Sarawak | Edgar Chieng

I last visited Kuching back in 2004, and my trip to this time had shown me the drastic changes to the city from the last time I saw it. However the culture, the tradition and the local people remains the same, which is what I like about it. I filmed this video around the various street markets around the city, and also the waterfront.

I just have to film this as I might not be able to see these sort of scenes in my next trip as Kuching is rapid developing left right and centre to become a more modern city. I also went to Damai Beach Resort and stayed overnight with my family, it’s a 45-minutes drive from the city and is the nice getaway in the rather tropic and hot weather of Kuching.

I hope to visit Kuching again during my next trip and eagerly awaits to see the ever-changing city scape.

Sibu is a small town in the state of Sarawak in Malaysia. This is where I was born, a place where I grew up and spend most of my childhood time. This is a very unique town because it is such a culture-rich place where you will meet people of all kinds of background. You get to meet the Chinese, Malay, Indian, Iban and other minorities everyday and everywhere, in the shopping malls, in the food courts and even in the markets, and the best part is, everyone gets along just fine.

We were there to visit and catch up with my family whom I have not seen for many years. However, most importantly, we were there for my second wedding, following the one in Adelaide a week earlier. Everything went smoothly and as expected, being such a small town, words spread pretty quickly around town and the next thing we know, we were on the local newspaper from all the congratulatory messages by the nice people.

I have always taken Sibu for granted and I start to appreciate it more during this trip. I had the opportunity this time, to take my wife and her family to visit the famous indoor market, which is the largest of its kind in Malaysia. I have never stepped my foot in that market all my life, until now, and I was totally blown away by what it offers, partly because my previous memories of a market wasn’t quite a pleasant one (think wet, dirty, smelly market).

You get traders from all kinds of different background, with their produce, neatly arranged on top of their portable tables for sale at a ridiculously cheap price. Everything is clean, and dry (except for the seafood area), and the people are very nice and polite. Or maybe they were nice because I was carrying a DSLR camera and they thought I was doing a documentary on them, but the way some of the produce are being displayed were really amusing. Take a look at one of the pictures below where the live chickens were wrapped in newspaper and tied with a string for easier picking and carrying.

We also had the chance to visit the night street market, a car-parking compound during the day time and turned into a street-market after hours. It has been there since forever. As a kid I used to like this traditional Chinese cake (dipped with soy sauce) made by this family-owned business and my parents would to take me there once a week to have them take-away. When I went back this time, it seems like the family-owned business is no longer there, and by comparison, the number of traders have shrunk significantly compared to 20 years ago. I remembered the market being a really busy place at night, and they were a lot of pick-pockets because it is so packed, but these days, I would called it considerably safe.

My mom was also kind enough to drive us all the way out of town to the newly opened Chinese Buddhist campus. It is about an hour’s drive from town and it has the largest collection of Chinese temples in a compus in South East Asia. It has different kinds of temples, big and small, different buddhas, and it is built to the highest quality of the workmanship (Chinese labours were sent to work on the temples from China).