Day 378: Top spot!

After a leisurely breakfast of eggs and toast we packed up and hung around the chalet waiting for our friendly taxi driver to arrive, which he duly did at about 11.15 cab. We then drove back down to Kuching and checked into the Nova Hotel again. 

The part of Kuching in which the hotel is located is a bit bereft of nice places to eat (Taipan Food Corner is great, but there's only so many times you can eat noodles and wontons), so we checked out Trip Advisor to see what other options were available. We settled on a place called Top Spot Food Court, which seemed reasonably close by, and headed off. Although it looked pretty straightforward to get there, when we arrived at what we thought was the right place all we could find was a multi-storey car park. After a bit of sleuthing, we found a few signs and a rather skanky elevator, which we took to the top floor. Turning a corner, we came across a sea of tables and rows of food stalls, but no diners – thanks to our leisurely attitude to meal times we had managed to miss lunch. Our regular McDonald's was just across the road, so we slouched in there and filled up on production-line burgers and fries instead.

We spent the afternoon in the hotel room, enjoying the air conditioning and cable TV, before heading back out Top Spot again for dinner. This time, when we turned the corner, we found a sea of diners filling the tables and washing up against the food stalls. We did a quick circuit, peering at the brightly lit displays of seafood and vegetables at each of the stalls. We eventually chose one and received a quick tutorial on how it all worked. The idea was that you grabbed a tray, piled it up with the things you wanted to eat and then told them how you wanted it all cooked. They then weighed the various ingredients to work out the price and then handed it over to the kitchen. 

We opted for a nice big fish, a pile of prawns and a bigger pile of vegetables. After handing it all over we grabbed a nearby table and ordered some beers and soft drinks. While we waited for the food to arrive, I wandered over to a different stall and grabbed some satay sticks.

It didn't take long for our ingredients to return in cooked form, but unfortunately Kate hadn't specified how she wanted the vegetables prepared, and when they arrived, they were drowning in a frankly inedible sauce. She took them back to the stall and they very kindly agreed to replace them with something a bit more to our taste. The seafood dishes were delicious – as were the replacement veges – and we had a very pleasant meal, chatting while we ate to a lovely Dutch couple with whom we were sharing the table.

Day 377: Several steps too far

After rising late again and having some toast and eggs again, we headed out into the forest again. This time we set off up the hill on the reservoir track, which proved to consist of a lot of stone steps going up the side of the mountain. A lot of stone steps. Going up. And up. And up. When we reached a side track heading off to some lookouts, the girls refused to continue climbing. I decided that having climbed so many sodding steps, I couldn’t stop without seeing the actual reservoir, and continued up on my own. I soon met a guy coming down who assured me that it wasn’t much further so I called out to the others, but the girls still refused to go any higher. Kate was also keen to see the reservoir, however, so she continued up with me. The guy was right and we didn’t have much further to climb, but when we got there, we discovered that the climb definitely wasn’t worth the effort: the reservoir was just that – a small man-made pond with a fence around it. Kate quickly turned around and rejoined the girls, but I stayed and did a circuit in the hope that I would come across a snake or lizard or two out sunning themselves in the man-made clearing around the reservoir. I didn’t.

When I got back down to the others, we set off for the lookouts, which, as per our other lookout experiences in Southeast Asia, were pretty uninspiring, the haze from the Indonesian fires obscuring anything that might have been worth looking out at.

When we had set off this morning, Kate had said, ‘I want to see a snake today,’ and as we approached the last of the lookouts, she fulfilled her own request, spotting a juvenile viper on a pile of bark beneath a large tree.

It was around lunch time by now, so stopped on a big log for some tuna and cucumber sandwiches – but we didn’t linger as there were clouds of mosquitoes around intent on lunching on us.

As per usual, it was a hot and steamy day, so on the way back down we stopped for a quick immersion in a shallow pool in a small creek, struggling a little to find a pool big enough to get wet enough in. The track we were following was uncharacteristically well marked, with big slashed of red and white paint on the adjacent trees; however, Zoe and still managed to wander off it at one point when Sarah and Kate had gone off ahead of us. Thankfully, we realised our mistake relatively quickly and rejoined the others not long after.

When we got back to the chalet, we did a bit of clothes washing and hung it out just as the sun disappeared. There was another storm in the area, but this time there was a lot of thunder but no rain.

After dinner – pasta again - I went out on another night walk, but despite covering a lot of ground, I didn’t see much: just a couple of sleeping Gonocephalus and a few big phasmids.