In this graceful town, you will not find the kind of jingoistic nationalism that is often associated with peninsular politics. The rule of the British rajahs, the Brookes family, is remembered with fondness and in fact constitutes the core of Sarawak history. This rectification is now enshrined in the Heroes Hill in downtown Kuching. City authorities likewise ignore national regulations that have made life Kuala Lumpur oftentimes stifling. There is not much surveillance over women's public behavior.
More Malay women are comfortable with modern wear and shun the head cover.
In the evenings, you can actually see transvestites openly displaying their beauty to potential customers in the town square. You can also spot those huge satellite disks that capture over a hundred channels, devices that are banned in Kuala Lumpur. Such practices are discouraged and even banned in the peninsula, but in Kuching, representatives of the central government, including the police, turn a blind eye on all these matters, content with the fact that they too benefit from them. Sarawak's unique history partly explains this unprecedented autonomy. In 1839, the wealthy English adventurer James Brooke put down a rebellion in behalf of the Sultan of Brunei.