Day 4: JB to Kuching

I knew Friday was going to be a good day after the wonderful breakfast we had at our hotel in Johor Bahru. It was the first time we hadn't had a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich for breakfast and the open buffet of typical Malay cuisine was both inviting and overwhelming. The feast consisted of noodles and vegetables, rice and chicken, salad, cereal, pastries, daal, bread, jams and fruit. Unfortunately the Indian feast from the Thursday was still too present to be able to try most of the treats and so I settled for dragon fruit, watermelon, muesli and a little daal and fresh Indian bread. I was a little surprised at how heavy and savory the food was for breakfast but it was a good chance to see and smell a lot of local treats.

After breakfast Zoë, Jenna and I decided to explore as much of the city on foot as we could. We set of to find a beautiful, impressive building that we had spotted from our hotel room. As we approached we noticed signs of snipers and it didn't take long to realize we probably weren't supposed to enter the premises. Once we saw some soldiers marching around we figured that it was a government building. 

As we continued on our little exportation of JB we found a Sari shop that we had seen the day before. We had all been thinking of it so much that we figured we wouldn't regret buying them. Who knows the next time we will be in Malaysia? The difficult part was choosing one sari because each one was stunning. The lady working at the store was an excellent business woman and sealed the deal by helping us try the sari's on. After some smooth bartering Zoë brought the price down from 237 ringots (Malaysian currency) for three to 185 ringots for three silk saris. We were on cloud nine. 

That afternoon we walked, took a bus to the airport and flew to the city of Kuching. One of the biggest cities in the state of Sarawak, east Malaysia. The view from the plane and the drive to our hotel, full of rivers and rainforest, both proved that we are going to be staying in a beautiful state for the next week.

We welcomed the sabbath at delicious a North Indian restaurant (up until this point we had only had South Indian cuisine). As we headed back to the Grand Margherita hotel, we sang worship songs along the river walk over looking the Sarawak river as the lights danced across the water.