Plus du change

A couple images struck me today which indicate how quickly things change around here, one of the changes being natural and the other being manmade. The manmade change is the incredible rate of progress being made on the new flyover. The images alongside and below are from 12th and 24th November respectively. During the intervening 12 days the construction workers have completed the concrete work, welded the steel barriers and removed much of the scaffolding. The target operational date of Chinese New Year looks easily attainable.

The second change affected the beach at the boat club, 11 days ago it was covered in a thick layer of wood chippings. The picture below of the beach today shows how the chippings can be scoured off the beach, the waves are actually breaking up to the 3rd step on the stairs from the beach to the club terrace.

This high tide is the local result of storms which have hit the South China Sea area this week. The effect could also be seen this morning at the sea wall which protects the front of the Marriott hotel.

The storms around us did not spoil the weather, we enjoyed another sunny day of around 30C, but it did turn the triathlon at 6:30 this morning into a biathlon since the sea was too rough for the swim. It is the aankomst of Sinterklaas tomorrow morning, I assume that his traditional arrival by boat will be adjusted to take account of the conditions.

Christmas is coming, the pizza eaters are getting fat .....

Belle’s bookshop, apart from being the best stocked bookseller in town, is also getting into the Christmas spirit. A selection of faux trees greets you on the stairs and then you are able to browse the stock to the strains of seasonal melodies. All of which feels relatively natural in the air conditioned shop but distinctly strange on exiting into the humid 30C exterior.

Meanwhile something for Les Girls. All sorts of culinary delights on offer in Miri, and while we cannot boast a Fratelli’s ( nearest location is Voorschoten ) we do have Fratini’s if one fancies some Italian cuisine, in fact there are two branches of this fine eatery in the city.

Shopping, Cars and People

Once again Paul, one of my colleagues, had invited me to join him for breakfast on Saturday. This time, before going to the café, we went to the jungle market. This is the local equivalent of a farmers market where lots of small stalls sell fruit and vegetables, chicken and fish produced or caught in the area. Prices for local produce were very reasonable, e.g. 3Kg of local oranges for the equivalent of one pound. There were also a number of imported vegetables which would be more recognisable to European shoppers ( carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, beetroot, sugar snap peas etc ) but these were selling at higher prices. After a fascinating wander round the market, and lots of purchases, we ate at the 2020 café which is a very popular Miri stop for breakfast.

Later I took the opportunity to explore some of the shopping malls in Miri. First observation is that a lot of the locals seem to want to park in the immediate vicinity of the mall. At Bintang Plaza I parked without any problems about 500 metres from the mall and by the time I had walked back there the queue of cars searching for close-by parking spots hadn’t moved much. It wasn’t even as though the day was unbearably hot, it was about midday when I parked and the temperature was 30C with the sun shining, I wore a big hat to protect the balding pate and I was absolutely fine.
Bintang Plaza is a multi floor mall; a big department store called Parkson is the major draw but there are other attractions, for example a Hush puppy shop offering good shoes, but unfortunately not in sizes larger than 44 ;-(
It also has the regional equivalent of Starbucks and a Bodyshop, what more could you want ???

The other major activity yesterday was to finally decide which 4wheel drive I was going to buy. Pajero’s have a reputation as troublesome and expensive to maintain and there is a very limited supply of Landcruiser VX so in the end I have selected a Landcruiser Prado TX, the car is 9 years old but in good condition yet still costs a pretty penny due to the substantial import duties on foreign cars. There are locally built Prado’s but our car is a Japanese built import, all local advice is that these imports are of higher quality, we shall see …….




The car has been purchased from Jomoto, this is the local dealer that almost every expat seems to use for car purchase and service. While waiting to sign the paperwork yesterday I looked through the photo archive of previous purchasers. I recognised lots of people currently here but also some blasts from the past, one of these being Steve and Jean Laux and another, in a yellowing photograph from 1998, was the whole Douglas clan. Nine years ago they left NL soon after we arrived and now we are leaving The Netherlands as they go back there ( although they have been in a few exotic places in the interim ). Oh well, that's the expat life for you.

Nature in all its wonders

Although we are in the midst of the rainy season it has actually been remarkably dry this week. There have been a few occasions when it looked as though we were about to get a downpour but the reality has seldom made it to the coastal regions. The threatening skies are quite impressive though. I took this picture driving from the office to the club one lunchtime, the sea ( with clear blue sky ) is to the right. The storm clouds, complete with lightning, are inland but once again the rain did not reach us.

But the weather causes other strange effects at this time of year. I shared a picture of the beach at the club in an earlier posting; a nice, clean, sandy area as you would expect. I had been told that there were occasions when the beach would be covered in wood chippings driven ashore by the storm tides, these being a by product of the local timber industry. Well I didn’t think too much of that until I saw the reality.












The whole beach looked as though it was a rocky foreshore at low tide and on closer inspection the depth of the wood shipping layer can be seen. One outgoing tide has already started to cut runnels through the thick mat of chippings.

But not to worry apparently, although this looks pretty catastrophic the next storm tide is likely to scour the beach clean again.





Otherwise life marches on, I have a house and expect to be able to move in early December and I think that I have found a car. More soon ….

Now you don't see it and .....

The Prime Minister of Malaysia was in Miri to open a new flyover today, nothing special in that you may think but the building work on the flyover only started about 6 months ago.

A second flyover is being built, currently about 2 months into the job and much of the basic structure is in place, this second flyover is expected to be ready by Chinese New year 2008 ( early February ). Back in Europe we might have just been getting the planning permission for the first flyover in the same period of time that the Miri authorities have built two of them. Although the safety systems are rather different from those employed back home.

Hello again

Well a bit of a catch-up is due. Lots to do at work so I have been a bit busy ( and tired ) to blog.

This weekend has been fun. On Saturday morning one of my colleagues invited me out for breakfast. On the drive into the city centre from the hotel we passed a Chinese temple and elsewhere I passed a large cemetery, clear indications of the size of the local Chinese community.

Apparently breakfasting out is a bit of a local tradition and there are some cafés that are only open in the morning to cater for this trade. We were joined at breakfast by Paul’s 11 year old daughter Joanna, apparently his older daughters used to join him as well but it is no longer cool to be with Dad, some issues are clearly cross cultural…..
Anyway, once at the café we sat down to an excellent meal of Mee. Paul and I had Mee Jaya ( my transliteration so may be spelt wrongly ) which was noodles with chicken curry while Joanna had Mee Goreng ( literally fried noodles ).

Then Andrew (one of my team ) picked me up from the hotel for an orientation tour of Miri but with a specific aim to find a car, well there were surprises in store. Quite a number of expats have arrived recently so it is a sellers market, prices are considerably higher than when Andrew arrived 8 months ago. I was offered a 10 year old Landcruiser Prado for just over EUR16000, a 7 year old RAV4 for EUR23000 or a 5 year old Pajero for EUR35000. Small cars were not much better with a fairly basic Proton ( local build ) at EUR9000 for a 4 year old vehicle. These cars are all available from one or other of the dealers used by most expats and come with a warranty. I will look again at the board at work & club to check whether there is anything coming up for sale from someone on departure.

We then moved on to furniture, since the houses here are provided unfurnished. Andrew pointed out the various furniture stores to me including Cane Decoration which offers hand made rattan furniture, I then saw some examples at Andrew’s house and they are quite impressive, pretty certain we’ll get something similar when we have a house.

Speaking of houses I have opted for a place in Taman Bayshore. Andrew showed me around his house ( which is the mirror image of our house ) and the big rooms certainly look better with furniture in them.










Andrew and Sarah have removed one of the base units in the kitchen so that they have space for their dishwasher and a cold water dispenser, we will probably do the same.

We had lunch on the beach shore in front of the club, very relaxed, and then took a quick stroll round the facilities. There are lots of sailing options.










Plus other ways to enjoy the water such as the river barge, the left hand boat with the bimini top and twin 60Hp engines, not sure that it is visible in this picture but the right hand engine cover is held on with bungees, Apparently this engine has finally given up the ghost and a new engine is on order. The river barge ( as might be expected from the name ) can be used for excursions up river. The speedboat beyond ( with a whacking great 175Hp outboard ) is apparently accompanied by a banana boat and great fun can be had by all.






There are 4 tennis courts at the club, the court surface appears to be in much better condition compared with the courts at the Marriott but they are busy in the evenings so some people ( those who are members at the Marriott ) play there instead.

Sunday has been a really wet day, but with the typical warm rain of the Tropics, when it is really heavy I use an umbrella but otherwise I just walk through the rain. I clearly still have a N European attitude to rain, when I am in the car and preparing to open the door I just expect it be cold and wet, so it is still a really pleasant surprise when it is hot and wet. But the rain was not too much of a problem as I took the opportunity of fairly empty Sunday roads to explore the city streets and start to get my bearings. There are no GPS maps of Miri thus it is back to old fashioned paper maps and dead reckoning.

Finally, although today has been grey and wet this is a picture of the hotel pool and sunken bar which I took yesterday morning, definitely feels a bit decadent to be living somewhere that looks like a holiday brochure.

Work, Work, Work ( and housing )

I feel like the BBC … and now here is today’s weather in Miri. Heavy rain overnight and still raining when I left for the office at 6:30, thus first use of an umbrella was required. The little football pitch I spotted on the first day had large pools of standing water and was occupied by a flock of white egrets.

Lots of admin today as I start the process of registration in Malaysia and work in SSB, as usual you just never have enough passport photographs, the demand for photo ID seems insatiable. I met many of the members of my team all of whom seem nice but I have some challenges, between failing hearing and east Malaysian English accents, as I communicate with them.

Got my new laptop, thus now 3 in the hotel room in total, and more importantly my new phone a spanking new Nokia with every feature you could possibly need ( so why do I feel a bit like a Luddite and want to keep my nice simple 6310i…. ).

I had lunch at the Piasau boat club, great location and they still use bar/restaurant chits ( shades of Ras al Hamra ). Quite a varied menu but apparently quite static, there was supposed to be a new menu introduced in October but that has yet to materialise. Anyway I had a Tuna and Chickpea salad which was very good. The noodles also looked good, and I am sure that over the next few months I'll have lots of chances to sample the different options.

And this is the view of the beach to the left of the boat club itself.

This afternoon I met up with the housing administrator and found out that I was 48th on the waiting list for the camp houses thus could have up to 2 years to wait for a house on camp. The good news is that I am over the housing points threshold thus get access to Cat A houses ( essentially everything other than the management houses ). Thus not so good news on the camp houses but better news on Taman Bayshore; I am the only person looking for a house at present, there are 4 available now and another 3 become available in November. There are two styles which are very similar other than the addition of balconies in the later houses, given the restricted garden space I think I will opt for one of the balconied houses.

So that’s it for today…

Out and About

Well I was lucky again with the weather today, although it rained over night I awoke to another blue sky. Already hot and humid by the time I went to the gym before breakfast and at the top of the day it was distinctly “drippy”.

Today was my orientation day, I was to be escorted by a local relocation specialist who would show me all the important things I should know about Miri. Well, that was the plan. Turns out that the company had only taken over the Shell “Meet & Greet” contract recently and that Sharon ( my guide ) only moved to Miri from KL in July. Result was that she didn’t really know the programme and she definitely didn’t know her way around the city very well. Since the only road map we had was fairly small scale and didn’t even show all the road names we, needless to say, took a few interesting routes. At one point, having failed to find the boat club by driving all the way to the end of the peninsula at the Miri River Sharon then failed to find it on a second drive through the camp. Never mind we would do better in locating Hornbill House, the Outpost base, where I would meet the Shell spouses who run the place and get some more information, now where is it again ….. In the end we gave up and agreed that Sharon would find out where all the missing places were actually located and take me there later this week. To cap all the geographical shenanigans once I picked up my pool car Sharon was to show me the most direct route between the office and the hotel. First she took me back through the camp, rather than direct to the main road, and then overshot the hotel turning by a few kilometres ( her excuse there was that I was a couple of cars back and may not have seen her turn signal, yeh right …… ). But other than the navigational traumas the day went off pretty well, we started off at the Hong Kong & Shanghai bank and opened two accounts one for Euros and one for Ringgits. No debit cards in Miri, thus back to cash ( how old fashioned ) but 6 digit pins on the ATM card and Tasco tokens for Internet banking ( how advanced ). Apart from that lots of charges and by the way I can only use the ATM at the one HSBC branch in town free of charge, everywhere else will cause a transaction charge. Ah well, so a cash economy and only able to get “free” cash at the home branch ( didn’t we bank that way 20 years ago ???? ).

We then visited a plethora of shopping malls, being a KL girl Sharon was quite disparaging about the local retail therapy offerings but at first glance they seemed OK to me ( but then what do I know about shopping … ). I did take a look at the wine section of one supermarket and found Australian Banrock Station Cab Sauv at EUR17 per bottle so a posting in Miri could be good for the liver.

Other than the malls there are lots of little shops offering a whole variety of services in the back streets. Plus an abundance of small restaurants, mainly catering to locals ( so fish head stew is available for those that want to go the whole hog ) but also offering lots of nice food. For lunch we each had a portion of Singapore noodles, a bottle of water and green tea; total bill just less than EUR4, and apparently tipping is not normal practise. So eat like the locals for a song or eat like an Expat at the Marriott for the whole opera.


And, specially for Kay, I did find the best bookshop in town, a nice place called Belle’s tucked away on the first floor of a shop down one of these backstreets and disguised above a lower floor selling baby wear.
Next door to Belle’s is the laundry I will use, they will wash and iron a kilo of laundry for RM9.50 while the hotel charges RM9 for a single shirt.



I checked out both the local golf courses, Eastwood is the better looking course with lots of water and great looking greens( plus electric golf carts ) but is a cool EUR1780 per year and is located about 20 minutes drive away from the office/camp on a quiet day, which would make a few holes of golf after work rather difficult given the year round consistent 6PM sunset.



The Miri golf club costs EUR888 to join ( EUR666 re-imbursable by the company ) and then EUR20 per month to be a playing member. The course is fairly basic but is really close to the camp and it has an incongruously grand clubhouse as you can see alongside. Next step will be to talk to golfers already here and then probably try them both out when Kay comes out in December.



Final stop was at the Taman Bayshore housing development, which is likely to be the type of house we will first live in here. Lots of new houses are being built at present and I wondered round a house which was being painted, spectacularly big but the only green space outside would accommodate a couple of seats at most. Like many other expats we’ll probably take once of these houses and then wait for a transfer onto Pisau camp.


I mentioned the downside of tropical sunsets earlier ( i.e. no evening golf ) but there are upsides, we had another spectacular sunset across the South China Sea tonight.


So that’s it, I now have to start work tomorrow, let’s see what a new day brings ….

What a difference a day makes ......

Well, after the welcome team's doom and gloom statements on the rainy season and 5 hours of rain on the first night I was delighted to wake up to dry blue skies today.

Clearly the ground is well able to cope with the rain, this is a photograph of the same football pitch which was standing in water yesterday. Although the central section ( near the red flag ) is still spongy underfoot the rest is quite OK.


When out walking today I did come across some of the roadside storm drains, from the size of the drain you can see the type of rainfall that is expected.

The sun also brings out the colour in the environment, as expected Miri looks as though it is going to be a fabulous place to live.

I took a stroll onto the beach nearby and encountered some of the local wildlife, this first picture is specially for James.






On the beach I found lots of specimens of an old favourite, the little sand crabs that roll sand balls, it was low tide so the whole littoral area was covered with the evidenceof their activities.



















Miri's mascot is a seahorse and the object on the left of this picture is a large statue of same facing out to sea. Alongside is the pavilion at the end of the sea wall. I believe this is one extent of the harbour but I have yet to get there ( my passage being blocked by a stream running down the side of the beach).









And then finally one more shot of the beach and hotel, bookings now being taken from wintery northern Europeans.....


Tot ziens

Arrival in Miri

I arrived last night after a lengthy journey from The Netherlands. Miri was as expected warm and damp but then at about 11PM the heavens opened and it started to rain. By the time I got to sleep at 4:30 AM it was still raining, not that the rain kept me awake, just the time zone difference.


By the time I woke at 9AM the rain had stopped. After breakfast today I wondered around the Marriott hotel grounds. The hotel is fairly modern and has everything that you would expect of a 4 star hotel including the high staff ratio typical of Asian hotels. Although from the photo alongside it looks as though the hotel sits on the beach there is actually a sea wall behind the position where I took the shot with substantial waves crashing onto the shore, thus no swimming in the sea here !!!





The bedroom wings are two storey affairs looking onto gardens. I have a ground floor room and from my balcony I look onto some typically luxuriant gardens while beyond the foliage there is just a glimpse of the sea. A walk to the end of my wing leads to this wider view of the bay and a manmade headland. Very brown surf at the moment, I assume that this is caused by silt outflow from the river following the rains.

Lots of sports facilities here although the hard tennis courts have numerous pools of water on the surface and look unplayable to a European eye. There are what appear to be giant squeegees at the fence so it may be possible to push off the water. .

However the small football pitch looks another matter altogether ;-)