Hornbill Fountain at Kuching Waterfront gets third ‘bubble bath’ this year

A woman taking a bath in the bubbly hornbill fountain water.

By Ling Hui

KUCHING, May 13: It is the third time this year the Hornbill Fountain at Kuching Waterfront has been given a ‘bubble bath’ with detergent powder chucked into the water.

Last night (May 12), the latest incident happened when a woman was spotted enjoying her soak in the bubbly fountain water at about 10pm.

It was believed that the woman had dumped a packet of detergent powder into the fountain water to create the bubbles.

This morning at about 11am, an empty detergent powder packet was seen by the trash can just beside the fountain, and the bubbles had gone.

Park cleaners who were there for their morning shift said they saw nothing and had only heard about the incident.

The Hornbill Fountain at Kuching Waterfront opposite the Tua Phek Khong Temple.
An empty packet of detergent powder by the trash can.

Meanwhile, Dayacop security officer Mohamad Sarizan Annuar who is in charge of Kuching Waterfront security, said the perpetrator had vandalised the fountain between the security’s patrol rounds.

“We do patrols every two hours. At 8pm, nothing was out of the ordinary. At 10pm, when we did another round, it had already happened. There were already a lot of bubbles.

“We have already lodged a police report, and we leave the rest of the investigation to the police.

“We did lodge police reports for the previous two incidents, but the individual has yet to be identified,” he told DayakDaily when met by the fountain this morning.

Mohamad Sarizan had just returned from filing a police report at the Kuching Central Police Station, where he was instructed to lodge another report at the Kuching District Police Headquarters.

(Left to right) Mohamad Sarizan, Nazrul and Hamzah in front of the Hornbill Fountain.

Commenting further, he opined that the repeated incidents could be linked to people seeking popularity or following a certain trend on social media with footage of themselves within bizarre setups.

“This has become a trend on TikTok (social media). Everybody wants to do it too when it becomes a trend, like using the bubbles as background.

“But they don’t realise that this is a public facility, a public space. So, therefore, it cannot be vandalised,” he asserted.

Mohamad Sarizan was accompanied by two other officers, Nazrul Zamri and Hamzah Kamarulzaman Eden. — DayakDaily