Sarawak River Cruise — Local services in Borneo

This cruise cost me 65 ringgit per person.

You go to the waterfront and look for the signs. It's not hard to find. Try to avoid the guy selling "authentic or traditional" cruises in his tiny boat with the Hornbill. Unless you want that sort of thing.

Go to the Waterfront at around 5 pm to pick the best seats. It might not be necessary. It wasn't packed when I went on.

You will be greeted with orange juice and tiny lapis cakes free of charge. I'm on a diet so I avoided them. You can purchase cold bottled water instead. I did.

I saw they also sold chips ("crisps" for you British folks), instant noodles and other snacks. I didn't get the impression they were trying to charge an arm and a leg for anything.

There are bathrooms on this ship. But no soap. But bathrooms are pretty clean.

The trip is about 1.5 hours. You may find Malaysian accents hard to understand. I know I did. Try to do a bit of research before you go along. Then you can save yourself frustration and confusion if you don't understand what the heck the tour guide is saying.

The ride is awesome. The boat goes at an amazing pace. Not everyone you go by will wave at you like in the USA. But lots of people will.

You will go by a lot of amazing monuments like the governor's mansion, parliament, the docks etc. It's good in pics. It's better in person. Some people are filthy rich in this country.

You will go by people living in abject poverty. They live in shacks by the river. I was entranced by both the very rich and very poor. Especially since they lived by eachother with no obvious separation.

If you watch the river, you'll notice a heartbreaking amount of plastic. Consider cutting down on buying plastic people. The river and the fishes are suffering

There was a dance at the end. I paid no attention to it. Not because it wasn't good, it's because I didnt care. I paid for a boat ride, not for a song and dance. Besides, the people living along the river fascinated me and held my total attention. So I spent the last part of the ride waving to them and...

We took a disappointing sunset cruise. Couldn't hear much of a rather basic commentary just naming a few landmarks and ignoring any less wealthy settlements. We would have liked to know more about the history and "village" settlement on left bank rather than the modern characterless developments. The commentary (what I could hear of it) would have benefited from more anecdotes and stories about what we were seeing. There seemed to be much pride in the modern developments which appeared to have wiped out all nature and character. At one point we were told about the new apartment block for rich people that had twenty-four hour security -more of an estate agent pitch than a cultural tour commentary. There were very self-conscious dancers. There was also a lot of diesel fumes where we were sitting. On the plus side, very friendly, helpful staff served squash and cake. Rather depressing to see just how much land is being eaten up by modern concrete development which made Kuching look just like any other city and is destroying any unique character. I wouldn't repeat and would gladly not have included it in our visit. I left it feeling depressed instead of uplifted. Would have been better if our cruise hadn't had a lot of out of control children running around screaming. Mind you, their parents were so taken with the view, they spent the whole journey watching...

It's a nice cruise ride for enjoying the scenery from the riverside and the sunset with the gentle breeze of the Sarawak River. The ticket price comes with a cordial orange drink with a few slices of Sarawak cake lapis. They do offer other drinks/food that can be purchased during a 2-hour ride. There's a dance performance at the end of the ride showcasing different styles of costumes and dance based on the Sarawak ethnicity.

What killed part of the experience was the staff asking us to move from our chosen seat with the reason to balance the ship. We specifically came early so we could have the best seat to our preference. The tour wasn't even ready to depart yet, and there were still passengers due to arrive. We ignored this request, and afterwards later, passengers filled up the other side.

The other thing is that the tour commentary could be improved in two ways: first, by hiring someone who can speak good english and second, by improving the audio system. I hardly understood what the commentary was about and completely gave up listening to it, and decided to just enjoy the...