Kuching and Kota Kinabalu are not new to me, even I've covered Miri in some of the work trips.
This time round, I've got to explore another new town of East Malaysia: Sibu.
Sibu is a small town where the main population in the city is chinese teo chew folks. Then, a big portion of them are natives.
One of the must try here - mee sua chicken soup
When I landed on Friday, I was assigned to a taxi uncle that he reminds me of my late grandfather. We started chatting and he offered to bring me around, aka city tour.
This feels like I'm in some sort of the filming setup - very nicely done!
We first went to this very big temple called tian en shi 天恩寺. I felt like VIP as I booked the whole place - no one is around apart from me.
It's a very huge plot of land with different temples and buildings around the area. I got to admit the structure of the temples were amazing, detailed and I was very impressed. They say it will "fully operate" when there is group / tour visit... But not for me when I was there la, since mine is a walk-in...
Opera house
One of the temples
Another temple at the outer ring
Check out the dragon craving and nice building craftsmanship
One of the main goddess in the tempple
This supposed to be their library
Some of the interesting wall art as the fence of this area
Then he bought me to sight see the longhouses and lake garden. The tour ended with a visit to the jetty and another temple dua pek gong 大伯公.
They say many will check in this place, so am I
I was a bit misery of the color of the river. Then I realised Sibu is a town where there are logging business going around - hence, the waste of the logs cause the coloring of the river
These are the transportation ferries to the other smaller parts of Sarawak
After checking some emails, I thought of having some me time. Hence, I looked for manicure service. Unfortunately, I can't find a place at all. Most likely it's a small town, and such services might be on appointment basis, no walk-in allowed.
I continued searching and I found a tattoo shop instead. Hence, I wrote to them on Facebook and the next thing you know I was preparing to go check out.
After delivery, I was attempted to have another mark to symbolise my always travel. Was thinking of having a small one on my wrist. Went to consult the tattoo artist and the first draft of having a music score, an anchor and an aeroplane was out. Totally love it and yes, I did it!!
introducing my new addition
Later on, exploration mode continued and I went to Sibu local night market. I was more than shocked when I saw both halal and non halal stalls are within the same compound, but in different rows opposite facing each other.
So many dim sum options in a night market?
These bananas are 10x bigger than our convention bananas
This is really interesting as no where in Klang Valley I could see such openly selling of non-halal food products - we have body parts of pork for sale!
They have colorful drinks too!
On the last day before I head home, we get to try good local food in one of their local restaurant - Hong Fu Seafood. We were the last table for that day and we had a satisfy meal to mark an end to our event.
Hong Fu famous pork knuckle - it's the BOMB! super delicious
fried sotong
vegetable of course
salted egg prawn
sweet and sour chicken
Yam and taufu
Chao Zou steam fish
Although it's a small town, but I did felt welcome here. The culture, people and atmosphere are much harmonious here in Sibu.