langkau fiction

This is the second time Ruai bar changed location since leaving the Green Hill area. The new premise is now stationed in a wooden shed 15 feet away from the Telang Usan Hotel building. There’s more space in this new establishment compared to the two previous pubs and it has good ventilation (there are no windows and no doors). It’s definitely better than the Old Kuching Town kopitiam, which I thought to be a kedai kopi that sells overpriced beers.

Speaking of overpriced beers, the Ruai bar only sells beers in stubby bottles…but they don’t have Tiger, which I think is a disappointment for my demented kanid. His species is what I call handicapped beer drinker i.e. the ability to drink only one brand of beer. A Stella stubby would costs RM6.00 which is RM1 more expensive than beer in cans.

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When the insitution of beers at Ruai was told to vacate its premise in Greenhill, the management quickly opened up a waterhole not far away its original place. The current patrons are more or less the same regulars that planted their ass in Ruai. Last night was my third time drinking at that new place.

It’s now called Old Kuching Town kopitiam and I was kindly told by the management that this kopitiam is “just temporary”. The management is now renting another shoplot next to the Old Kuching Town kopitiam and will revive the new Ruai, which will be the ‘real bar’.

Despite being a kopitiam, the beer prices aren’t really kopitiam prices. Yes, it’s cheaper than Ruai but understandably so because Ruai was a bar. The Old Kuching Town kopitiam trade their Tiger beers with your cash for RM18 per jug. In normal kopitiams, Tiger beers would cost RM11-RM13 for a jug of Tiger. At Ah Liong kopitiam, for instance, three Stella stubbies would cost RM10! So, don’t be fooled by the name Old Kuching Town kopitiam because it ain’t that cheap as expected of a kopitiam.

Oh, there’s also the Kuching Prison right across the Old Kuching Town kopitiam. My demented kanid and I are suggesting to the management that they should work out with the prison officials to see if it’s okay for the OKT kopitiam customers to have a mini tour of the prison ground during one of the drinking sessions.

It’d be a good tourist attraction…

That thing has just finished and the strange bunch of crowds hanging out at Ruai bar for the past weeks has fizzled out. It’s now gradually morphing into its usual self with the elder regulars reclaiming their stools at the bar. I was there on Tuesday evening with the usual plan of ‘one or two beers’ but ended wrapping up the evening at around 2am.

I can still remember when my demented kanid called me one early evening “Eh, kanid, come over to Peter’s place across the road!” I was peacefully sipping my bir at Havana at the time when he interrupted me. Being the one who was constantly bullied as a kid, I obeyed my kanid‘s summon. Paid my tabs at Havana and I walked across the road to meet up with my demented kanid and Peter, the owner of Ruai.

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I was in Ruai last night – and the night before – trying to re-orientate myself with the place. When I arrived there at about 3.32pm 6.30pm, the place was empty apart from the good ‘ol bartender Desmond. He updated me on the general welfare of Ruai and its customers during my week-long absence, while I bored him with my stupid travel stories in upriver Belaga. By 9.26pm, a group of people started to stream into the bar. These were people I’ve never met before. Then, more came from the front door and by 10.16pm, the place was crowded with some regulars busily chatting with the strange crowds of people.

I didn’t pay them any mind until one of my fellow bar regs came up to me “Hey, are you going to “rainforest” [meaning the Rainforest World Music Festival]?” It was then it hit me: the strange-looking people were here for the festival. “Oh, no..,” I told my fellow bar reg. He understood and then, embedded himself into the crowd like a maggot that loses itself among its kind in an eating frenzy. Okay, so the simile is bad lah…

As the night went on more questions “Are you going to rainforest?” were thrown all over the bar that it gave me a multiple vertigo. It was dangeously becoming a philosophical question. I called out to Desmond, who was handling the orders and bills single-handedly, and asked for my damage. “If you’re busy it’s okay, man. I can always pay you tomorrow,” I told him. He just laughed “Nah, you can pay me now, I’m not that busy.” So, I gave him RM40 for my two jugs of Tiger.

I think I’ll just skip Ruai until this “rainforest” phenomena is over.

I discovered a new bar in town. Well, actually, it was not ‘discovered’. My cousin runs the bar now and she wanted me to visit. So, I did, four times since last week! The bar isn’t ‘officially’ opened yet so, it hasn’t got a name. In a human sense, this new nameless bar is still wriggling in its mother’s womb. Since it’s opening, the bar started harboring its own regulars, mostly ‘veteran’ bar-regs from Ruai. With this new bar that has just sprouted, I am thinking of dramatically reducing my trips to Ruai. For me, Ruai has transformed into an unknown being, something which I could not adapt myself to lately.

As mentioned earlier, this new bar without a name isn’t officially opened yet. But to the few of us who knows of its existence have been warming the bar stools with our ugly butts since last week and I think I’m beginning to develop a liking for it. True, this new nameless bar does not have the exotic tribal deco that Ruai is known for nor does it have the number of customers to rival the boisterous younglings of Ruai. The bar’s old-fashioned front door is still locked so that people will not know of the bar’s existence. Not yet, at least. The entrance is through the tiny back door. To the untoxicated minds, some would say this is indeed a strange marketing strategy. Then again, this is a new nameless bar still wriggling in its mother’s womb.

Heavy?

One thing I noticed about this new nameless bar is the furniture. The stools and tables are, I think, made of heavy teak wood. The stools are so heavy that my tendons would just snap if I attempt to move them a few feet away. The heavy furniture is probably a safety measure, just in case some drunk ass decides pick up one of the stools to beat someone with it. To carry a stool in a state of intoxication plus stupidity would be quite a task, I think.

There are also these young and loud group of regulars would make their entrance at around 8.30pm. Because the space of this new nameless bar is small, all manner of sounds would be trapped within this tiny space, thus amplifying all the sentences in a conversation, the farting melodies, and of course, the hysterical laughter. This group of kids do not patronize the new nameless bar exclusively for the alcohol indulgence. They’re there primarily for the barbecued pork at the back entrance of the bar. When you observe these younglings eagerly waiting for their pork, you can’t help but label them a cult group.

This bar is situated along the row of shophouses off-Carpenter Street behind the main Kuching post office. It’s not that easy to find it because once you miss the junction, you’d have to make another big round. That happened to me twice already and I was not even drunk then! The best thing do to is to just follow the arrow above. I do not know how to write directions bah…

And once you reached the parking lot at the back, just look for this sign (see above) on the wall. The new nameless bar’s back entrance is just a few doors next to this sign.