From Riverside to Riverbank...

Beautiful view, ain't it? Stole Billy's posing style on the small jetty. But I think I showed the wrong photo. I'm suppose to show you the photo of the riverbank from the riverside. Juju and I, both of us have powerful English. Thank God I caught things faster than her. She was thinking that riverside and riverbank were two same places. It wasn't. Riverside is along Riverfront. Riverbank is at the opposite. There goes the English lesson into the river... Let's see how many river cruises I've seen. There's South Yarra river cruise in Melbourne, Malacca river cruise which looks more like a huge monsoon drain cruise with the stinky smell, Singapore river cruise... the merlion actually spits into the river, yucks... and now Kuching river cruise which costs RM60 per person. I'll never do any river cruise even if I get it for free... unless I'm allowed to man the boat or row it myself. Now, if you walk along the riverfront, there are a few state of the art buildings that will catch your attention. The Astana was built earlier by Charles Brooke as a bridal gift to his wife, Ranee Margaret. But the palace is now turned into the residence of Yang di-Pertua Negeri, the Governor of Sarawak. No visitors allowed, though. Not a tourist destination, it's the governor's crib. The building next to it is the State Legislature building. My Kuching friends described it as the lemon squeezer building. Again, not much activity seen there. Almost deserted when we were walking somewhere where we can get a clear view of the building. Seen enough of the view? There's not much to see unless you wanna see the mangrove swamp.... You don't really need the river cruise. The view is just like that, nothing much to see along the Sarawak River. To get across to the riverbank, just hop onto the 'sampan'. It's only 50 cents instead of RM60. When you google for more information, you might find that it's written there 20 cents. Oh, come on~!! Those websites have not been updated since donkey years. 50 cents is reasonable. What can the uncle do with 20 cents? Can't even buy him a cup of coffee. Even 50 cents can't do much.

I'll show you in the next post what you can find at the riverbank.