Leaving Bandar Seri Begawan on the first bus to Seria at 7:10am, I was one of only five passengers. The bus we took was not to the standards expected of the glamourous Brunei, resembling something you may see in Laos - no air con, torn seats, foggy windows. Not the Rolls Royce I was hoping for. It was a nice ride to Seria, nevertheless.
Seria was a nice oil town. All the necessary services were present, and the streets were neat. Oil workers wearing overalls wandered about, lots more white guys than in Bandar - apparently there is a night life too, somewhere, somehow. Not time for that this time.
I called my mother, who's jaw seemed to drop over the phone when I mentioned I was in Seria. No Mom, not Syria, thankfully. I will try to keep my travel plans more up-to-date... :)
At 10 I caught a bus to Kuala Belait, only about a half hour away. From KB we caught a 1 minute ferry ride across a 150m wide black-water river (black like oil...). On the other side a bus took us to the Brunei customs/immigration office. We passed through and another bus took us to the Malaysian customs/immigration. Then we took another bus across another river and finally touched down in Miri around 1. What a ridiculous affair!
Miri is a beautiful little community of 200 000, with a very centralised commerical district. The chinese influence is much greater than in Sabah or Brunei, and most business signs are in both english and chinese. Has the feel that Georgetown, up north on the peninsula, had.
I arrived at the bus depot and sought out the familiar surroundings of an internet cafe, found on the second floor of the nearby shopping centre. There I looked for a hostel that I found while browsing online a few days earlier. The hostels listed in the LP were nothing special, and this one I found online boasted lots of helpful advice for tours in the area; the owner's wife lived in a longhouse in the interior or Borneo, she has intimate knowledge of the tribes there. I found the place, located on the waterfront in a relatively empty, new, commercial area.
I've run out of time here, I'm likely heading to Bario, a town made up of a cluster of tribal longhouses in the interior. I hope to meet up with the nomadic penan people to live off the land for a few days; I'm going with an aussie I met here. I may be out of contact for awhile, but I will finish ASAP...