Kuching General Tips by Robdaz

Favorite Thing: The Main Bazaar is the oldest street in Kuching dating back to 1864.. It comprised of a row of two-storey shop houses.

Most of the shops now sell local and regional Antiques, Souvenirs ,Arts and Crafts . This is mainly targeted at tourists who usually walk the areas.

The prices are reasonably but you will need to bargain. Shop around and compare prices as most shop sell similar items.


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Favorite Thing: India Street is a designated as a pedestrian walkway. This is where the very small numbers of Kuching's original early indians population lived and do their business. Most of Indians here are Indian muslims and were originally involved in foreign exchange, book stores, textiles and of course selling food.

The building are typical 19th century Kuching's 2-storeys shophouses with a 5 foots walkway in front (to keep pedestrians dry and away from the tropical sun and rain)
The shopowners would have their business on the ground floor and lived on the top floor.

Fondest Memory: This used to be the main shopping area in Kuching before the times of Shopping Centres in Kuching. When their is a major celebration around the corner such as Chinese New Year or Hari Raya , the street will be packed with shoppers then.

Of course nowadays , you will find the shoppers in the cool comfort of modern shopping centre dotted around Kuching.

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Favorite Thing: Padungan Road on the other side of town is designated as Kuching Chinatown, although it doesn't make any sense to me as the whole of Kuching South or most Sarawak cities are predominately where the chinese population then to lived. So you wouldn't noticed any differences here compared to other non-chinatown streets.

There are a number of nice cafes here, traditional chinese medicine shops and hardware shops which is what the area was originally known for among the locals.

Fondest Memory: This is where my mum used to take me to for traditional chinese herbal medicines if the couple weeks of western medicines for illness doesn't seem to work.

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Favorite Thing: This is one of the streets in Kuching which name is based on the tradesmen that used to do their business there. The other is Goldsmiths St and other I can't quite recall.

I remember this street as being very narrow with few chinese located temples along it. Near this temples are stage where they used to stage chinese operas on special festive occassions. I haven't been back for awhile so not too sure whether they still do it.

The business here are now family operated Goldsmiths , furniture Shops, Cafes etc.

Fondest Memory: The family doctor used to have a clinic here and opposite it was a shop that sell all variety of sweets and candies.

Mum used to used that as an incentive for us to visit the doctor. " If we go to see the doctor about ........you can have a candy after............"

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