Getting to Miri, Malaysia
We feel a little guilty about how much we flew across the massive island of Borneo because it’s usually not our style. But, it turns out, the cost from Kuching to Miri by 15-hour overnight bus or 1-hour flight was the same…$40 for two tickets so it kind of became a no brainer. Plus, of course, we got breakfast and lunch in the Kuching lounge making it an even better value. It was also pretty amazing to see the wilds of Borneo beneath us, climb in a 30-minute $1.50 taxi ride with fried chicken on top, and arrive to our apartment for five nights in record time.
The island of Borneo is 60% larger than UK.
The lounge at Kuching featured super comfy chairs, a full buffet, free non-alcoholic drinks and free draft beer. They did want us to pay for wine though so we decided at 11:00, beer would suffice. 🤣
The terrain of northern Borneo.
The Grab crowned with the chicken was sure easy to spot at the airport. Plus, we felt super cool. 🤣
Our apartment for five nights at MCiti Suites had fifty shades of green. It also had a moderately stocked kitchen, floor to ceiling windows, a very comfortable bed and the softest couch we’ve had in months. It cost $26/night.
There was also a running track directly below, which Greg used regularly. It was a good little apartment for a week and was also walking distance to a few restaurants, a night market and a grocery store.
Exploring Miri, Malaysia
We spent five nights in Malaysian Borneo’s central city of Miri, mostly to grab a little downtime and also due to its proximity to another country we had to snag while here…Brunei. We were also trying to wait out the Islamic holiday of Hari Raya because we’d read traveling during this time could be challenging.
We would say Miri, a widespread city of 350k was pleasant, but nothing special, and definitely preferred Kuching. It did feel a fraction cooler and have unique nature reserves where we saw our first hornbills in the wild, enjoyable parks, eclectic sushi, and shopping malls…lots and lots of malls, which is where the Bruneians come to do their spending on weekends.
By the way, they like big noses and they cannot lie in Borneo!! Such a curious bird! The oriental pied hornbill is considered to be among the smallest and most common of the Asian hornbills and are predominantly frugivores, aka fruitaterians. We were lucky to see a pair at the last minute leaving Piasau Nature Reserve. Walking in the nature reserve, which was free, we didn’t see much else though we heard lots of scampering in the brush.
For the record, we did not see the hornbill where it said they would be. Instead, they were high in the treetops near the entrance
No idea what this bloom is, but they were everywhere and just beautiful!
We find in peculiar that the majority of Malaysians speak English, and most professional and government signage is in English, yet the stop sign is not. In the meantime, in Vietnam much fewer people speak English and the signs read STOP!
A classic Sarawakan restaurant. In Miri, locals gazed curiously at us a LOT more than in Kuching. Considering we didn’t see any other foreigners in five days, it’s likely they don’t see many of us. We definitely felt off-the-beaten-path. Things to note, when you ask for a fruit or vegetable juice, it will usually include milk…and sugar. In this case, we ordered carrot and interestingly, it was damn good! They cost about $.80.
Our apartment building was in the top right. Down below there was a giant track which we, as well as tons of locals would use in the early mornings or evenings. The track was threaded together with two parks and was quite tranquil.
It felt great to have a kitchen and be able to prep our meals for a few days. Fresh, crunchy food is harder to come by than in Vietnam, so we always wanted salads. We unfortunately couldn’t find olive oil so we ended up buying the “healthy” form of red palm oil, which was a light mostly flavorless oil with a deep red tint that stained like turmeric. Our salad was made of cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, onion, peppers, eggs and apples. Surprisingly apples have been cheaper and easier to find here than papaya. (About $2 for 6) Strange…
The waterfront in downtown Miri is actually a jetty. Surprisingly it’s not that easy to access the ocean even though it’s seemingly right next to it. Parts of the Miri waterfront are in dire need of a fresh coat of paint, but it seems like their urban development ringitts are going to Instagram-friendly signage instead.
And shopping malls….this area was called Times Square Miri. Beware, like in THE Times Square, you will overspend. For us, on froyo. $6 for two!! 🤣
The area adjoining Times Square, which had some unique architecture. It started as a small fishing village and struck it rich in 1910 when the first oil was discovered. It seems like it’s unfortunately become a bit dilapidated.
So interesting. We’d never seen this style.
We did find some specialty shops like this bakery which had everything from gluten free to keto to sugar free to “American” chocolate chip cookies using 100% French butter. 🤣
In downtown Miri near the water front is an area called “The Wireless Walk,” which is the foodie destination of the city. We settled on “Street Food Corner” and were excited to start reading menus. Mandy ordered Nasi Goreng Ayam Butter which means Rice Fried Chicken Butter or in simpler English, butter chicken with fried rice. The butter is SO creamy here. Greg ordered Chicken Satay with spicy peanut sauce. Yum. We’re in those parts now! Six skewers were $1.25
A mosque with a fetching emerald dome.
One of the many malls we enjoyed riding escalators in air conditioning while we ran errands.
We also stumbled onto our first merry-go-round sushi in months so we had to try it out. Despite the fact that Miri is on the fringe of a giant island, the lack of seafood spinning around that belt was a little surprising, so we decided to try some of their more eclectic options.
- Fried chicken with dragon fruit
- Bean curd with egg and crab (this one was amazing)
- Fried chicken, lettuce, dill mayo and….cheese?!? Basically, what should be American starter sushi for all the picky eaters. It was not sushi, needless to say.
Still, we commended them for their creativity and most of the other ones we got were “normal”…and delicious.
After 11 plates of sushi and $8 later, we headed 25 minutes back home passing another big mosque and a dessert shop where we bought a piece of chocolate ganache cake called “Deep Love.” We’ve noticed many desserts are named something abstract, and some a little naughty, in Borneo and often they have the word love in them. Fitting. 🤣❤️
Hitchhiking to Brunei
We hitchhiked in Brunei more than we have in six years of travel. And it was also the most amusing travel day we’ve had in quite a long time thanks to the friendly faces we met along the way. One reason we came to Miri was due to its 25-kilometer proximity to this tiny oil rich nation, which is among the least visited countries in the world, naturally whetting our passports for a stamp, or a chop, as the locals say.
But first we had to get there. What separated us from the border was seemingly easy…about 25 minutes by car on the Malaysia side and about 25k on the other side to the first town in Brunei called Kuala Balait. We have a rule that you have to at least eat a meal in a country for it to “count,” (not an airport) so we had to make it that far.
There are no buses to take you across the border unless you’re heading all the way to the capital, and the taxi services will not cross. So, we jumped in an overpriced $8 Grab to the Malaysian border and then figured there would be taxis on the other side to move onward.
There weren’t. Apparently Brunei is as car centric as Middle America.
But first, after stamping out of Malaysia, we had to walk the 1 kilometer no-man’s land between two countries. We were greatly perplexed by the massive conga line rolling into Malaysia, but probably not as much as they were to see two crazy white people wondering in a land without borders in the beating sticky sun. We later learned the traffic going to Malaysia was all Bruneians making alcohol or other consumer goods runs.
Only 200 meters to the control post! And the language had suddenly switched to English and Arabic instead of English and Malay. We found this quite interesting considering Malay is actually the national language though English is official and widely spoken. Arabic is not an official language, but taught in schools, particularly religious ones, in this Islamic dominated nation. We later found out that this is Arabic script, but what is says is in Malay. So bizarre.
Welcome to Brunei. Or at least the pre-border bathrooms of Brunei and the only welcoming signage we would get! They were quite clean for the record…at least as far as border loos go. 👍🏻😅
Ahhh! We made it…to the border! The smiling and quite pretty immigration official of course wanted to know what were doing crossing into Brunei for the day and we told her we were just heading to Kuala Belait to get some lunch. She immediately asked if we had a ride because it was 25 kilometers away, or a 2.5 hour walk, and informed us there were no taxis waiting on the border when we said no. We said, “I guess we’ll be walking then!” to which she responded “good luck” and gave us 89 bonus days on our passport just in case.
So, after walking about 20 minutes in the blazing sun and a quick Google search to make sure hitching was legal, we stuck our thumbs out and were picked up by the second car that drove by. The sweet Malaysian family consisted of a young couple, her mother and sister and they were heading from Kuching all the way to Sabah, in the far east. And boy, were they full of questions for us….what are you doing? why are you doing this? How much was your visa? Are you YouTubers? Are you married? How long is your trip? (The one we always fudge with locals….uhhh…three weeks…in Borneo?!)
After a quick photo, the family let us out at the interchange which was still a 30 minute walk into town, so we instead stopped at the first option…which was no surprise…a shopping mall.
But with stores…again in Arabic! So interesting. We then visited an ATM so we could score a Brunei dollar for our currency collection (our one and only souvenir everywhere we go) and sat out to find a traditional Bruneian lunch…at the shopping mall.
We had read that Brunei food was a lot like Malaysian so instead we settled for “going to Italy” at Pasta Mania to get a quick western fix, where we grabbed a garlic pasta, a cheeseburger whose bun was strangely inside out, and a Oreo milkshake. This was all $13. Since we expected Brunei to be significantly more expensive, and we’d have virtually no transport costs others wise for the 50k journey, we were quite fine with this.
Google proof we went to Brunei. Some other facts about the country:
- it’s super safe with ultra-low crimes rates…another reason we’re fine with hopping in cars with strangers
- it only achieved independence in 1984
- According to Culture Trip, as Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo chopped down their rainforests, Brunei was tapping oil in the South China Sea. Flash forward to today and Brunei’s dense jungle is deforestation-free. Approximately 80% of Brunei is virgin rainforest. Most of the jungle remains in the same condition as it has for thousands of years.
Checking out the cost of living at a supermarket in Brunei. More than Malaysia, but didn’t seem too crazy.
It was 1:00 and time for us to figure out how to get back to Malaysia, so we first went to the hotel attached to the mall and asked the front desk for assistance. They wanted to charge an absurd $75 USD for a taxi for the 25k to the border. Are you kidding?! This isn’t Manhattan!! So we googled “taxi app Brunei” and quickly downloaded an app named Dart, which is Grab’s sister in this country. Easy peasy!
Nope. Thirty minutes later, we still couldn’t get a taxi to answer our request. So we went back to the mall and instead enlisted the help of a smiling dim sum girl who we’d soon learn was named Poudri. She immediately called a friend to see if he could take us, for money of course. He agreed, but then when he realized we wanted to go to the Brunei border, he wouldn’t do it saying…he’d never been to the border. Apparently some people are unnecessarily afraid of border crossings no matter where you are….
Thus, we returned to perching on the side of the road, Greg with a thumb in the air and Mandy grinning with begging prayer hands. (Because flashing would be almost certainly a criminal offense in the Islamic Sultanate of Brunei. 🤣)
This time it was harder and we stood about 25 minutes in the sun until a man waved, smiled and continued driving onward. That was weird. Five minutes later the same man, in a different car and now with a woman, drove back towards us and told us to get in! He had just dropped off his other car for service, evidently and picked up his wife!
Anyhow, on the way to the border, Abai and his wife Camy turned the tables on us and invited us to Camy’s brothers home for some beers. When we said, “But I thought you didn’t drink this country,” Abai assured us, “Muslims don’t drink…so you just gotta find the Chinese people!!”
And that we did! (minus Abai himself who was fifth generation Tamil!) We had the best time getting to know them and having some Tigers. What amazing hospitality and a fantastic turn of events.
Abai then took us back to the Brunei border, completely empty unlike earlier in the day. We were still the only pedestrians in line, though we did pass two headstrong Brits who seemed to be determined as mischievously as we had.
Selamat datang to Malaysia where you could find plenty of duty free shops filled with rule breaking Bruneians buying beer. 🍺
On the Malaysia side, we probably could have called a Grab. But we’d been having so much fun hitchhiking, Mandy gleefully stuck her thumb back out and again, the second car stopped. This time with a Bruneian family who was heading to Miri to do…what else? Go shopping. And just so we didn’t forget Faris’s name, he kept holding up a helpful name tag. 🤣
They were the sweetest family. Mom, Lala was from Indonesia and dad was Bruneian. They were definitely both younger than us and insisted on driving us out of their way directly to our apartment. A+ on hospitality for the Bruneians and thus concludes our most blatant and shameless country grab so far.
