Living Life in Malaysia as an Expatriot | UK Expat

UK EXPAT

I now live out in Kuching (old Malay for “cat”) simply because I like it so much! My work does sometimes take its toll on me – I search engine optimize for websites and make a little income from it too . But my work provides the freedom to travel and live where I want to live.

What does that mean – search engine optimize? It means to rank websites (web pages) in the search engines (particularly Google) high enough so they are found by you, the searcher – how did you find this site? You seached for Damai beach resort or something along those lines, right? Or maybe, for “Kuching hotels” or simply, “Kuching“.

As a sidenote here, which may be of interest to you – this site currenlty receives around 90% of its visitors from Malaysia and Singapore. About 5% are from Australia. Why would this be? Simply because westerners in general are not familiar with “Damai”. The main way to find this site is by searching for words related to “Damai”.

I am close to ranking top 10 in Google for both “Kuching” and “Kuching hotels”. Those keyword phrases have much greater volume of searches, and many more from western countries besides. But, do I really want to encourage westerners to encroach upon this wonderful place, or is it best to keep it to myself?

Anyhow, I just gave this website a long-needed makeover by installing a new theme and adding a series of new images in the top right corner. I think it looks nice, hope you agree? I used to make no money from the site, but I have more recently monetized it with some affiliate links. It does make an income, but I need to work on the search engine optimizing harder to see more results.

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Kuching is not the most beautiful city in the world, that’s for sure! But it has got a lot of character, and its relatively laid back in some respects. There are about 660 thousand inhabitants according to the most recent stats, most of whom are Chinese. The city is growing in population, and growing rather fast too!

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Why do I like it here so much? After all I am from what could be argued as one of the most beautiful (small) and most historic cities in the world – Edinburgh in Scotland, and Kuching is nothing at all like that.

Its my laid back lifestyle! (Don’t get me wrong here – I often work 100+ hour weeks online). I spent 30 years living in Scotland – mostly Edinburgh, and 5 years in Ayr, which is a lovely place – I love Ayr! 8 years in-all within England – a year in Suffolk and 7 years in Warwickshire/Northants. I’ve now been in Kuching for just over the past 8 months (first visited in 2008 and stayed for 11 weeks).

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Its not only the stunningly gorgeous food – which is on the whole, so much cheaper than the United Kingdom. Its not only the weather – I like it warm all the time as I can’t handle the cold of the UK which lasts about 6 or 7 months of the year.

Here in Sarawak you can leave the patio doors open all the time. The windows wide open all the time. You can walk about with shorts on all day and all night – all the time. I’ve never put on my jacket since I came here over 8 months previously. This is freedom, in a certain fashion, anyhow.

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But its not only that.

Its not necessarily just about how the people here (mostly) like Westerners. Yes, the old colonial days seem to be thought of (perceived) highly here in Kuching (after all, the Japanese ruled here for 3 years during World War II and you can perhaps imagine the terrible atrocities committed during that time!), whereas in many other parts of the world, colonialism is now treated with contempt. And I understand exactly why, too!

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Take for example just yesterday. I popped down the street for a haircut. I paid 18 ringitt, which is about £3.75 (the UK pound is way down against the ringitt at the moment – change in Government has not helped one bit either!). In US dollars that currently would be around $5.55.

Now in the UK you would expect to pay just less than 3 times this amount, and the service would probably be not nearly as “deferential”. The gentleman who cut my hair was so attentive, even though he did not speak much English and my Cantonese or Mandarin is non-existant.

I find learning the local languages – Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka (no, not Haka – the New Zealand rugby team dance), and Bahasa Malaysian – well, they are very tricky indeed and don’t sit well with my western mind. Give me Italian, French or Spanish languages and I although I’m not at all good at them, if I lived in those countries I know I would pick the lingo up relatively soon.

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So, back to the point – I paid just over a third of what I used to pay in the UK and I am treated with a lot of respect and provided with a superb haircut to boot! Starting to see what I mean about living here? Quality of life is superior for sure!

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More to come – I’m just gonna have breakfast then I come back and complete this article.

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I’ll put in an image just above, in this article – its a food called laksa. Its incredible! I’ve never tasted anything like it and you can get a large bowl of it just like the one in the image for 4 ringitt, which is around 85 pence – $1.25 US.

I don’t tend to eat seafood but prawns I can’t help but to love. In the UK even small prawns are expensive – the ones you buy frozen. Here in Kuching – Sarawak, you can get these great big prawns (tiger or jumbo) in a bowl of laksa and its still well below a pound sterling or just over a dollar US. Talk about quality living!

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Now I know there is a lot of “oh but the fo0d is dirty and you should not eat it or you get food poisoning and worse – for sure!”. My old mate back in England is one of the worst for that! We used to watch the occasional cooking programme on television and where the cuisine was Thai. He – my friend, would say “oh how can you eat that hawker Thai food – so dirty!”

Well, I eat out at local hawker centers about 4 – 6 times a week on average. In all I’ve spent about 11 months here. That means I ate at hawker centers well in excess of 250 times now. One time I had food poisoning.

In my mind that one time of coming down with food poisoning is well worth it when you consider how cheap the food is, how great the atmosphere can be at those hawker centers, and simply how stunningly delicious the food is! Its fresh, its tasty, its colourful – its gorgeous! And I don’t have to wash any dishes or do the cooking, thankfully!

Much more to come on this – the “expat living in Kuching, Malaysia”.

Oh and as a final note. I see on the television time and again on those travel programs about the best places to holiday in around the world. I see how incredibly expensive those places are – Bermuda, Maldives, Maui, St Andrews in Scotland (if you like the golf), Edinburgh and indeed London!

I look around here where I live and some of the hotels are delightful, but affordable. The beaches are equally as stunning as those in Hawaii, but to stay nearby in a hotel over-looking the ocean (take Damai Beach resort or Damai Puri as an excellent example here!!) would be so, so much cheaper here. And the food here is equal or better to anything I have ever tasted in my 43 years. I rest my case!

Kuching, the city of the cat, is the place for me!

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