It costs MYR 50 to travel the 400 km from Sibu to Miri by bus, and there are lots of companies to choose from. We opted for MTC, who did the job just fine (comfortable seats, plenty of leg-room, foot-rests, efficient aircon, and -- as advertised -- "no squeak noise").

The online schedule posits a journey time of 7 hours and 25 minutes; people we talked to in Sibu rolled their eyes, and said, "It will take at least eight"; in fact it took eight and a half.

Of course, you could jump on a plane, and do it in next to no time. But that's contrary to the Purple Tern ethos, which is "surface where possible".

Why so slow? Well, the road is single-carriageway, and pretty bumpy.

Add on the fact that for the whole length of the journey you get an up-close-and-personal view of Phase 1 of the nascent Pan Borneo Highway, reportedly due for completion at the end of 2021.

At the moment, Sibu to Miri is basically one long roadwork, and the bus driver has to negotiate a succession of chicanes on and off temporary bits of road constructed to circumvent the new bits of road still being worked on. A pretty exhausting day's work, I would say...


It's difficult to take photos from a lurching bus. But anyone willing to brave the dust on a motorbike could get amazing pictures: ballets of diggers, squadrons of traffic-control dummies, the patterns formed by the runners of plants determined to claw back the embankments, clouds of dust with a stubby steamroller in the middle, and so much more...






Things we wish we'd known beforehand:

The food court at Sibu bus station is open bright and early, so you can easily breakfast there before your 8 am departure (ie, you don't have to have yesterday's bread and cheese in your room at the crack of dawn).

Your first brief stop is at Selangau. Get somebody to bungkus you something for lunch here, because...

... Bintulu bus station, your second stop, about five hours into the journey, either does not have "real food" outlets, or they're too far away to be easily accessed in your brief toilet-and-provisioning stop (we ended up with pizza -- it was that or waffles, as far as we could see).

Batu Niah, your third and final stop, offers excellent pisang goreng, which rounds off your incredibly healthy day's diet very nicely...

So, a bit tiring, but worth it.