There's not much more to write about our KL experience, which was excellent, but ended on Tuesday.

Last hotel breakfast. (I'd become a bit addicted to croissants with butter and kaya. This is BAD. So it was a good thing we were moving on.) Last round of wrestling with the suitcase. Taxi ride to the airport, where we discovered that Ya Kun Kaya Toast, one of our favourite Singapore food outlets, now has a branch. (Yum. Runny eggs. Crispy toast. Last indulgence...)

Then, a quick flight east, and we were back.

I had wondered how I would feel about returning to Kuching.

I'm very fond of the place. But we were imprisoned here for a long time last year, and I wondered whether the memory would hang over me a bit.

That doesn't seem to have happened. In fact, I find I'm really happy to be back.

Obviously, the last few days have been a bit hassly. We've been busy unpacking, sorting, restocking the cupboards (not to mention the fridge and the freezer), updating the electronic equipment, washing, cleaning, and generally getting our Sarawakian life back on track. But at the end of the day, it's a very pleasant little home that we have here, and it's nice to be in it again.

It has also been heart-warming to be welcomed back. By our landlady (with a lovely gift of local products). By the staff here. By the folks at Indah. By our "dining club" buddies.

I still wonder how the blog will turn out... Last year it became almost exclusively about Kuching (because for most of the year we couldn't go anywhere else). What, I'm thinking, can I now possibly find to talk about that's new...? We've done everything to death...

That will still be an issue, going forward, I think, once the first flush of long-time-since-we've-done-this enthusiasm is over. But -- God willing -- we will be exploring other parts of Sarawak. While we've got the chance... Before some other damn thing gets us...

And these first few days have actually brought lots of new things:







Another of our landlady's gifts brought a totally new discovery: nipah salt. Garam apong (like gula apong, the super-delicious sugar that we're not allowed to have very much of) is derived from the nipah palm. I'm a little blur on the exact process (there seem to be different accounts out there). But the basic story is that the nipah absorbs saline water from its environment, and the salt is then extracted through a time-consuming and complex business that involves harvesting, drying, burning, and boiling the ashes until the the water evaporates to leave a cake of salt. It has a great flavour -- salty, obviously, but also slightly smoky.


New to us, too, was Indah's ultra-delicious "ants' nest cake" (kue sarang semut). Lovely flavour, and a fantastically squidgy texture:


And new was our second covid booster... Very happy to have hoisted this on board, as our UK ones are more than five months old now.

Of course, there have been lots of golden oldies as well. The Big Padungan Cat is nattily dressed for Gawai (see the pic at the top). We've enjoyed our first river sunrise, and the first of what will undoubtedly be a long line of favourite laksas (this one is from Madam Lau at Da Apple):




So, all in all, Kuching is being very kind to us, and we're very thankful.