Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia

I had 5 nights in Miri as I already had booked my flight into Sabah. Miri is quite a big city and has a nice feel to it. I checked into the guest house and headed out to the night market 3km away with some girls from the dorm. Although it was nice to travel with the Odyssey crowd it has also been great to meet new people and see where they have been or are going to and get some new ideas.

The reason for coming to Miri is Niah National Park. To get to the park I would have to take a local bus to the long distance bus terminal, then get a bus to a junction 16km from the park, and then I would have to get a taxi to the park HQ. This would take an unknown about of time and would be quite costly so I waited to find enough people to get a private van for a day trip.

Whilst waiting to get to Niah I explored Miri's shopping centres picking up a few pieces. I also walked up Canada Hill which is the site of the 'Grand Old Lady', the first oil well in Malaysia which was drilled in 1910. There are great views over the city and the South China Sea and also a very good Petroleum Museum which has been done my Shell and Petronas which filled a few hours.

It is a lot easier to meet people when you are on your own and I soon had some company for an afternoon at a local beach which was very popular with local traders who were quickly setting up BBQ's and grilling chicken and various unknown meat products!

I was soon befriended by 4 guys in the guest house so we had a day trip to Niah which was great fun. The park is famous for it's caves which are full of swiftlets which provide the nests for the pricey Bird's nest soup. The caves were huge and filled with over a km of boardwalk which led us through very dark passes into huge caverns. Huge bamboo poles hang from the ceiling which are climbed when collecting the nests- unfortunately no one was at work. The major disappointment of the day was the Painted cave which features cave paintings from human settlement 40,000 years ago. They were fenced off so we couldn't actually get close enough to the paintings to actually see what they were of. A great and long awaited day out was completed when the van driver stopped at the beach so we could watch the fantastic sunset.