A city named "Cat"! Michelle HAD TO STOP HERE!

The famous "Happy Bachelor" croc, held in control by Sue's visegrip headlock. This commemorates a crocodile that is known to have eaten at least 35 people. Suck on that Francis the Pig!
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Kuching is the capital of Malaysian Borneo, and the name really does translate directly to "Cat" in Bahasa Malay.  Fortunately for Susan, the city turned out to have a lot more to offer than just the cat museum, though Michelle insisted that we visit.

Our hostel was pretty neat, and we met up with a few other Western travellers.  Besides being a hostel, the owners offered tours, meals, movies and tattooing.  (Un)fortunately "the mom" was on vacation, so those services were not currently available.  Especially the tattooing.

Fortunately for Susan, the city turned out to have a lot more to offer than just the cat museum, though Michelle insisted that we visit

Sue and Mr. Wahn entering an Iban longhouse
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As evidenced by the statuary, the government definitely capitalises on the name, the cat museum is actually housed IN the Town Hall.  We did stop in there, but it was a little disappointing...the very bad taxidermy of the wild cats was especially disturbing, as was the collection of Chinese artwork featuring two-headed, no-butted cats.  There were a lot of really pretty pieces, some very elegant Egyptian and Asian art...but there was also a collection of cat greeting cards and three Hello Kitty exhibits.  Susan was in and out in 20 minutes and spent a while waiting for Michelle to get bored.

Melayu dancers getting ready for a performance
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We also visited the crocodile farm, mostly at Michelle's insistence, and it turned out to be pretty neat...if a little smelly at times.  We arrived just in time for feeding, and it was pretty spectacular.  Full grown brackish water crocodiles thrashing violently over buckets of fish tossed down from the keepers' high perch.  As an additional display of ferocity, pig guts were strung across the pond-pen and dangled above the hungry crocs.  It turns out that apart from the actual act of snapping at food, crocodiles are pretty ponderous and kind of boring.  We waited about 20 minutes, but were rewarded with the sight of 13 and 14-ft crocodiles leaping about 8 ft out of the water.  The farm housed around 2000 crocodiles ranging in age from 2 weeks to 45 years...hence the occasional smelliness.  They also had a few sun bears, which Michelle was pretty excited about, having done a grade-six research project on them, and some dragon-fish which you could throw scraps of bread to.  The dragon fish were really cool, 5 ft long and shaped more like eels...if eels were a foot and a half wide.  The only depressing bit was the great sea turtle, sadly sitting in a stagnant pool with coins all over his shell and in the water.

Susan and the cat statues.
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That done, we could focus on the neat cultural stuff that Kuching had to offer, especially about the native people, who make up the vast majority of the Bornean population.  The commonly perceived Bornean native, with bowl-shaped hair and blow darts, is actually a minority group called Panan.  The vast majority of the native people belong to the longhouse-dwelling Iban tribe, and we learned that we had arrived just in time for the annual Iban harvest festival.  It turns out that many of the Iban have moved into the cities, but most still live in the jungle.  Some longhouse communities remain traditional, while others have satelllite dishes, internet and regular tourist campouts.

The croc jump! Ooooh, aaaaah....Michelle is godawful at action photography!
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We hired a city guide, Mr. Wahn, who lives in Kuching but grew up in an Iban longhouse.  He told us a ton of interesting information, and led us to the Sarawak cultural village, sort of like a really well done Fort Edmonton Park, where each of the six main tribal groups has a pavilion.  He seemed to know everyone in the village, and told us a lot about each exhibit, especially the Iban one.  We got to see traditional dance and music, and Michelle even participated in a traditional wedding "hoedown".  He encouraged us to visit the cultural museum and it was pretty fascinating to see all the artifacts upstairs...after passing through another creepy taxidermy exhibit on local wildlife.  We also viewed an exhibit detailing the local history of pottery, where pieces had recently been discovered as old as 50 000 years.  We were definitely prepared to venture further North and see some of the great caves and mountains in the back country!  We arranged to fly in to a city called Miri, a jumping off point (like Canmore) for the National Parks.