Our day-trips-with-hire-car continue...

The Hakka Association Cemetery, which extends over a number of small hills at 14th mile on the Kuching-Serian road, dates back to 1969, and houses thousands of graves.


Quiet and pleasant, it's a good place for a morning walk, especially when the mist is still draping the wooded slopes:




The tombs are little works of art, resplendent with tiling, sculpture, and calligraphy:













From the cemetery, you can go the long way round to Siburan (target of that aborted bus trip the other week). Definitely worth doing, as it's a really pretty road:




Siburan is small-town and quirky, very lovable in its own way:






As an added bonus, we found a really awesome pan mee place. Pan mee is one of my favourite noodle dishes, and you don't actually find it that often over here in East Malaysia. But this lady, operating out of Hiap Lee, does a really good one. Hand-cut noodles, with the perfect degree of chewiness; all the requisite ingredients (pork, ikan bilis, cangkok manis, and shredded mushroom); a really tasty broth; and we added an egg each for extra oomph. She also does speciality pan mee noodles. She'd sold out of the spinach ones, but Nigel scored the last of the pumpkin pan mee. Together, these two bowls of deliciousness came to MYR 13 (GBP 2.20)...





Now, you can easily incorporate Sam Shan Kuet Bong Temple, located at 7th mile in Kota Sentosa, into this same itinerary. It's handily on your way back. But, for complicated reasons, we did the cemetery and Siburan yesterday, and the temple today.

There's not much information available on this place of worship, but it seems it is over 100 years old.

All these temples are photogenic, but we were particularly struck by the eyes here...




Again, it's right by the main road, so it's not exactly peaceful. But we never tire of the iconographical exuberance:












A good visit, then, rounding off a pleasant little Chinese interlude.