Kuching: Day 3 – Vaccines, Electronics and River Lunch

The first order of business this morning was to head to the clinic for some vaccinations.

The cost matrix for the service:

• Consultation Fee: 35 rm ($8.29)
• Registration Fee: 10 rm ($2.37)
• Rabies vaccine: 235 rm ($55.67) – Requires a follow up shot in 7 days
• Influenza vaccine: 90 rm ($21.32)

Total cost: 370 rm ($87.65).

No insurance, no waiting, whole thing took 10 minutes. Why the rabies shot? Simple, so I can bite people without giving them rabies! That and there are a couple of reported deaths from rogue rabies bites here in Sarawak but there are likely more that go unreported.

After getting the vaccines done, it was time to head to Wisma Saberkas which is an overlooked electronics mall in Kuching. I picked up a forbidden phone to test SIM cards, network connectivity, speeds and reliability.

After the electronics mall, we headed to lunch at a place down by the river front.

Back at VivaCenter mall, I took a look at some other electronics and boy are things a bit pricey here. The OLED TV below is $2800 USD. It would be nice if they had a Costco here.

For some reason, the only security camera sold throughout Kuching and maybe Malaysia are TP-Link branded cameras.

Another curiosity in Kuching, are the endless variations of fried chicken and other fried foods. Fried chicken, however, has many different franchises here.

I think the reason for so many different fried chicken places is the style and country they come from such as Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, China, Japan and USA. Note that many restaurants also sell fried chicken but are not dedicated to fried chicken alone.

After returning to the mall, I bought a new sim card from another carrier to test speed and connectivity with my new phone. These guys had banners hanging all over the place from the mall and were aggressively pushing their service so I decided to give it a try.

I thought I had gotten a great deal with YES which provided 50gb for 20 rm $4.74, but UMobile provided 2200gb (2.2 TB) for 30 rm ($7)! The speed on Umobile (17 mb/s) @ 4G at the mall has been a lot faster than YES (2.5 mb/s) @ 5G.

I will continue to test both from different areas in Kuching.

With the vaccines taking a toll on the old body, I settled for a nice hot bowl of Ramen from Ajissen Ramen. Sadly they didnt have Tonkotsu so settled for some random bowl.

Then its publish this post and lights out.