As advertised in last week's post, we're heading overseas tomorrow.

It's been a busy week, but a pretty successful one. Top of the list of achievements was a visit to the bank, and the fixing of a problem that had been going on since mid-December (as this had involved a complete inability to pay money out of our account to third parties, and as lengthy conversations via various channels had failed to resolve it, we were majorly relieved to see it sorted).


Less momentous, but still satisfying, was the completion of a round of pre-departure house-cleaning. Dull, but hey, you can't go away and leave your house a mess... And cleaning does mean you get plenty of story-listening time.

We celebrated Valentine's Day. But not on the day, because we don't celebrate things on the day any more... Much to our surprise, Kuching suddenly sprouted a rash of pop-up gift stalls. I don't know if this happened last year (we were away), or if it used to happen before the covid plague struck, and has now resumed. Any which way, it was new to us. I hope all those bears have gone to good homes...



Our Valentine's celebration came two days later when we headed out to sample Sarawak's first locally produced craft beer, named 1602 in honour of the year of publication of one of the earliest maps of Borneo. We tried out Southside Cafe and Bistro, which has a slight British vibe (good preparation for our upcoming journey):




(By the way, on the subject of Sarawakian alcohol, check out this great story about tuak. Glad we'll be back in time for Gawai...)

Anyway, back to our "Valentine's" night. It made a nice change to see the river in its evening tuxedo, rather than its dawn dressing-gown:



And we rounded off with coffee at the Healer Cafe (part of the Think & Tink complex):




We marked our last full day in Kuching for a while by having brekkie with Angie at Zheng Shan Mei. Would really recommend this place: Nice dim sum; awesome prawn noodles; excellent price.





To close, here's the rest of the week in pictures:








Dear old Kuching, we will miss you, as always...