Day 5: Friday 8 July (Part 2)

Regular readers (if such there be) will already know that we're currently on a Big Road Trip. Anyone who's just blown in on a bit of dandelion clock needs to look here and here for Days 1 to 5 (Part 1).

If you take the coast road (and why wouldn't you, as it's scenic, quiet, and not the Pan Borneo Highway), it should take about three hours to get from Mukah to Bintulu. It's not a fast road, as it's pretty bumpy in places. But it's pleasant. We actually took a tad longer than three hours. I drove the first bit, so we had a mega rain-storm to contend with... And we also stopped off at Kuala Tatau to get a view of the bridge:



Just as we did in 2020, we are staying at the Jinhold Apartment Hotel, tempted back by the large space (two rooms plus bathroom), the kitchenette, the sea view, and -- very necessary by now -- the washing machine that lives on the balcony...

The Ta Kiong supermarket has moved into the Spring mall just down the road (a sentence that makes it sound just like home...). So we were able to stock up with essential provisions for the evening:


Day 6: Saturday 9 July

Designated slow day. On a road trip, when you're regularly on the move, you need quiet days every now and then.

But we did three things: walked a beach, visited a coffee shop, and viewed a bridge construction.

The beach was Pantai Batu Mandi, just up the coast from Bintulu:










The coffee shop was The Coffee Code, the Bintulu branch of Sarawak's very own coffee chain. Having sampled their wares in Kuching (a long time ago) and in Sarikei (just the other day), we're now on a mission to visit the remaining branches...



And the bridge was the one that will some day link Bintulu and Jepak:




Day 7: Sunday 10 July (Part 1)

Bintulu, as we found out last time, is not noted for being pedestrian-friendly. There's an enormous amount of construction happening, so you're likely to find your routes cut off by barriers of one description or another. And it's all too easy, as we discovered, to get marooned on the wrong side of an uncrossable drainage ditch, that you then have to go miles to circumvent.

Nevertheless, we cobbled together an interesting itinerary for our final Bintulu morning, and we were accompanied on most of it by the chanting of the mosques for Eid al-Adha:















Our last port of call was the History and Cultural Park, which features a series of carved panels depicting the development of Bintulu over the years. It's meant to represent a success story -- from sleepy village to industrial hub -- but read against the grain, it's an ironic commentary on what has happened all over the world: from living with and from nature, we took to subduing it...









After that, just some cooking up and tidying up, and then we're off.

We have 73,112 kilometres on the clock, and we're heading for Miri...