Straight ahead…

The old hometown looks the same…

…but no, Bintulu certainly has changed…a lot since the last time I was here on one of my working trips.

Two Sundays ago, the 13th of July, we sent Melissa to her school which is located somewhere in between which would mean that it is more or less the same distance back to Sibu (99 km) or straight ahead to Bintulu (122 km). After everything was settled and done there, my missus and I drove on to attend my cousin’s youngest daughter’s wedding on the 15th but we decided to go a little earlier so we could spend a couple of days there to see whatever they might have in store.

The road to Bintulu from Melissa’s school was not as good as from there to Sibu and it did not help one bit that there were two long stretches where they were doing repairing and resurfacing works, one 2 km long and the other a kilometre. In the current very hot and dry weather, the dust could be seen from far far away like there was some open burning going on.  Other than those, most parts had all those badly-done patches the rest of the way so it was not really a smooth and pleasant drive.

The town centre has not changed much. I remember staying in that inn with the HSBC branch right across the road and there’s a not-very-impressive shopping complex further up that road but I don’t recall seeing this very nice temple…

…at the time. Probably it was there, just that I did not notice and they’ve done it up very nicely since.

While the town itself has remained pretty much the same, many vast commercial areas have mushroomed all over, here and there and everywhere outside the town proper. The roads in the town in some parts were, I’m afraid, not much better than what we went through along the way from Melissa’s school and there were simply not enough signs to help first-timers in town get around so we would end up at some place, unintended and u-turns were the rule of the day. I also noticed in places along the road where the grass was very long, left uncut and many of the buildings and blocks of shophouses badly need a new coat of paint. The town authorities obviously need a paradigm shift and should pull up their socks now that it is no longer the little cowboy town that it used to be…to make Bintulu a lot more presentable and impressive than what it is presently.

We stayed at one of those new(er) areas – the  Assyakirin Commerce Square/Commercial Centre at this hotel…

…right next to the one affiliated to that cheap airline.

I used my government rate and got a standard twin room like this…

…for only RM118 nett per night with one breakfast…at the cafe on the ground floor, right beside the lobby…

Breakfast was supposed to be at 6.30 a.m. but I went in way before then. This being the Muslim fasting month of Ramadhan, it was made available extra early for their pre-dawn sahur…

I thought the fried noodles…

…were all right and so were this chicken dish with Thai chili sauce…

…and the beef rendang…

…or at least, that was what I thought it was. The chicken curry was good too…

…even though it looked like those who had their pre-fasting meal ahead of me had helped themselves to most of it. Normally, at such hotel buffets, there would be people going round to see if anything needs refilling or at least, they would use a spoon to “rearrange” the food to make it look more presentable…but there wasn’t a single soul to be seen. I guess it was simply too early for anybody to be up and about.

There was nasi lemak too with the sambal, hard-boiled egg, cucumber plus the peanuts and fried ikan bilis (dried anchovies) in the tupperware…

…to go with it and there was porridge…

…if one would be thus inclined and on the other side, there were the cereal, bread and stuff and there was a free flow of coffee or tea and juices as well.

This was all that I had…

… that first morning in Bintulu as my missus and I would be heading to the airport in a bit to pick up two aunties of mine from Kuching who were also coming to attend the wedding banquet and we planned to go with them for breakfast upon their arrival. Do stick around for my blogpost on that and more.

Incidentally, if you are in Bintulu round this time, you may be interested in their Ramadhan buffet…

…which seemed to be quite popular as I would see quite a number of people having dinner in the cafe those three nights I was there.