Cheerioet’s Weblog

Journey to Sarawak is now published!!! Ok…I must admit that I am indeed to slow in writing this up. I don’t have the idea, and you know…those writer attitudes…No inspiration No publication. :p Here is the link to view all the photos. There are some left out due to the limited space. I will upload it whenever I can; soon. :p

Audrey, Iris and I planned to visit Sarawak back at March; during the Air Asia promotion on Zero Ticket Fair and it just happened that we booked it and we gonna fly on June. Oh, well…Time indeed flew or shall I say speeding when you are in holiday. Our schedule was to fly to Miri and by land to Niah from it. We took a bus from Miri Airport to the city’s bus station…According to the information service centre staff, the bus will be bringing in passenger to the airport frequently from city and because the bus will pass a housing area to make a U-turn; there is no worry about not getting a bus. It’s just the matter of time. If you are chasing time, don’t wait for it. Take a taxi. Taking a bus of course will cost you less…it was RM 1.80 per head for one trip.

Next, when we reached the Miri bus station, we hooped into a taxi instead to Pujut, the intertown/intercity bus station to Niah. The ride cost RM 10 from Miri bus station to Pujut per taxi. As our destination is Niah Cave, we need a lot of transit due to no direct transportation. From Pujut to Simpang Batu Niah by bus cost RM 10 per head per ride and the journey took one hour and a half. Well…the local told us that there is no more bus service available from Simpang Batu Niah to Niah National Park. Like it or not, we need to take private car to the park. The journey cost us RM 30 per car for one trip from Simpang Batu Niah to Niah National Park.

The entrance fee at Niah National Park is RM 10 per adult and reduced to RM 5 for student with student card presented. Lucky for us, Iris did bring along her student ID, so we are waved to half price entrance fees. As it’s been quite late for us to take our walk into the Niah cave, we checked into our hostel at the national park. We did manage to visit the Museum situated opposite the park. To crossover to the Museum, we used the boatman and each ride per head is RM 1.00 from 0730 to 1730 and RM 1.50 from 1730 onwards. The boatmen are willing to work extra hours; we just needed to inform them earlier. It is free to visit the Museum, but the Museum closed on every Monday.

Since there is nothing much left for us to do on the first day, we head back to hostel and rest. The room next to us, were two Dutch-a mother and daughter team. They planned to walk into cave on the next day as well due the late arrival. But, we did not manage to catch up with them in the next morning, I guess they depart early. As for us, we took some time to wake up…as the consequences of playing poker until late at night. Well, both Iris and I taught Audrey to play ‘cho dai di’. She indeed plays quite good for beginner stage. And, that’s the reason we find it hard to wake up early in the next morning. More over, we chit-chat all the way like we never chat before…hehe :p

The walking journey from the starting point to C’hang Long House is about 4++km. There are two junctions to turn into C’hang Long House: a first junction whereby the pathway looks old and insecure and the second is at the souvenir stall junction. We took the second junction as being told by the park’s staff. We saw the souvenir stall and bought some of the handicraft souvenir. Lastly we reached the long house and look for the ‘Tuai Rumah’- Patrick Libau. Tuai Rumah is the villagers’ head or the long house’s CEO . Initially we thought we were going to stay at his house, but he arranged another homestay family for us, Julia. Julia saw us while we were passing by to look for Tuai. She stopped us and let us knows about the Tuai’s planning. Lastly, we stayed at Julia’s house and her mother cooked for us for the lunch. After lunch, we head on to the cave by the companionship of Julia and her friend Rundy. They brought us into the dark valley of the cave. Luckily, all of us brought torchlight together with us and the deeper we walk into the cave, the darker it is. We saw some local residents collecting guano, but no more collecting bird’s nest as it might not be the seasons and also due to the restriction from the government to preserve the cave nature. We wanted to see the painted cave and we head on further. We were quite disappointed to see the painted cave, as the painting had worn out and the original paintings were almost not visible anymore. Anyway, we were glad that we finally reached the painted cave…as that’s our plan.

We were quite exhausted from the walking journey as it is indeed a long way, as there was climbing of staircases. While we were on the journey back, Audrey saw a snake. What snake is that? I don’t know. I didn’t saw it. According to Audrey, it’s quite small and the snake still young as it isn’t look full grown. Anyway, this makes me remember of one old people’s advice that I heard. The elder always advice not to think of four type of animal in our mind or from our mouth as it’s bad luck to mentioned it and it will become true when we are in forest or surrounded by pure nature. The four type of animal are Tiger, Elephant, Snake and Wild Boar. Don’t look down on wild boar; they can create disaster when someone meets them. So, do tiger, elephant and snake. Of course, I do not hope to see any of them appearing in front of me as I don’t think I can handle the situation. I am not Ace Ventura, though.

After visited the cave, Julia brought us to her uncle’s palm farm and paddy field. There is no paddy as it isn’t the season, but the palm is all year round. Most of the villagers have palm farm to replace their ancient time plantation-the pepper. Pepper did not have much promising product compare to palm, and as such, they shifted their vegetation. Most of the villagers will go to farm during daytime while the elders stay at home to look after the young.

We had the most challenging part when we heard we need to bath at the river bank. OMG! How to bath? We used sarong provided by Julia’s mother and we bath with the sarong still fasten tightly to our body! I don’t know about other, but mine does…as there were also some men bathing nearby. Soap is very essential in ‘mandi sungai’. Mandi sungai or direct translation is river bath; is to bath at the river bank using the resources there. So, if one plans to homestay with the villagers, please bring along soap. The villagers are used to it…And they depend to the rain water as water supply and a generator to supply electricity at night. They had tried to request for water and electricity supply from the state government, but there aren’t any answer until now. I do hope the state government will take some action, as these villagers are their hope to promote the cultural tourism…beside the attraction of the nature’s beauty.

After dinner, Julia brought us into her aunt’s house-a few doors walk. Her cousin then gave us ‘tuak’ to drink. Tuak usually made by them to celebrate Gawai and it’s a kind of rice wine. Sometimes, even though it isn’t Gawai, they will still make some for storage. The longer it stored, the better it taste. The theory behind is just like wine. The villagers sleep early and wake up early. That’s their routine. That ends our one night homestay at C’hang Long house. We walk from the long house back to the national park and stopped to shower as we were sweating all the way. To those who wanted to have their homestay at the long house, you can call this number to make reservation (Julia:013-5669702 / 019-8573504)

Ok…that ended the trip at Niah and we head out to Bintulu after that. We were quite surprise by the hot weather at Sarawak as it might be due to the after raining season effect. We were sweating all the way, again! Lastly, when we had fed up walking around Bintulu town, we stopped by at KFC and enjoy the air-con there. Well…this makes us appreciate air-con better…Hahaha. Fortunately, we no need to get a taxi to the airport as Joseph, was driving to town to meet us. Joseph is my friend, whom I met at Terengganu St. Andrew’s Church. He was with Billy, Jeremy, Rudy, and others that studied at ITP-Institut Teknologi Petronas. Joseph is now working at a plant at Bintulu, so that’s why we got the chance to meet each other again. :p Joseph drove us to Bintulu airport and we had our dinner together. We manage to snap some photos before we depart. Haha…Nice!!! Next destination…Kuching!!! Meow City…

We reached at Kuching by night. Both Audrey and Iris had made the reservation at B&B Inns at Jalan Tabuan near to Hotel Borneo. From Kuching International Airport to B&B Inns cost RM 23 and the inn is located at the centre of the city. It’s between walking distances to waterfront and also some other surrounding places. We walk around waterfront at night and we tried to search for the Cats Statues at the city. Due to lack of time and it was late, we only found the Northern Cats Statue. We had booked our bus trip to the Cultural Village near Damai Beach Resort. We woke up quite early to have our breakfast at one of the nearby kopitiam. All of us had ‘kolok mee’. Kolok mee looks like the wantan mee means ‘sang mian’ in Chinese. I guess they both do apply the same flour to make it, but just a little bit different in the texture. Kolok mee is quite springy and wantan mee is quite soft. Nonetheless, both of them still taste great!

So sharp at 0900 we departed from the inn to the Sarawak Cultural Village. Along the way, we passed by the Sarawak Cats Musuem, but we didn’t went in for the visit as we wanted to save up some time for our last minute souvenir shopping. The entrance fee for Sarawak Cultural Village is RM60 per head for adult and Children pay half the amount. I don’t know about student price…but I know if you are a Sarawakian and you intended to visit the Cultural Village, you can have the Sarawakian discount. I heard it from the counter. When we had paid for the entrance, all of us were given a Cultural Village passport and also entrance stickers.

The passport was as prove that we had entered the house of every tribe that are available at the village. Some of the tribe has activities or sells delicacies from their tribe’s house. We tried out the traditional outfit at the Iban’s Long House. Each costume with accessories cost RM 10 per head. Not bad at all. We ask their opinion to get the right outfit for the three of us. The person-in-charge suggested Iris to take Bidayuh, Audrey to take Iban and me to take Orang Ulu. We managed to snap some photos of ourselves wearing the traditional outfit…:p

We noticed that there are rooms available for tourists whom wanted to try out the cultural homestay at the cultural village. I am not sure about the pricing, I never did happen to ask. Everyday, the cultural village will be performing 2 sessions of local cultural dance according to their schedule – Morning session 1130 and late afternoon session 1630. The cultural village also have a souvenir shop inside, but I didn’t find the price attractive. (OK…I am too frankly speaking) There is a cafeteria which offers some local village foods such as ‘manuk pansuh’- bamboo chicken, ‘umai-umai Sarawak’ – prickled shrimps and prawns meat, laksa Sarawak, and many other.

After visited the cultural village, we took the van to return to Kuching city. At the city, we were walking all the way round to find the white cat statue along the street. According to the local, there are 3 junctions that has cats statue. Kuching is also the one and only city in Malaysia that has two mayors – A northern mayor and a southern mayor. The first cats’ statue situated at the north part, which surrounded by all those 5-stars hotel and it is just opposite from McDonalds. The second cats’ statue is situated in between of the north’s and south’s cat statue. The white cat statue is located at the entrance of Padungan Road. We found the souvenir shop mentioned to us by the person-in-charge from B&B Inn. We shopped quite a lot of different souvenirs and of course not to forget to buy peppers. Haha…

The person-in-charge (We forgot to ask his name :p) drove us to the airport after waited for us to buy the ‘kek lapis sarawak’ at some shop nearby waterfront. Well, we manage to snap some photos of us before we check in ourselves. We had our dinner as well at the Kuching International Airport before we finally depart from Kuching to K.L. I do felt heavy hearted to leave Sarawak as I kind of like the lifestyle there :p

What a holiday… Now, I am thinking of trip to island. It has been some time that I didn’t dive since I got the license. Maybe I should gather some friends and go to Redang Island next year! Haha :p