Day 4:
Started the day by visiting Serikin Market, a weekend market at the
Malaysia-Indonesia border. We head out at 7am as we wanted to reach there
before it gets too hot. Our ex-colleague, Yanthi was supposed to join us to the
market, but when we went to pour petrol, she noticed that there’s a nail on her
back left tyre. We changed the tyre but when we put the reserve tyre, it has no
air in it and when we want to add air into it, the air won’t go in. So, she
decided to take her car to the nearest workshop and we proceed with our plan to
Serikin Market.
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| Changing tyre of Yanthi's car |
We
departed to Serikin Market at 8am and the journey was about 1 hour. By the time
we reached there, it was a bit hot as the sun was already up. You can find
various items here, from clothes, shoes, to kitchen appliances and home decor.
People claimed that the items here are cheap. I would agree to some extent. The
girls bought shoes here for the price of RM14 per pair and it was very
comfortable. That is very cheap. But when I asked the price for sulam fabric
for baju kurung, it was about RM75. It’s cheaper than other parts of Malaysia
but a bit expensive compared to Bandung or Jakarta.
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| Serikin Market |
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| Some items that you can find at Serikin Market |
Most
of the sellers here are Indonesians and they don’t speak the same slang as the
people in Bandung or Jakarta. Believe me, I’ve tried when bargaining with them
and they didn’t understand. If you want to go here, please go early morning as
it gets very hot around 10am as it’s an open market. Once it started to get a
bit hot, we went into one of the stall here to have bakso. After we finished
eating, we decided to head back to Kuching as Teoh wasn’t feeling well. We
didn’t even walk to the end of the market as it was too hot at that time and we
saw that most of the stuff that they sell was a bit repetitive.
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| Bakso breakfast/morning tea |
Once
we’re back in Kuching, we parked the car at our hostel and head to Popular
Foodcourt for lunch before heading to Merdeka Plaza and Padang Merdeka. There’s
a navy exhibition at Padang Merdeka and we had a chance to sit in a helicopter
and have a feel of what’s inside the copter. After that, Bhai and Vaani head to
Natural Earth Museum while the rest of us head to Heroes Monument. We then head
to Tua Pek Kong Temple (we didn’t go inside, we just took photo outside) and met
the other two at Cat Statue for a typical tourist photo at Kuching. By this
time the sky looked very dark and rain might fall any second.
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| Pisang Goreng Cheese and Laksa Sarawak for lunch |
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| In a helicopter at Padang Merdeka |
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| Heroes Monument |
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| Tua Pek Kong Temple |
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| Kuching's Cat Statue |
Then,
we took a sampan ride to Kampung Boyan (it only costs 50 cent one way). We
wanted to go to Fort Margarita but we couldn’t find a way to it we decided to
head to Dayang Salhah Cake House for Sarawak Layered Cake. The layered cakes
here are freshly baked compared to the ones in the market. You can also sample
the various layered cake here before buying them.
We
asked the worker here the direction to Fort Margarita, he told us to take a
sampan ride to the other side. We paid the sampan man a bit extra to send us to
the other stop. The sampan man stopped us near the Astana’s entrance and we
were told by the stall man here that we cannot go to Fort Margarita from here.
But there’s an Orchid Park that we can visit if we wanted to. So, we ended up
going to the Orchid Park instead.
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| Sampan ride to Kampung Boyan |
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| Dayang Salhah Layered Cake |
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| Orchid Park |
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| Scanning our palm to enter the Orchid Park |
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| Orchids |
After
that, we head back to Waterfront and did some shopping before we went out for
dinner. The others went out for dinner with our ex-colleagues at Sharing
Western Food but I went out with my college friends at RJ Ayam Bakar where
Kacang treated us to dinner.
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| Dinner with Kacang and Jess |
After
that, we stopped at the foot of Mt Santubong for a pic (a place that I’ll put
on my list for my next visit to Kuching) and went back to our hostel area as
Shermynn left something at the hostel but she couldn’t find it. Even the hostel
workers said they didn’t see anything when they cleaned our rooms. So, we head
to Popular Foodcourt for lunch (This place became our favorite dining spot). After lunch, we head to the airport; sent our
rental car back there and went in ready to go back. Since we had time before
boarding the plane, we had tea at Coffee Bean. We reached KL at 9pm that night.
It was my first trip traveling in a big group. But, we had tons of fun and
would definitely travel with these crazy girls again.
Till then~
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