KUCHING

A couple of days ago an article came out in the newspaper about Kuching (or Cat-city), the capital of Sarawak, Malaysia's largest state located in East Malaysia. Once again Kuching has been voted as one of the cleanest cities in the world!!! Wow! What an honour!

Though I am not from Kuching, I feel proud nonetheless. I have been to Kuching twice, about 2 years ago. Actually it was twice in 2 consecutive weekends! How come? Because the first time I went, it was for a neurology conference which was supposed to take place at one of the hotels there. Unfortunately, my eyes must have played some tricks on my mind and I got the dates wrong! So, there we were (my wife and I), at the Kuching airport, in a state of shock after realising my blunder, with no where to go and not knowing a single soul in Kuching!!!

The choice was either to fly back on the next available flight or stay on and take an unexpected holiday. We chose the latter and we had a whale of a time (the expenditure for which I am still slowly paying off....but that's another story).

And we fell in love with Kuching! It is one of the cleanest cities I have ever been to. The food was nothing less than divine and the people, ultra-friendly! It was indeed pleasant to shop at the many bazaars and not come away being cursed by the shop keeper should I decide not to buy his wares. Not in KL, in Petaling Street, they would have cursed all your forefathers and future generations as well; that's assuming you haven't been mugged yet!

The following weekend I went back to Kuching again, this time for the neurology conference (finally got the dates right). This time round, I became a kind of an expert around the place, bringing people here and there to eat or shop. I don't think anyone figured out how come I knew the place so well. :-)

Given a chance I would love to go back there again. It's such a nice and clean city. I really think it's unnecessary to take 'lawatan sambil belajar' trips overseas to look at other people's toilets when we have a truly clean city to view right at our door steps.