Fotos

Scotland? Portugal?
No, no ...a hard one... Kuching, in the heart of Borneo.

Few people leave their print in a century. Charles Brooke was one of them : this british adventurer landed on Borneo coast in the midst of the XIXe century, helped the unefficient sultan of Brunei against some of the local warlords. Brooke was rewarded with the city of Kuching and the title of Rajah, he then engaged into the pacification of Borneo allying to headhunter tribes, he turned against his former boss the sultan of Brunei -quite objectively was a greedy and lazy ruler- and soon ruled almost half of Borneo.

The White Rajah as he was called started a dynasty of 3 Brooke rajahs who ruled Borneo till the japanese invaded the island in 41. Kuching was their capital, in 1879 they built european inspired fortresses along the Sarawak river to protect the city from the pirates. The "square tower" here was controling the river and used as a jail.
Sarawak state was a "private" state until 1946, when Vyner Brooke the 3rd white rajah decided he would give his "personal" state to the british crown. Weird, eh...

Brooke fascinated many people, lots of old people lived under the last Brooke Rajah : I tried to question people about how he was. I had the answers from younger people who told me the elder didn't like Brooke much because he was a foreigner but aknowledged he was a better burden than the dutch rulers of Indonesia. Very strangely, the younger people told me they liked the figure of Brooke very much because Borneo youth needed a hero. And Brooke certainly had the profile for...

Nowadays the Square tower quarter is illuminated as all the banks of the Sarawak river, many food stalls open at night providing delicious seafood (try the Sarawak pepper mud crab), everything that makes Kuching a very pleasant twist in SEA

Kuching hosts the best living cultural museum I've ever seen "Sarawak cultural village", touristy but really interesting, don't miss it.