So, there we soaked, with the rain drizzling on our faces and the hot water was...not so hot.

It continued raining well into the late afternoon and we couldn't do any other outdoor activities, so we headed out for lunch some 30 minutes away via taxi from the resort.

The great thing about Indo taxis is that, as long as you can squeeze in, you can go in! :)

A spot of hot

Second day started off HOT. It was the sort of weather Singapore was having for a while until a couple days ago. Seeing the weather so fine, we decided to walk a bit and made plans for the day.

We stumbled upon one of the activities that the resort had - the ATV ride trail. It costs $20/bike/hour. Apparently it was brand new - in fact, the machines had only just came. It looked pretty exciting but...!

Sadly though, long queue + hasty assembly, my dad decided not to risk it, so we trudged back to the lobby to ask about the go carts instead.

Go carts were a little bit lot more expensive, at $15 for a 10 minutes ride. The trail was just around 5 minutes ride from the resort and the trip there was free and I wasn't the one who was paying, so off we went.

I had some reservations when I saw the track and the go carts. I sniffed the helmet a little and hoped that it wouldn't stink my head much. But I guess the hot weather sort of dried out the sweat from previous users quite fast, so the smell wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I don't know why the person bothered saying the right pedal was for gas and left was for brakes, because, I didn't need to press the right pedal and the cart just moved on its own accord - and at such a high speed that I had to press on the brake pedal all the way!

However, generally, I did enjoy it...I would love to go for go carting again, and 10 minutes is kind of short!

Side-tracking a little, this drink is awesome on a hot day, and it costs only 2800IDR - that's around 38c. It's a fruit-tea product with the undertones of mint, so people who are allergic to mint...unfortunately, this is not for you.

Virgin trip

Next up was my virgin trip to a massage parlour.

After walking for 2 hours around BSC, I couldn't wait for the massage. Massages, I must admit, are not as over-rated as I think it was. And a good thick skin (not literallyl) is in order for the traditional body massage. But it was good!

I don't have pictures of the place, but here's a card.

At 130,000 RP (around $20) for 1.5 hours of full body massage, it's actually pretty cheap, I think. And well worth it.

The sore neck that had been bugging me for a while was gone! Voila! Just like that. It did come with some scary positions, and several scary sounding cracks though.

Dinner was after at Golden Prawn, but I was pretty conked out, so no pics from me, although I seem to recall posing for some photographs, in the fuzzy recesses of my brain cells.

About Golden Prawn, it's a seafood place where you can pick your choice of seafood and tell them how you want it cooked like. It's been around since forever. You can check it out at this website:

http://www.goldenprawnbatam.com/

Dubious shops

Where else would a Singaporean in Batam go to for a quick-fastfood stop-over?

Why, hello.

It's been a while since I've been around...

If you're at Nagoya Hills mall and you're feeling adventurous, you can try this name clone:



They serve indo foodfare like bakso and some chicken or something. Amazingly, it.has more than 1 branch...!

Even more amazing still, is that this is not the only "fc" in town.

We moved to BSC after that, and this was was when I realised, apparently counterfeit goods shops were everywhere.

Counterfeit items are not limited to LV.

Fancy angry birds animation? They've got it!