In Miri, Sarawak

Sorry for the cutoff--Brunei's call to prayer was playing which meant that that particular internet cafe had to close down. First time I've heard it all trip, and that, coupled with the various mosques and use of arabic as a second language means that it finally felt like I was in a muslim country.


Best 20 bucks that I spent so far was taking a speedboat ride around the Bandar Seri Begawan harbor and its stilt villages. Hopefully, the picture I am including will come through. To the left of me in that photo is the mudflat on which I saw a crocodile. It looks like I am out in the woods, but the BSB harbor is closer to me than Staten Island is to Battery Park. Brunei is very very green (strange when you realize that its main resource is oil), and, as you can see, the forest comes right up to the edges of BSB.
An aside, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam has to have one of the smallest people to number of letters in its full name ratios of any world capital (it's only about 180,000) in a country with >100,000 people. The highest is probably Tokyo, Japan.

Continuing with Labuan--there's really no point in going there, unless you are a longeshoreman working on a container ships (it's malaysia's sole deepwater port, so as you come in, you are dwarfed by massive ships and tankers in the harbor), transiting to Brunei or elsewhere (like I was), or if you are a Malaysian in search of duty free shopping. Because its a federal state/special economic zone, goods there are duty free to bring back to the rest of Malaysia provided you stay 24 hours. The island also has a WWII cemetery and memorial, and was where the Japanese command in Sabah formerly surrendered to the British. I took a cab out the cemetery which, though unmanned, obviously has a caretaker since the grass was putting greenesque short and the gravestones were clean and tidy.

Since I had an hour after that, I just perused the duty free offerings to see if I could find the cheapest possible booze available. For most of the good stuff, transport costs added to the retail price means that with quite a few labels, prices are similar to those in the U.S. I managed to discover a bottle of dirt cheap (3 MYR, or less than a buck) 80 proof Philippine sugar cane liquor, but decided not to buy it simply because 1. it probably would have blinded me, and 2. I didn't want to lug it around.

I was able to determine the tax on beer--a standard can of Tiger Beer (singapore and the closest thing they have to a local beer) costs 5MYR in the grocery store, but 2MYR on Labuan--so they tax it at about 150%. Fun facts to know and tell.

You can easily do Brunei in a day (or two hours, in my case), but any longer and you are probably pushing it if you have elsewhere to go (like I did--there was one thing that I was unable to do--take a longer boat ride to its second city, but that would have meant missing my direct bus to Miri). Their drivers are nice though--they actually signal you to walk at crosswalks.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to see the Sultan's palace because it is surrounded by trees, but you can catch glimpses of it from the road, and the $350 mil. masterpiece is indeed massive.

Meanwhile, I'm in Miri in Sarawak--which has little tourist value (unless you are an oil prospector--it was the site of malaysia's first oil well) except for being a gateway city to two national parks within daytrip distance, one inland national park that is so remote that an hour long flight is both the cheapest and quickest means of getting there (it would be 12 or 14 hours via boat), and a highland area also popular with tourists that is only realistically accessible via airplane. Otherwise, it resembles any good ol' American sunbelt suburb--especially Frisco.