It's hot here at the moment. Hot as in "hot-so-that-the-locals-mention-it's-hot" hot. Which means we're currently getting whacking thunderstorms and lovely sunrises:



Last week, I brought you up to date with the Big Flagpole. This week -- da DAH! -- we have flag pictures!

It's not easy snapping flags, I tell you. Kuching is not noted for being a windy city, and you have to have patience to capture the flag standing out from the pole, rather than drooping wearily down it. But we persevered, and here are a few pics from various vantage-points.:




Now the flag has come down again... So I'm not quite sure what's going on there, nor yet when we're going to get rid of the crane.

Food is always part of the Kuching diary, and this week we got to try two places that were new to us, both featuring fish.

Woo Pin Fish Head Noodles was the first. This is a new eatery that recently opened quite close to us (it's apparently part of a chain).


What they sell is fish noodles of various kinds, not actually fish HEAD noodles. But as we're not particularly adept at fighting with fish heads, that wasn't a problem at all.


The soup was very tasty, the portions were generous, and according to Nigel, who chose the grouper rather that the generic "fish", it's worth paying the MYR 6 extra for that. But it's not the cheapest of cafes, and so probably won't feature regularly on our breakfast round.

We had Friday dinner with friends at the Batu Lintang food court, which is one of Kuching's most venerable evening seafood places. This outlet has been serving up quality stuff for many decades, one of our friends told us. If our experience is anything to go by, it's easy to see why.



In terms of taste and value, it would be hard to beat. Six big dishes (more than enough for seven people), plus rice, came to MYR 188 (GBP 32).



And finally, I wrote last week about the sculpting of one of our local temples. There's an interesting article here by Priscilla Tawie, who interviews Kong Ping Ming, the sculptor involved. "Everything about sculpting is difficult," he says. "But I do it anyway because to me, the preservation and conservation of our Chinese culture is essential." Amen to that.

The project will take about a year. It took 40 days just to draw the designs on the walls with a calligraphy brush. So I'm now even more interested in watching this work progress...

And as an added bonus, we got to find out from the article the name of the temple, which had always eluded us... It's Tiong Hock Kiong, and so will no longer feature in these pages as "the temple by Petanak Market".