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.