Saturday, 5 June 2010
We woke up this morning and looked out the hotel window to see grey skies, ominous looking clouds, rain on the horizon and trees swaying in breeze – not good signs for diving. We prepared ourselves anyway, then popped into a local eatery for our morning coffee, then back to the hotel to wait for our driver to take us to the dive operator.
Our driver arrived spot on time and drove us to the marina. It was raining en route so things still weren’t looking too flash for our diving. At the marina we met Robert, our Dive Master, who duly informed us of the weather report; needless to say we didn’t go diving. We were pretty impressed with what we saw of the dive operation; the boat was well laid out and they appeared to have all the gear. When it was obvious the conditions were not going to be great, they happily recommended that we not go diving instead of trying to still make a dollar. We got back in our transport and were delivered back to the hotel. Hopefully this afternoon we will get a phone call with a better report for tomorrow.
As we now had a day to spend in Miri, we went for a walk to see what was around. The first thing we noticed was how quiet it was. We walked through the rain to the Tourist Information Centre and gathered some details on buses to BSB and further (just in case). We found a brochure for another dive company, who it turned out happened to have their office in a sports club just near the Tourist Information Centre. We left the TIC and quickly found the sports club. The sign on the door said members only, but we went in anyway to ask the Receptionist where the dive shop was; he explained it was on the premises, but guess what? It was (yet another) public holiday and the shop wouldn’t open until Monday, maybe!
The Lonely Planet says this time of year is a great time to be travelling in Sarawak, but we whole-heartedly disagree; this time of year is very difficult for travellers. Since the end of May, it seems everything has been directly or indirectly shut/unavailable because of some celebration or another. Shall we remember the recent fiasco with the Belaga Longhouse where everyone was too pissed to receive us?
We resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren’t going to be doing too much today, so headed down towards where the river is supposed to be (you cannot actually see it from town) and found the Chinese Temple. It wasn’t as colourful as previous temples we have visited, but it was still interesting. We watched as an old lady lit up a massive bunch of incense sticks; remarking to ourselves how this Chinese religion seems to be based on setting things on fire! Incense, pretend money, prayer notes etc.
Just next door to the temple was the fish market; not too big and not too busy. Outside on the roadway were some smaller stalls selling veges and chillies to accompany the fish purchased inside; a one-stop-shopping experience?
As there wasn’t too much going on in the traditional end of town, we walked up to the other end of town to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf cafe in the Bintang Plaza shopping complex; there wasn’t anything happening up here either, but we did have a large coffee each (paying more than 10 times what a coffee costs in a kopitiam). From the CBTL we walked around the corner to the City Fan, an intricate array of gardens which, according to Lonely Planet, is popular with families and joggers. When we arrived in the park, we were the only people there (other than a toilet attendant and a bored looking security guard). Eventually, we saw a small group who came to the park for a photography session with a model, and a couple of mini-buses with Brunei advertising and a plethora of tourists. The main public swimming pool was of course closed for the public holiday, but it looked well maintained, with Olympic sized pool, diving boards and a separate smaller (water polo?) pool.
We had read in Lonely Planet that a weekend market was a must-see event in Miri. As it’s Saturday, we thought we should see the market but had to find a taxi to take us there. There was not a taxi to be seen near the park, so we walked back to the Bintang Centre and found a taxi driver, who explained the market wasn’t open during the day, but was in fact a night market and would probably be open tonight?
With nothing much else to do, we headed back to the hotel, stopping at a “local” arts and crafts (for sale) centre. Some of the souvenirs on sale were hand-made by locals (there was a man carving bamboo and a lady working with beads) but a lot of mass-produced cheap junk too.
We headed out to dinner at a local restaurant that was busy and even had pictures of what they offered for meals. The meal was exactly what I ordered apart from the fact the sauce was so hot it nearly blew my head off, talk about sweating when we left.