Woke up at the ungodly hour of 415 am to catch a 6am flight to Kuala Lumpur, and then connected onto a Medan bound flight. Interestingly, I was on the exact same plane for both flights, so there was no excuse if my bag didn't make it (it did).
The good news is that my gamble/strategic decision of arriving early and hoping to spend as little time in possible in Medan has indeed paid off. I am on a shuttle to Lake Toba that departs in 90 minutes.
First impressions of Medan--loud, crazy, and chaotic--it definitely reminds me of Egypt. One of my biggest pet peeves at airports is when they let non-essential personnel into supposedly secured areas (ie customs areas), and they allow all sorts of porters and touts into the customs area. Through my selective bargaining, I have already saved a grand total of about $1.50! I know I could have done more, but my goal was to get in and out as soon as possible. It will be the same coming back--go to a travel agent and see if I can get on the next Yogyakarta bound flight after I get into Medan.
Anyway, I liked Kuching, but thought it was a city with a ton of potential that wasn't using it. It has a pretty long waterfront bordering the Sarawak River (ideal places one would think for a bar/watering hole, etc.), but it was largely just small mom and pop ice cream and fast food stands.
Went to Semenggoh, which was a 30 minute drive away--the place is a wildlife refuge built in secondary forest, and is home to an orangutan rehabilitation center. Basically, they bring in injured, orphaned, or animals rescued from the pet trade and markets, and teach them how to fend for themselves with the goal of eventually releasing them back into the wild.
Spent the last half of the day wandering around Kuching, which has a pretty interesting (if bizarre history)--it served as the capital of the White Rajahs of Sarawak--the Brooke family, the eldest of which, James, helped the sultan of Brunei fend off pirates, and was awarded land grants in return, which he and his family expanded to the point where Sarawak now dwarfs Brunei--Brooke is the main inspiration for Conrad's Lord Jim, and his description of "Patusan" is very reminiscent of Kuching.
The town has a feel of a port city--and I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way (ie red light district)--instead, it has a bunch of old streets and buildings clustered around the waterfront that have lost little of their original feel. There are also some fairly pretty Brooke era buildings, the most famous of which being the Courthouse, Fort Margherita (from which the photo was taken), and the Astana (Palace).
Its a place worth visiting, and while I was able to get done with the town by 3 in the afternoon, it makes a good base to do some daytrips to some of Sarawak's offerings.
How about this for a interesting case of "small world syndrome": A german man and his filipino wife were on the same ferry with me from Kota Kinabalu to Brunei and we shared the bus ride to Bandar Seri Begawan. When I got to the Miri airport to fly to Bario two days later, lo and behold there they were waiting for their delayed flight to Kuching.
When I went to the orangutan center yesterday morning, guess who was also there? The very same couple. Later that day, as I was taking the boat back from Fort Margherita, they were just getting off the boat to go to Fort Margherita. We didn't plan this out--it was just an example of coincidence happening four separate times.
Liked the hostel I stayed at in Kuching--though it needed to be about three or four blocks closer, the staff were unbelievable. The owner himself drove me to the Orangutan place (and back), and also got up to take me to the airport at 445 in the morning, even though I was perfectly willing to take a cab--he was making the airport run three separate times this morning.
It is at this point that I would like to bring to everyone's attention that a disturbing epidemic is spreading through SE Asia: young school age males are chronically addicted to playing first person shooter games on the internet computer. Every internet cafe I've gone to is full of middle schoolers (and younger) hunched over their machines, looking to blow each others brains out (in the virtual world, of course). At least in Malaysia they have the sense to not provide speakers. Not so in Indonesia.
Anyway, I'm off to Toba in about an hour--I'm not sure if I'll have internet access while I'm there, so apologies if this isn't updated for the next couple of days.
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