We'd not been out of Kuching since our smoke-enforced trip to KK. Despite the best of resolutions, teeth, coughs, administrative tasks, and endless cooking have hollowed out our schedule.

But today we made it to Serian on the 3A bus. This 61-kilometre trip costs MYR 12 per person return. On the way out the journey took 2.5 hours. On the way back we made it in 1.75.


It's always good to get out of town, and be reminded of how vast, how tall, and how green Sarawak is.



There's not a huge amount to Serian itself, but it's beautifully situated, and we spent our available couple of hours very pleasantly.


We had a long talk with a local who remembered very gratefully the work of volunteers from Anglophone countries, including NZ. Such people taught him English back in his youth, and "enabled Malaysia to develop", he said. Truth to tell, the conversation made us wince a bit. I'm glad he benefited, and in a world of (richly deserved) post-colonial hatred, I'm glad he's grateful and positive. But I'm too allergic to the "white saviour" syndrome to not feel uncomfortable at this narrative. What got suppressed in the process of transmitting all this knowledge? And what is or was "development"?

We also discussed the Pan Borneo Highway (you travel along this from Kuching to Serian, and a bit more of it is going up at the end of the main street). He explained how the town had insisted on being part of the route: "We didn't want to be bypassed, and left to turn into a cowboy town." In the expectation of more throughput, land and property prices have risen already. So Serian may well be a very different place in a few years' time...


In the meantime, two people still can, as we did, lunch on pork noodles and tea for MYR 10 all up.


The Tua Pek Kong temple is sufficient on its own to justify a trip to Serian in my opinion.






A little fountain trickles gently inside. You can hear the road, but it sounds a long way off. These still places really speak to me.






Serian also has a really cool durian...


... and boasts a classic Sarawakian market full of what to us are still mysterious foodstuffs. I limited myself to buying a purple keyring...


And I whiled away the journey home by attempting to photograph creeper-goons.

If you're familiar with the inimitable Calvin and Hobbes, you'll know all about snow-goons.

Creeper-goons, the shaggy monsters created by rampant creepers, are similarly amorphous and towering.






In the daytime, they're harmless (but REALLY hard to photograph). At night, though, who knows what they do when they loom out of the darkness with their long, green, stretchy, grabby arms...?