Two days in Kuching is enough to understand why people extend their trips. You can watch orangutans in the morning, eat laksa that ruins every other laksa for you by lunch, and walk the Waterfront at sunset, and that’s just Saturday. This itinerary covers what I’d actually tell a friend to do with a weekend here, in the order that makes the most practical sense.
Part of our guide to Things to Do in Kuching.
The pacing is relaxed. Kuching is not a city that rewards rushing. The distances are short, the food is everywhere, and the best things tend to happen when you’re sitting at a plastic table in a kopitiam with no particular plan for the next hour.
Key Takeaways
- Saturday morning: Semenggoh orangutans (9am feeding), then laksa for brunch
- Saturday afternoon: Bako National Park for proboscis monkeys, or the Waterfront if you’d rather stay in town
- Saturday evening: Hawker food crawl through Carpenter Street and Jalan Padungan
- Sunday morning: Satok Weekend Market at dawn, kopitiams for breakfast
- Sunday afternoon: Museums, Cat City walk, and the Old Courthouse
- Total weekend budget (excluding accommodation): RM 150–300
Contents
- Saturday Morning: Orangutans and Laksa
- Saturday Afternoon: Bako or the Waterfront
- Saturday Evening: The Hawker Food Crawl
- Sunday Morning: Satok Market and Kopitiam Culture
- Sunday Afternoon: Museums, Cats, and the Old Town
- If You Have an Extra Day
- What to Skip
Saturday Morning: Orangutans and Laksa
6:30am, optional early start. For the kolo mee I’d send a first-timer to, get to Choon Hui Cafe on Jalan Ban Hock before 7am. The noodles come out springy, the minced pork is fresh, and the queue hasn’t started yet. RM 6–8 for a plate. Pair it with a strong kopi-o (black coffee, RM 2.50). This is how Kuching starts its day.
8:15am. Head to Semenggoh Nature Reserve. Grab from the city centre costs RM 15–25. The 9am orangutan feeding session starts promptly, but arriving by 8:30 gets you a good viewing position. Entry is RM 20 for foreigners.
The feeding session lasts roughly an hour. Some mornings, several orangutans appear, swinging down from the canopy to the platform, occasionally with babies clinging to their fronts. Some mornings, none show up because they’ve found food deeper in the forest. That unpredictability is what makes it feel real rather than staged.
10:30am. Brunch. On the way back from Semenggoh, stop for Sarawak laksa. The laksa at the Open Air Market near the Waterfront is a solid introduction: rich coconut-and-sambal broth, prawns, shredded chicken, vermicelli, omelette strips. RM 8–12. If the queue is long, the stalls along Jalan Carpenter have similar quality.
A bowl of this laksa and a Teh C Special (iced milk tea with gula apong, the palm sugar unique to Sarawak) costs under RM 15. It’s the dish I still think about on the mornings I don’t have it, and the friends I’ve sent to that stall tend to come back having recalibrated what they expect from the rest of the trip.
Saturday Afternoon: Bako or the Waterfront
You have two options here. Both are good. The choice depends on how much nature you want versus how much wandering.
Option A: Bako National Park (Half-Day)
If you want to see proboscis monkeys, wild boar, and pitcher plants in Borneo’s oldest national park, head to Bako. It’s a 30-minute drive to Bako village, then a 20-minute boat ride through mangroves to the park jetty.
The Telok Paku trail (30 minutes, flat) is where the proboscis monkeys congregate in late afternoon. Walk it between 3pm and 5pm for the best chance. The Telok Pandan Kecil trail (1.5 hours return) leads to a secluded cliff-top beach with views that feel disproportionate to the effort required.
A half-day at Bako (transport, entry, boat, snacks) costs roughly RM 80–120 per person. Grab can take you to Bako village; arrange a return pickup or get a number from the boat operators.
Back to Kuching by 6pm for the evening food crawl.
Option B: The Waterfront and Old Town
If you’d rather stay in the city, spend the afternoon walking. Start at the Kuching Waterfront Promenade, a 900-metre stretch along the Sarawak River with views of the Astana (governor’s palace), Fort Margherita, and the Dewan Undangan Negeri (state assembly). The Waterfront is flat, shaded in parts, and the breeze off the river makes it tolerable even in the heat.
Cross to the north bank on the tambang (river taxi, RM 1). Walk the kampung on the other side: quiet, residential, a different rhythm from the south bank’s cafes and shops. The tambang back costs another RM 1.
From the Waterfront, walk into Carpenter Street, Kuching’s oldest commercial street. The shophouses date to the 1800s. Today they hold kopitiams, antique shops, a few art galleries, and one of the best concentrations of street art in the state. The murals are understated and genuinely good, not Instagram bait but actual commentary on Kuching’s history and culture.
Continue to Jalan India (Indian Street) for textiles, spices, and the sound of Bollywood music drifting from electronics shops. Then to the Main Bazaar for handicrafts: Iban weavings, Orang Ulu beadwork, and carved ironwood. The tourist markup exists but is modest by Southeast Asian standards.
Cost for the afternoon: Close to free. The tambang is RM 2 return. Everything else is walking and looking.
Saturday Evening: The Hawker Food Crawl
This is the centrepiece of the weekend. Kuching’s evening food scene happens at hawker centres, kopitiams, and open-air stalls, not at restaurants with menus and mood lighting.
Start at Carpenter Street (6pm). The evening stalls set up along the street and in the lanes running off it. Get a plate of kueh, Sarawak-style steamed rice cakes in various colours, RM 1–2 each. The pandan ones and the kaya ones are the standards.
Walk to Jalan Padungan (7pm). This stretch, Kuching’s old Chinatown, has both hawker stalls and sit-down options. If you’ve only got one restaurant meal in you this weekend, make it a seafood dinner at one of the Chinese restaurants along Padungan. Butter prawns, black pepper crab, stir-fried midin (wild jungle fern). Budget RM 40–60 per person for a proper feed.
For the hawker purist: Skip the restaurant and eat your way through the stalls. Three dishes from three stalls (kolo mee, satay, a bowl of ABC shaved-ice dessert) costs under RM 25 and covers more ground.
End with a drink. Kuching’s bar scene is small but genuine. The Junk Bar (Jalan Wayang) is built in a converted shophouse and serves craft cocktails for RM 25–35. The Barber (Jalan Tabuan) is a speakeasy-style spot. Or do what most locals do, and what I usually end up doing: buy a couple of beers from a 7-Eleven (RM 8–12 each) and sit on the Waterfront steps watching the river. It’s a proper mooch, as we’d call an aimless wander back in Manchester, and it’s still my favourite way to end a Saturday here.
Sunday Morning: Satok Market and Kopitiam Culture
6:00am. Satok Weekend Market. This is the market that locals go to. Open Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, but the best time is early Sunday morning. The wet market section has river fish, jungle ferns (midin, paku), wild ginger flower, and produce you won’t find in any supermarket. The dry section has spices, sambal belacan, local honey, Sarawak pepper (both black and white, and worth buying), and handicrafts.
Walk slowly. Accept the free samples of fruit. Watch the aunties negotiate. Buy a bag of dabai if it’s in season (June–September), the black fruit you soak in warm water and eat with soy sauce and rice. It tastes like nothing else.
Satok is also where you’ll find the cheapest and most authentic kueh in the city. RM 5 buys you a mixed bag of 8–10 pieces.
8:00am. Kopitiam breakfast. Walk from Satok to any kopitiam in the area. The standard order: kolo mee or kampua mee, plus a kopi-o or Teh C Special. RM 8–12 for everything. Sit, eat slowly, and watch the Sunday rhythm of the city. Kuching doesn’t rush its mornings.
The kopitiam is where you’ll notice the language situation: orders shouted in Hokkien, conversation in Sarawak Malay, the bill explained in English. Three languages in sixty seconds, nobody blinking.
Sunday Afternoon: Museums, Cats, and the Old Town
12:00pm. Borneo Cultures Museum. Opened in March 2022, this is Malaysia’s largest museum (and the second largest in Southeast Asia), and it’s genuinely excellent. Four floors covering the indigenous cultures of Borneo (Iban, Bidayuh, Melanau, Orang Ulu, Penan) with reconstructed longhouses, ceremonial objects, and multimedia installations that are well-designed rather than just expensive. The depth of Sarawak’s cultural diversity becomes tangible here.
Allow 1.5–2 hours. Entry is free.
2:30pm. The Cat Trail. Kuching means “cat” in Malay (though the etymology is debated; it may come from the mata kuching fruit or the old port name). Either way, the city has embraced it. The Cat Museum (Jalan Semariang, north bank) is a small but dedicated collection of cat-related everything. The cat statues scattered around the city centre, at the Waterfront, outside Padungan, at the roundabout on Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, make for a low-effort walking route.
This isn’t the most profound cultural experience of the weekend, but it’s fun, it’s free, and it gives you a reason to walk through parts of the city you might otherwise miss.
4:00pm. The Old Courthouse and surrounds. The Old Courthouse (1874) sits at the heart of the colonial district and now houses a tourist information centre and occasional exhibitions. Walk through the compound, then continue to the Round Tower and the Square Tower, remnants of the Brooke era, when Sarawak was governed by the White Rajahs. This corner of Kuching holds more history than most visitors realise, and it’s central to understanding why Sarawak governs differently from the rest of Malaysia.
5:30pm. Final Waterfront sunset. End where the city ends: on the river. The light over the Sarawak River in the late afternoon is the colour of teh tarik. If you’re lucky, a hornbill flies overhead. If you’re luckier, someone sitting nearby shares their kueh.
If You Have an Extra Day
Kubah National Park. A 30-minute drive from the city for waterfalls, rainforest trails, and a palm garden. Combine with the Matang Wildlife Centre (sun bears, hornbills) next door. Half-day trip, RM 30–50 total.
Annah Rais Longhouse and Hot Springs. A Bidayuh longhouse about an hour from Kuching, still lived in, with a natural hot springs nearby. RM 10 entry to the longhouse. Combine with Semenggoh if you haven’t done it.
Damai Beach and Santubong. Sarawak’s nearest beach area, 45 minutes from the city. The beach is fine, not spectacular. The real draws are the hiking trails on Gunung Santubong and the Sarawak Cultural Village. Look for Irrawaddy dolphins in the bay; boat trips run from Damai.
A food-focused day. Spend the morning at a different kopitiam. Try kampua mee (the Foochow cousin of kolo mee), manok pansoh at a Dayak restaurant for lunch, and a full seafood spread at Top Spot Food Court in the evening. Read our restaurant guides for the specific stalls.
What to Skip
Not every “top attraction” in Kuching earns its listing. A few honest notes:
The Cat Museum is charming for 20 minutes. Don’t build your afternoon around it. It’s small and the novelty wears off faster than the journey there.
Fairy Cave and Wind Cave (near Bau, 45 minutes from Kuching) are sometimes recommended but neither is in the league of Mulu. If you have limited time, Bako gives you a more complete Borneo experience.
The Waterfront at midday is exposed, hot, and the river doesn’t look its best with the sun directly overhead. Go early morning or late afternoon. The sunset is worth timing.
Generic souvenir shops on Main Bazaar mostly sell the same mass-produced items. If you want authentic Sarawak crafts, the stalls at Satok market or the shops on Carpenter Street tend to stock work made in Sarawak.
A weekend in Kuching won’t exhaust the city. What it will do is reset your sense of what a day costs: RM 20 to sit with orangutans, RM 12 for a bowl of laksa, RM 1 to cross the river and back. You leave having spent very little and seen a lot.
Most people who come for a weekend come back for longer. If that happens to you, here’s what it actually costs.