Bits of the past in Kuching

A short visit to Kuching, Sarawak to attend a niece’s wedding, gave me some time to roam around the city and look at things which are no longer seen over at Peninsula Malaysia, at least along the west coast.  When one talks about heritage, one usually thinks of old building and architectural structures and forget about the living heritage.  Living heritage are sometimes more valuable – it’s the old ways of life – which may disappear soon together with the last generation of practitioners.  Here, in Kuching, I found, much to my delight, that much of what has disappeared back home, are still in practice.  For instance, at the famous waterfront to the Sarawak River, old fashioned boats are still being used to ferry passengers across the river for only 50 sen per person.   That rate belongs to the 1970’s for a ride across a river in any kind of boat.   This kind of trade – as a boatman – has long disappeared in West Malaysia.  One just can’t earn enough to sustain a living, doing this. Modernised form of transportation and improved road infrastructures has made this form of trade obsolete.  

Talking of modernised form of transportation, I noticed that although new and air-cond. buses are now moving people around the city, the old-fashioned, open-windowed buses are still going around doing its public service, faithfully.  The design, the paintwork and even the seats are still the same for the last half of a century or so.  Of course, such buses are also still plying along rural routes in West Malaysia, but over here, they are very well maintained. Riding on these buses brings back memories of how I have to change stage buses three times for a journey from Ipoh to Penang in the early 70’s.  And, all those buses looked like this one that I saw in Kuching.

As a youngster, I used to enjoy ice-balls.  Those days ice-balls cost only 10 sen each.  They are made by pressing shaved ice into a ball, the size of a sepak-takraw ball, and then had red syrup or sarsi poured over and into it.  On a hot day, sucking the red syrup out of the ice-ball is delightful.  Now, no one makes ice-ball this way any more.  Then, you know what, there is this stall by the side if a road in Kuching which is still selling something that is so similar to our ice-balls.  They called it ice kantong. Same principle, shaved ice and then squeeze the ice onto a stick and pour syrup over it!!    On that  hot afternoon, it was selling like hot cakes!  The next thing that caught my attention was the tool the hawker used to shave the ice.  No one use such a thing back home anymore – it is a wooden ice shredder!  You just push a block of ice over the blade sticking out of a wooden stool-like equipment and the ice is shaved.  This was used by the cendol man, the ice kacang man and the ice-ball man, long, long ago over in West Malaysia.  This is what I meant by living heritage.  This man is doing it exactly just the way his grandfather did. 

         

Making Ice Kantong

Still using an old wooden ice-shredder