In the morning we took the long taxi ride from Kuching to the "Express Boat Wharf" several kilometers from town on a winding route through more light industry and shopping centers. We passed more of the same Chinese Mansions we have seen regularly from Vancouver to Singapore.

The shopping centers outside of town look about like the ones in town - three-story tall rectangles with lots of large plastic signs illuminated from within. The shops sell furniture, cellular phones, electronics, food. Also lots of little restaurants with Chinese food. They're a lot like strip malls in America except each one has only about five stores and not much parking and things seem a little dingy. The city looks very healthy.

The express boat is a long skinny thing, sort of like and airliner without wings. It has two decks for passengers each with three seats on each side of the aisle. We sat upstairs in first class for a few ringgits extra. Only about six or eight other passengers sat up there with us. It's air-conditioned and has two movies during the four-hour trip. I never expected that on my first river trip in Borneo, I would be watching Pet Semetary 2!

I didn't watch much of the movie actually. I wanted to see outside. Shortly after we embarked we had to stop and wait for a lock. I stood on the rear deck with about a dozen other gawking passengers. Some of them might also have been tourists, but we were definitely the only westerners on the boat.

We were allowed to wander anywhere we wanted on the boat even though it had no railings. When the locked gate opened, a hodge-podge of vessels emerged. One was another express boat like ours and the rest were hard working old wooden boats that must have extra bilge pumps installed, judging by the amount of water flowing out of hoses over the side. Some of the boats were fishing boats and some are small to medium-sized transports. Few looked particularly seaworthy, even from a distance.

Before long we entered a large shallow bay. For most of the trip we could not see land. The haze and overcast skies and shallow greenish water provided about the most boring possible spectacle, like a sensory deprivation tank. I watched most of Passenger 57.

Finally we entered the Rajang river. It reminded us of the lower Mississippi, though not quite as wide. The water ends at the tree line and you can't see anything beyond the first row of trees. Occasionally we passed a logging station where hundreds (or thousands) of giant logs are piled waiting for milling or shipment. I noticed lots of log debris in the river and we heard things thump into the hull several times.

There were a lot of other boats on the river - everything from enormous ocean going vessels to a couple kids in a "longboat" (wooden canoe) with an outboard engine.

By the time we reached Sibu, we could see a river valley forming and hills in the distance.

We liked Sibu right away. It's a busy compact little town. We hardly saw any other westerners. No one pays particular attention to us yet they are friendly. Like Kuching, it was Chinese. Lots of people were out walking and the shops seemed busy. There was no sign of an economic crisis. In Indonesia, people hated it when we tried to pay with anything but exact change. If you pulled out even a 10,000 rupiah note (US$1), they might disappear for 10 minutes to scrounge up the change. When people don't have 30 cents in change, you know they're poor. But in Sibu, we saw a woman use a 50 ringgit note to buy roll that costs under 1 ringgit. (While we were there, 1 ringgit = 30 cents U.S.)

We felt comfortable in Sibu. Kuching had a lot of tourist luxuries that Sibu didn't but Sibu was small; you could walk everywhere. We spent an extra day there just exploring shops and taking pictures. We found a shop that sells bird's nests and shark fins - period. A sign outside read, "We Sell Birds Nest (With Rock Sugar)."

Very few shops cater to tourists but every night the city has a crowded and appealing night market. Just as the sun sets, hundreds of stalls appear on two central streets. All the stalls have hanging white fluorescent lighting. One street has trinkets like wallets, toy cars, finger nail clippers, balloons, cassettes, batteries, generally anything you can find in a five-and-ten. The other street has food stalls with fried chicken, egg rolls, and delicious steamed buns filled with chicken, sweet bean paste or pork. At four buns for one ringgit, we ate quite a few. In the night market we saw no local crafts at all. In fact, other than the buns, the market had very little that interested us but we really enjoyed just walking though it.

Sibu sits near the end of the Rajang. Upstream are hundreds of longhouses and very few shops. The people from the longhouses come here to buy the necessities. I think that has something to do with the energy of the market.

I had a sad feeling in Sibu that the apparent rising affluence comes mostly from cutting the rainforest. Sibu and Malaysia in general have very high hopes for the future. Malaysia will probably do great but I feel like Sibu might peter out into a has-been logging town like the ones in the Pacific Northwest.

I had read the Karaoke was very popular in Sibu so one night Joan and I set out to find a hopping Karaoke bar. We didn't want to sing, we just wanted to experience it.

Lots and lots of places advertise Karaoke. One place advertised a Filipino band. We wondered what the point was of hiring a band for Karaoke. We looked inside and among the red velvet couches and candlelight we saw only employees. The band would not start for another 30 minutes. We left. The door to another place led to a dirty stairway. We walked up, a little timidly. This place was also empty.

Finally we found a slick looking sign in a little busier part of town that looked promising. We started walking up a stairway then I noticed a sign that had the price of rooms per hour. We left.

The only place we entered where we actually saw customers was a snooker hall that also advertised Karaoke. I think they had a TV playing music in the back but other than that we just saw a bunch of young men standing around snooker tables (they look like large pool tables). No one was playing. We left.

We never did find any nightlife in Sibu. It was Saturday night and we looked around until about 10 p.m. Perhaps it starts later or maybe we just didn't find the hip part of town.

Next: We reach a longhouse.

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