We were going to Kuching (which is in Borneo - East Malaysia) to see the 11th Annual Rainforest World Music Festival, an event where music groups from all over the world come together to perform and share their music with a very international audience. The festival took place at the Sarawak Cultural Village, about 40 minutes outside of Kuching's city center.
Upon arrival in Kuching, the three of us were picked up by a car sent by our hostel, the Borneo Seahare. Our hostel choice turned out to be a great one. The place we were staying was small, clean, and, most importantly, full of fun people and a helpful staff. Wesley, one of the hostel's owners, immediately sat down with us to tell us about how things worked at the Seahare, where to go and what to do in Kuching (he even marked things on a city map for us), and got us excited for the music festival. All this for only $6 a night...pretty great.
Then it was time to explore. We spent the rest of Thursday just wandering around the town, and we discovered the picturesque river walk, two of many cat statues around the city, and a gorgeous rooftop view of Kuching and the river. We ended Day One in Kuching with dinner at a charming restaurant called The Junk about a block away from our hostel, so named because its decor consisted of mismatched odds and ends, which made it quirky and fun. The three of us split an order of bruschetta, salmon gnocci, and vegetarian lasagna and were beside ourselves with excitement. No rice, no eating with our hands, no fish with bones. Life was good.
On Friday we woke up bright and early to pay a visit to the Semenggoh Orangutan Sanctuary and watch the orangutans eat breakfast. The 40-minute bus ride there was peaceful and cool, and we arrived at the sanctuary with just a few other tourists (we made it before the official feeding time). We walked down into the forest reserve, past orchid gardens and fernariums, and finally came to the feeding platform where reserve workers were feeding a mother and her baby and also a young male orangutan. They were beautiful animals with wise, kind eyes and fuzzy fur, and we couldn't believe we were able to stand so close to them. Everything the orangutans did was impressive. Watching these flexible animals swing deftly from branch to branch, grabbing onto branches with their hand-like feet, was hypnotizing. Their breakfast was all different kinds of fruit, and at one point the mama orangutan opened a coconut - a job that warrants the use of a machete for humans - with ease, using her teeth alone.
Basking in the glow of our remarkable encounter with the orangutans, we returned to the hostel for a quick rest before heading out to the Sarawak Cultural Village for the music festival. On the way to the shuttle bus to the festival, we went on a semi-frantic search for large plastic bags and ponchos, because Wesley at the hostel warned us about rain that night. It was somewhat ironic because we had the hardest time trying to convince shop workers to give us large bags, and usually in Malaysia we are refusing the multitude of plastic bags that we are constantly being given. We finally ended up with some bags, though, and caught the shuttle bus out to the festival.
The Rainforest World Music Festival was a three-day event, but we were just attending the first two days. We showed up early - at around 4:00 - because the festival consisted of much more than just music. Before bands started playing at around 7:30, we visited a few workshops where musicians from the different groups got together and played music together, sometimes explaining their instruments and introducing the different performers. It was a chance for audience members to answer questions and interact with the musicians.
In addition to the workshops, there was an extensive craft fair going on, featuring handicrafts from countries all over Asia (even Korea was represented). We enjoyed looking through the crafts and also exploring the grounds of the cultural village.
By 7:30, our bellies full of yummy international food, we had picked our place on the lawn and were ready to hear a band from Trinidad and Tobago get things started. Unfortunately, just then it started to rain and the lawn quickly turned into a mud pit. We were so thankful for our plastic bags, rain jackets, and ponchos!
Despite the rain, the concert was a huge success. My two favorite groups were from Portugal and Greece. The Greek group was a quartet consisting of two lyra players, a strange guitar-type thing, and drums like bongos. Their music was classical, Irish-sounding at times, and absolutely mesmerizing. The Portuguese group was so much fun. They were rock and rap (Jason Mraz-style) but had a dynamic flute player, a dorky-but-cool lead singer, and a female vocalist who sounded like the girl from Evanescence blended with Shakira. They were really high energy and amazing.
The atmosphere there was different from any festival or concert I've ever been to. There was a huge array of people there, and things were full but not crowded. No long bathroom lines, plenty of room on the lawn...things like that.
A final Kuching memory was a visit to The Cat Museum on Saturday. You know those movies you see sometimes that are so bad they're good? This was the museum equivalent of one of those movies. It was as though someone had gone door to door around a nursing home and asked lots of little old ladies for their cat figurines, and then just put them in cases all over the museum. For those of you who are Harry Potter fans, it was kind of like Delores Umbridge's office had exploded in there. Intermittently, there were sections on things like "Cat Whiskers," "Cats In Egypt," "Cat's Sleeping Patterns" and on and on. We laughed so much during our 45-minutes or so in that museum, and had such a good time. Our visit to Kuching was certainly enhanced by The Cat Museum, and we wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
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