Hi Everyone,

  We leave Sunday for our 2 night passage up to Miri.  Saturday we will attend the Rainforest Music Festival and the Crafts fair at the Cultural Village.  Musical groups from around the world perform.  Hopefully it won’t rain!  It rained again last night which is good for our water tanks.

Ru

Get Going Sox!!!!

 

Santubong

We are anchored about a mile from the mouth of the Santubong River in Sarawak, the largest state in Malaysia. Kuching is the capital and the small more historic waterfront area is quite charming. We make the 40 minute trip about every other day. We’re usually hot and tired enough from the trip to town that we spend the next day on the boat being lazy or doing a few chores. Tomorrow morning when we run the genset I’ll do some laundry. It rained last night helping refill our water tank. Our side awnings on the pilot house have hoses that drain the water into our tanks. Since we have been very conservative with our water, our 250 gallon water tank was still half full so now we have a tank that is almost 3/4^th full; enough to do a laundry. Many cruisers don’t have washing machines so take their laundry to town. Funny when the highlight of your stay is finally getting to do a laundry. Lovely as Kuching is, it’s not so different from Kota Kinabalu or Terengganu; so the urge to explore isn’t so strong; that and the bus back and forth. We don’t need to buy souvenirs; no place to put them. We stocked up on food and drink in Terengganu and because we eat a fairly large (for us) lunch, we only eat light snacks for dinner. I make a meal of cabbage/carrot/onion salad most days. Add a bit of cheese and that’s it.

On our “stay on the boat days,” about 11:30 am we take the dinghy to the jetty and walk into Santubong for lunch. It takes about 15 minutes or so walking steadily. There are about 3 small restaurants; but we always go to the same one. Randal likes it because the food is quite good and quite cheap. I like it because it is the furthest into the small village giving us more exercise. Most days there’s a buffet of about 6 dishes as well as lots of steamed white rice. We load up our plates, each get a drink and it comes to about $4 US. Usually there are 2 or 3 tables filled with local men eating lunch. On their “weekend” days some families are there too.

Each one of the serving trays has something different, fish, meat, chicken, veggies; most in some kind of spicy sauce. We ask what each is and then help ourselves usually avoiding the fish which have too many bones. Randal’s only regret is that they don’t serve beer. The place is run by women in shorts and t-shirts so it doesn’t seem to be a Muslim restaurant. But no beer. I have iced-lemon tea and Randal

100 Plus.

The view across the street includes Mount Santubong.

The best part of Santubong are the incredibly friendly welcoming people. Everyone says hello with a smile! They seem quite glad we are here. All of the children shout hello, ask where we are from and where we’re going. Our answers are USA and for a walk.

I’m guessing they were on the way back to school. Many of the children had on white, tops, head coverings or sneakers and they were all very white and crisp and clean. All of the school kids looked crisp and clean.

There seem to be two schools in the village or this wasn’t a school. Not sure. This was at the far end of the village and there was a school in the middle of the village near the restaurant.

This house was built on the beach at the end of town. It was larger and more modern than any other that we saw; not typical of the village homes.

Santubong seems to be upbeat and active. I have no idea about the level of income, but there is a tiny library and people seem to be enjoying life. And the children look happy what has to mean a lot.