A Walk Along the Kuching Waterfront Reveals Splendor and Noodle Goodness

This stunning building is almost finished on the banks of the muddy Sarawak River in downtown Kuching. It’s the new parliament building, as grand as a palace and something unlike anything you’d see in the US. We prefer our edifi to be blocky, and big, this one is grand, tall and soars toward the sky.

In this lovely city of 500,000, the riverbanks are for walking. I took a stroll there yesterday and approached a noodle vendor. She shooed me away, saying to sit over there and I’ll make your noodles. No, I said, i want to watch you. So she taught me how she mixed the cold noodles with the spices the sugar, the egg, the sprouts, and hotsauce and the chiles and stir fried them up for a glorious bowl of goodness.

I want to sell these noodles in my cafe but I can’t imagine old cranky Dick the health inspector going for my big wok out there on Sugarloaf St. as I toss together fresh cooked orders of these delicious noodles. Oh well.

Then I strolled down along the brick walkway and watched long, long boats being rowed by enthusiastic cheering rowers, two by two, grunting and powering these colorful pointy boats through the muddy water. Clouds threatened above, and then, a torrent, and I retreated back to the noodle shop with cover, and a television playing a soap opera in Malay that no one paid attention to. The rowers got drenched, as did the coxswain, still yelling into his megaphone.