On Day 6 of the “Best Of Borneo” tour, we travelled back from Sri Aman to Kuching.

We checked out of the hotel in Sri Aman after breakfast and started the coach journey back to Kuching. We drove past the statue of doves in the town centre – the symbol of Sri Aman representing peace and continued along the AH150 highway with cloud covered hills in the distance marking the 2,019.5 km long border between Sarawak and Indonesia’s Kalimantan province.

We stopped on the way for mid-morning coffee near a local market with stalls selling kebabs and fruit drinks, dry fish, fruit and vegetables.

There were stalls selling pitcher plants which are said to be eaten in Borneo as a traditional delicacy called lemang periuk kera. The pitchers are used as containers to cook glutinous rice, which is filled into the cups along with coconut milk and then steamed, creating a fragrant, sweet snack.

Another stall had bottles of live maggots called – Butod, for sale. They are the larvae of the sago palm weevil (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus) that live inside decaying sago palm trunks, feeding on the starchy pith. They are a traditional delicacy, particularly among the Kadazandusun and Melanau communities in Sabah and Sarawak. They can be eaten raw (alive), fried, or grilled. Raw, live butod have a creamy, buttery, or coconut-like taste, with a tough, chewy skin that “bursts” when bitten. When stir-fried with soy sauce or garlic, which makes them crispy, they taste like fatty meat or fried fish skin. They are a high-nutrient, high-protein food source and are sold at many local markets.

We stopped for lunch at the Ranchan Point Cafe in Serian which had a stream and a waterfall in its back garden.

We reached Kuching in the afternoon and were glad to return to the Waterfront Hotel. We collected our main luggage which was left in storage during the two-day trip to Sri Aman and got ready to fly to Kota Kinabalu in the morning.

Then we went out to dinner.