Padungan is a main city area of

Kuching Kuching ( , ), officially the City of Kuching, is the capital and the most populous city in the States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Sarawak in Malaysia. It is also the capital of Kuching Division. The city is on the Sarawak Ri ...

Sarawak Sarawak ( , ) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia. It is the largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia. Sarawak is located in East Malaysia in northwest Borneo, and is ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

Government

The

Kuching South City Council The Council of the City of Kuching South (, abbreviated MBKS) is the city council which administers the southern part of the city of Kuching in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia. This council was established after the city was officially granted city ...

(MBKS) headquarters is located there. The state constituency represented in the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly is

Padungan (state constituency) Padungan is a state constituency in Sarawak, Malaysia, that has been represented in the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly since 1979. The state constituency was created in the 1977 redistribution and is mandated to return a single member to th ...

. The elections were heavily contested in 1983, and 1991.

Businesses

A number of civic associations have had headquarters in Padungan for the past 90 years, with many businesses having offices there. An “industrial estate” and a

housing estate A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex, housing development, subdivision (land), subdivision or community) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to count ...

were built in the area in 1959. In the 1960s, the area became industrial. There are a variety of banks, travel agencies, currency exchanges, and related institutions in the neighboring area, and even right on the high street, in the 21st century. A significant new ecologically friendly hotel has opened, the Roxy Pandungan Hotel.

Amenities and tourism

Tourism in Malaysia Tourism in Malaysia is a major industry and contributor to the Economy of Malaysia, Malaysian economy. Malaysia was once ranked 9th in the world for tourist arrivals. In 2017, the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Malaysia 26 ou ...

has boomed in the 21st century, especially to the islands, including to Kuching. Hotels are being built in the Padungan area. Padungan became a budget tourism destination for inexpensive food and

hostel A hostel is a form of low-cost, short-term shared sociable lodging where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed in a dormitory sleeping 4–20 people, with shared use of a lounge and usually a kitchen. Rooms can be private or shared - mixe ...

s, as well as its central location in Kuching. In 2014, ''

Rough Guides Rough Guides is a travel company that offers tailor-made trips planned and arranged by local travel experts based in destinations around the world. Originally established as a guidebook publisher in 1982, Rough Guides expanded into customized t ...

'' featured the Nomad hostel and restaurants in the Topspot

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food Vendor, vendors and provides a common area for self-serve di ...

and

Pinoy ''Pinoy'' ( or ) is a common informal self-reference used by Filipinos to refer to citizens of the Philippines and their culture as well as to overseas Filipinos in the Filipino diaspora. A Pinoy who has any non-Filipino foreign ancestry, ...

restaurant (serving Philippines cuisine) on Jalan Padungan, the main or high street of the neighborhood. Nightlife and cafe culture has arrived in recent years, as of 2012, pushing aside the traditional

karaoke is a type of interactive entertainment system usually offered in nightclubs and bars, where people sing along to pre-recorded accompaniment using a microphone. Its musical content is an instrumental rendition of a well-known popular song. I ...

culture. A variety of businesses that cater to tourists have been operating in the area, including

currency exchange A bureau de change (plural bureaux de change, both ; British English) or currency exchange (American English) is a business where people can exchange one currency for another. Nomenclature Originally French, the term () is widely used thro ...

s, dining options, and cyber cafes. At both the western and eastern sides of Jalan Padungan are “

kitsch ''Kitsch'' ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as Naivety, naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal Taste (sociology), taste. The modern avant-garde traditionally opposed kitsch ...

y” monuments to cats; the city’s name is a

homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, a ...

of “cat” in the local language.

References

Kuching {{Sarawak-geo-stub