Yesterday, spurred on by the success of our recent bus trip to Bau, we embarked on a follow-up.

We'd been to Siburan last year with friends, found it a very pleasant little place, and felt it could stand a return visit. Siburan is on the route to Serian. And, as is well known, there's always a bus to Serian... Always, lurking at the bus-gathering place round the back of the market, is a bus to Serian.

Well, by the end of yesterday morning, we had formulated a working hypothesis as to WHY this is the case. We have figured out that there's always a bus to Serian, because it never actually GOES to Serian. It's a decoy bus.

We had an old bus timetable that said buses went to Serian every 30 minutes. Now, of course, you can't trust old timetables. And the Serian bus didn't figure at all on the new timetable we picked up on the day we didn't go to Bau.

But -- I repeat -- there's ALWAYS a bus to Serian. And when we arrived at 0725, there were already people sitting on it. So we climbed aboard.

As 0730 rolled by, it was clear that the half-hour was not its departure time. We waited. More people boarded. The temperature (the engine wasn't running, so there was no aircon) was steadily climbing.


So 0800 comes and goes, and there are still no signs of any action. There are probably about 15 people on the bus by now, and it's getting ever hotter. At 0810, we decided to bail.

Why didn't we ask one of the people on the bus, you might be wondering. Well, generally, I try not to ask questions if I think people might not know the answer, or might be embarrassed by the answer. I don't like to burden people by making them feel responsible for us. Maybe that's stupid. I don't know. But with no sign of a driver, and the engine still inactive (buses usually fire up well before departure time), I don't know how anyone could confidently have said when this vehicle was going to go. Plus, we thought, if it's that unpredictable at this end, how will we know if it's ever likely to come back...? Maybe a decoy bus sits all day at Serian as well...

So we headed off to do other things. Food and photography are always good stand-bys...









Now, you might think our bus experience is all very trivial -- and it is.

But an unwelcome pattern is starting to emerge of not being able to get to places... With the pandemic (pretty much) over, we'd been looking forward to moving away from road trips, and getting ourselves back onto the public transport that we'd enjoyed riding when we first got here.

As we research things,however, we draw more and more blanks. Sibu-Kapit-Belaga by boat, for example, and then back via the logging road to Bintulu? This was a trip we've wanted to do since 2018, and just haven't been able to fit in. Well, now, there's no longer a boat to Sibu, and because of the new road, there are few if any boats to Kapit. (We've also been warned that there might not be enough water in the river for a trip to Belaga, and conversely, too much rain on the logging road can see travellers stranded for ages -- but, in fairness, there's nothing new there.)

OK, so how about the Miri-Brunei-Limbang-Labuan route I'd also had on the back burner for a while? The direct Miri-Brunei bus no longer exists. What you have now is a choice between a private transfer and a complete shemozzle. Ditto, as far as I can see, for the Brunei-Limbang route.

There's supposed to be a new bus terminal in the works for Miri, but quite how far this has progressed I don't know.

Stuart McDonald, the Travelfish guy, is currently in Sarawak (we arranged to meet up with him, actually, which was very interesting). He writes in his newsletter that he has been planning "a trip up to Mulu National Park by boat, something I reckon I had to WhatsApp about half the population of Sarawak to pull off".

It's all a little discouraging. There's just way too much incentive to drive or fly...