It all started with Sunday breakfast at the New Happy Cafe, where we'd arranged to meet up with a family we know.

We'd been here before, and I'd raved about the pao fan. But it's always a different experience sitting down to eat with locals, and after long, detailed conversations had been held with the wait staff, dishes materialized that we wouldn't even have realized were available.

These are the longevity noodles (always add extra rice wine, says our friend, with a big grin):


We also ordered fried rice cakes, char chu mee (noodles and fish in a rich gravy), and char hong ngan (the one with the tangy mustard greens).

Really, a veritable Fuzhou feast.

Then we all went off in their car to drop the 16-year-old son off at the golf course, where he had a full day's practice ahead of him in preparation for an upcoming competition. We'd never seen inside the green and hallowed grounds of Kuching's golf course, which is a very extensive one.

After that, we thought we'd be heading home. But our friends were up for an excursion, and having established that we'd never been to Serikin, that was where we headed.

Serikin is right on the Indonesian border, and before the pandemic it had a very extensive weekend market, mainly stocked with goods from across the frontier. These days, it's a somewhat smaller affair, but it's still an interesting place to shop. Some of the traders are from Indonesia, some from Malaysia.



For us, it was quite nostalgic seeing Indonesian products, and hearing Indonesian voices, and of course, you do end up buying stuff...

We eschewed the mysterious substance that makes you feel first cold then hot, and after that heals your muscle pain... But we did succumb to some material (for spare sofa covers) and to some of the amazing range of keripik (like crisps, only more heavy-duty) that was on offer. Yam chips are fairly widely available, but breadfruit chips and salty (as opposed to sweet) banana chips are really rare.



But there are all sorts of other wares to be checked out:





And it's also a picturesque little place in its own right:



On the way back, we stopped off at Jagoi, where there's a farmer's market, and took the opportunity to have a drink (served, in our case, by a cheerful but terminally confused lady who got almost every order wrong):


Lastly, we called in at the Bao Ling Shan cave temple, which we'd last visited in August 2019:


And, having reached the outskirts of Kuching, we nobly declined a visit to Sunny Hill Ice-Cream, even though we were REALLY CLOSE.

All in all, an unexpected but very pleasant trip.