I'll start with the now-all-too-predictable bad news.

Malaysia as a whole has been regularly clocking over 17,000 covid cases a day recently. Last weekend our cumulative case count went past one million. Sarawak's numbers are rising too.

As of yesterday, Malaysia had 179,179 active cases; an overall infectivity rate of 1.15; and a death toll of 8,725.


As of 29 July, despite herculean efforts, just 27% of the adult population country-wide had had two doses of vaccine. Sarawak, however, is doing much better in this regard, with 61.3% of its adult population double-vaccinated. (We're not yet in that happy number, unfortunately. We're still over a week out from our second shot.)

News from Indonesia and Viet Nam is also not encouraging.

As a planet, we have such a long way to go with this still...

Anyway, this week we celebrated the anniversary of our return to Sarawak. It was bitter-sweet, as you can imagine.

I said at the end of last month that I don't really know whether our decision to return last year was the right one. A lot of bad stuff has happened since then. And we seem to have copped the double whammy of quite stringent restrictions stretching over an extended period, and (as yet) no real relief in sight from the sense of danger and need for constant vigilance.

Nevertheless, we still feel a lot of love for Sarawak.

I'm happy that we've been around to lend our little bit of support to local businesses badly hit by all the restrictions. I'm grateful that we're on the way to being vaccinated, and that we've been well provided for here (we never scored a single supermarket delivery in the UK during the pandemic, whereas we have accounts with three here, and the range of ready meals that can be delivered, when you feel like a bit of a change, is endless).

And at the end of the day, it's very interesting being here, even if our radius is still highly circumscribed. I'm looking forward to a change, most definitely. But it's certainly not the case that I'm tired of Kuching. 

Part 5 of the Kuching Old Bazaar series came out recently. (The full playlist is here, if you've yet to catch up with these little gems.) This last one is more tourist promotion than oral history, but it will give you a good idea of the places where we walk, and why we find this city so fascinating.

Now that we can go beyond our neighbourhood, one of our get-out-early circuits has become a particular favourite. We set off about 4.50. By the time we've reached Carpenter Street, the early-bird eateries are starting to open up. The riverfront is still blissfully jogger-free, and the mosques all along the banks are sounding the first call to prayer.






By the time you get to the far end of the riverfront, the coffeeshop scene is really coming alive. You can smell laksa spices, and baking bread. The ice-works is busy cracking ice (but then it always is).

The area around Petanak Market is bustling now (it's maybe 6.20 by this time). Big bags of bean sprouts and tofu sit around waiting for buyers or sellers. Vegetables are being rowed up like soldiers. Vans with plastic bags full of something (what?) await their turn in the distribution process.



It's always nice to pause at the brightly lit Mazu shrine, and spend a little time figuring out how many fishing boats are out, listening to the mosques and the chickens on the other side of the river, and assessing the state of the sunrise.

And then you trot home.

This kind of thing makes up for a lot of aggro and anxiety.

Anyway, we duly marked the anniversary of our return with another of our now-customary multi-day celebrations.

So, one day, we had the version of Sarawak's kolo mee that is currently our favourite: kolo lao shu fan. Another day, I made my patent terong asam soup (cook onion, carrot, radish, and canned tomatoes with some belacan, chilli, and fish sauce; skin the terong asam that you have cooked separately, and add it and its cooking liquid to the mix; blend it all up; and top it with a dollop of sardine mash or a handful of ikan bilis, plus a spoonful of Indah's terong asam sambal). Another day, we ordered lor mee from Foochow Estay. Foochow food has been one of the great discoveries of our time in Sarawak, and this lor mee is one of the nicest I've ever had. The gravy is just the right thickness, it's delicately infused with star anise, and it's laden with pork and tofu.



I'll close with this perceptive and beautifully illustrated reflection on home by Linh, a Hanoi-based researcher and artist. I get frustrated by our limitations, as I'm sure those of you who read this blog will have noticed, but there's a lot in Linh's final paragraph that resonates: "My life these days feels quiet. No trips, no busy fieldwork or deadlines, these are summer days of solitude and quiet joy of doing exactly what I like: sketching, writing, reading, listening to podcasts, thinking and reading some more... I’m slowly relishing the feeling of being at home -- being myself, doing what I like, savoring what I love."

I don't know whether our decision to return last year was the right one, but that's not Sarawak's fault.