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 ….