Miri’s attractions include such delights as the Brighton Beach, Miri River, the Grand Old Lady (Miri’s first oil well) on Canada Hill, the promenade at Taman Selera with its open-air stalls that serve up fantastic seafood delicacies and Mulu National Park, a little distance away.

Along the harbour and the waterfront are located a number of shops that sell locally made handcrafted items and exotic stuff from the rainforests of Sarawak. Miri also has a thriving nightlife that recommends it to oil workers looking to spend some of their hard earned cash as well as hordes of revellers from neighbouring Brunei.

Miri prospered on the wealth of natural resources around - earnings from oil and timber have transformed a village into boomtown into the headquarters of the oil and oil refining industry into the main revenue generator for Sarawak. But what makes Miri the focus of the tourist trade is the role it plays as the gateway to Sarawak and its proximity to the best that Sarawak has to offer in terms of national parks, rivers, forests, diving sites and adventure tourism.

From its humble origin as a small trading post, Miri has grown into a smart city of swanky hotels, sleek shopping malls and potential holiday resort. It serves as the take off point for adventure tours into the rainforests of Sarawak - Sarawak’s famed Mulu National Park is 40 minutes away by air, Lambir Hills (the world’s largest biodiversity site) is a mere 25 minutes away and the highly rated Niah Caves two hours by road. Not too far away, about half a day away by longboat or 4WD is the unusual Loagan Banut, a water body that recedes and expands with startling regularity and so provides a unique nesting place for many species of birds.

Less than an hours flying time away are the Bario Highlands, the home turf of the Kelabit tribe, an offshoot of the Orang Ulu people. This hilly region is remarkable for its natural beauty, surrounded as it is by the rainforest-covered mountains of Kalimantan and Brunei. The Kelabit are the only farming community on the island of Borneo who cultivate rice in traditional waterlogged fields and their neat rows of paddy plants add both nuances of colour and style to the rugged landscape. Incidentally, the rice they grow is highly rated for its quality, especially its fragrance.

A happy, friendly people, the Kelabit delight in welcoming visitors to their longhouses - the long thatched dorm like house where the entire village kips down for the night. The major tourist attraction in the highlands is to go off on treks or mountain bike tours of varying duration through dense forests, across log bridges over fast flowing rivers- and to stopover at longhouses along the way. Some of the shorter treks even cross over into Kalimantan in neighbouring Indonesia. Amateur climbers can join climbs up the 2,424m high Mt Murud while experienced mountaineers can try their skills at the very exacting climb up the Batu Lawi (2,043m).

Getting There: Befitting its status as the entry point to Sarawak, Miri has an international airport barely 15 minutes out of town; it is well connected to Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu (Sabah) and other important towns in the state of Sarawak. Smaller planes fly to out of the way destinations and are often the only access to isolated rural communities.

To get to the Highlands, fly into the little town of Bario - it functions well as a base camp with its tiny airstrip, hotel accommodation, cafés, restaurants and shops. The airstrip is served by Twin Otter aircrafts belonging to the Malaysian carrier MAS, they fly in daily from the towns of Miri and Marudi (40 minutes flying time). Alternate modes of travel are by boat up the powerful Baram River or an arduous fortnight long trek from Marudi.

Accommodation: While not a metropolis by any standards, Miri does have good quality hotels primarily catering to the oil industry and restaurants that offer excellent international cuisine alongside local fare. The Malaysian government is developing Miri as the gateway to Sarawak’s new Culture-Adventure-Nature tourism programme.

 For detailed country and visitor information, see Malaysia.