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MIRI TO SIBU & KUCHING
(Now safely home - but-Just catching up on my blogs!)
These long journeys, as part of our 1000 mile trip from Kotal Kinabalu in Sabah, through Brunei to Kuching in Sarawak, make us appreciate the size, scale and the landscape of the Island of Borneo, the 3rd largest island in the world after Australia and Greenland.
Ruth and I catch a local bus from Niah Junction on the road beyond Miri to Sibu. It is very comfortable - just 3 armchair seats across each row. A 5 hour journey with 2 stops. Typical Sarawak scenery - miles of oil palm plantations with occasional purpose built longhouse accommodation for workers and scrappy secondary forest. Little agriculture or industry apart from a few palm oil refineries. The road has few cars but many big waggons transporting bunches of oil palm fruits and a disproportionate number of tankers transporting palm oil, oil gas, petrol and diesel.
We arrive in Sibu, (population 250,000) the largest port and commercial centre in the Rejang Basin and the gateway to Central Sarawak. Sibu has more oil rich millionaires per capita than any other city in Borneo. The residents are
predominantly Foochow Chinese (who arrived in 1901 with the blessing of Charles Brook, the second White Rajah of Sarawak, to escape religious persecution as Methodist Christians in China). Smaller ethnic proportions include other Chinese dialect groups, as well as Malays and local Iban and Orang Ulu tribal groups. Sibu was badly damaged by a fire in 1928 and again by Allied bombing during the repressive Japanese Occupation from 1941-1945.
Early attempts to cultivate rice failed but the Chinese were successful in growing pepper and rubber. From the early 1950's the advent of mechanised logging led to Sibu becoming the principal centre for the timber industry in Sarawak with associated saw milling, plywood manufacture and shipbuilding. More recently palm oil production and oil and gas related industries have added to its wealth.
We arrive in Sibu and look for accommodation. 'Beware' says the Lonely Planet - cheap accommodation attracts roustabouts working in the gas oil and palm oil industries - and prostitutes. We find a good hotel overlooking the river and close to the ferry terminal for £7.50 each a night. The river is almost a mile wide at this point and 80 miles from the sea.
The
night market is recommended for food. Wonderful BBQ smells and swirly smoke. We take a look, take photographs and decide not to sample the pig's heads, pig's tongues, roasted bird's heads, giblet satay, chicken liver or BBQ'd chicken gizzard! We settle for beef and chicken satay and savoury batter based snacks. We sit on the kerb stones opposite the market stalls and watch the passersby and the cats stalking under the food stalls and eat our tasty selection of food. For pud we choose the equivalent of egg custard and kak lapis a stripy cake which is a regional speciality - all followed by a Tiger beer. A memorable evening.
The chicken and beef satay play havoc with my teeth. I pop into a late night chemist to buy some floss. Small world - the sister of the guy behind the counter studied pharmacy in Glasgow. His mother appeared and relived her visit to Scotland - Edinburgh, Stirling Castle, Loch Ness, the Highlands - such a nice experience.
A good night's sleep. We head to the largest market in Asia for breakfast with over 1000 stalls. We look for muslim rather than Chinese food stalls in search of
roti. Onion and egg this morning. The roti maker in his 60's talks to us about the Scottish referendum. Many people in Sarawak would like independence from Malaysia and they watched the Scottish referendum outcome with interest. His English is good (generally it is mainly the younger generation who speak English)
I start to sort the photos on my iPad and attract a group of nearby stall holders. My cottage, my garden and particularly my chickens. How much do they weigh? Lots of laughter and photographs. Later we check out the large market.
I guess you have heard of pigeon holes and a pig in a poke . Really sad to see hen holes and a hen/duck in a poke - but that is life here. I feel glad for the ready plucked ones - but wondered what their end had been like?- and what about the black ones? Lots of fresh fish and veg but very little fruit. Fresh tropical fruit is generally disappointing. Papaya, pineapple and bananas are wonderful. However I guess if any of the other local spiny, spikey, hairy fruits had been irresistible they would have already found a space on the shelves in
Tesco. We did try a few but most were bitter, too sticky, nearly all seed or smelly like the durian!
A fond fare to Sibu as we leave on the Express Bahagia ferry to Kuching, a 6 hour journey of over 200 miles, almost half along rivers and the rest across part of the South China Sea. There are few roads and river transport is often the only means of travel. We see several boats at the terminal piled high with boxes, furniture, gas bottles, food etc which ply the local river systems serving riverside communities.
The river is brown and muddy reflecting run off from soil erosion up stream. We see on shore saw mills with stacks of huge tree trunks, shipyards, brickworks, gravel dumps and a few smoky chimneys. On the river banks mainly mangroves and poor secondary forest. On the river only a few ships - but strings of big barges carrying gravel or huge rainforest logs being towed along by tugs to sawmills downstream to be cut for export. The occasional rice barge being fed by smaller boats with local rice. Further downstream are docks facilitating the export of Sarawak’s natural resources to far
parts of the world. We see only one bird of prey and luckily an Irrawaddy dolphin.
And now the turquoise blue sea. Ruth gets seasick so lucky it is calm today. The Sarawak River is similar with mangrove lined banks. We pass a power station and docks before arriving at the ferry terminal at Pending on the outskirts of Kuching. A taxi to Singghasana Lodge, a guest house recommended by a couple I met in the far north of Borneo.
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