Sibu Town – a brief introduction

Sibu is a town located at the center of Sarawak. The town is just neighboring the majestic Rajang River. Rajang river is the longest river in Sarawak with length of 1600km that connects the far inland like kapit.

It is a town usually bursting with activities during the days, boats and ships cruising along the Rajang river. At the evening sunset, the mile wide river will glow golden. It is a rather peaceful place to stay.

The inland of Sarawak is famous for various natural resources including timber, local crafts, plants and animal products. Sibu town forms the major gateway to central Sarawak via Rajang river.

Sibu downtown and waterfront located at the confluence of the Rajang and Igan river, with approximately 130km from the South China Sea, it is the largest port and commercial center in the Rajang Basin.

Behind the scenes of Sibu town

It is not unfamiliar to have a sight of discrepancies in height between buildings and roads in Sibu. Certain places will have major fall in road level leaving many exposed building foundations. It is always difficult to get up of the steeps and require extra step of stairs.

Often seen are cracked roads and uneven bumps. You won’t have a luxury to have high speed drive around the town without risking scratch beneath the car.

At certain places the houses are abandoned due to cracked walls and foundations.

Floods are a common visitor in certain parts of the town when there is massive downpour. You won’t find many effective drains around. Most drainage system are actually open drains.

Many efforts had been done by the authorities to save the town from destruction. Frequent pavement of roads and repair of facilities are done. In certain places, shop lots and commercial zones are built on top of special raised foundations with visible pillars below.

Noted in the Sibu townscapes, there is rarely any high rises. The tallest building is the Wisma Sanyan building scoring 28 floors tall. Second goes to RH hotel for 16 floors and third goes to premier hotel with 14 floors.

So what is actually happening in this humble little town that without which it have a potential to becomes a big commercial city ?

Fun Facts about Peat

What is peat ? How peat is related to sinking of Sibu town ?

• Tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia account for two thirds of the world’s peatlands.
• Peat is a soggy soils that is mainly contains partially decay vegetation and organic materials.
• It is nutrient rich and able to store massive amounts of carbon. It is also called the most efficient carbon sink in the planet.
• Peat forms when plant material doesn’t fully decay in acidic and anaerobic environments.
• Peat have properties to hold water and responsible for the expansion of wetlands, with usual features of ponds and lakes. Tropical peatland have close relation with swamp.
• In Tropical Peat swamp forest, the waterlogged soil prevents dead leaves and wood from fully decomposing, forming acidic peat over time.
• The Tropical Peat Swamp forests are native home to many different animals and plants, deforestation of peatland pushes many species to near extinction.
• These peat can be used for fuel when dried. Peat is usually the first step in formation of fossil fuels like Lignite coal.
• Wet or dry peat can be a major fire hazard as peat fires may burn for great length of time underground as smoulders (low temperature, flameless form of combustion, that reignite when condition right).
• Peat fire is Indonesia peat and forest fire 1997 releasing near 2.57 Gigaton of carbon – nearing 13% to 40% of amount released by global fossil fuel burning. Further fire during 2002-2003 released 200million to 1 billion tons of carbon into the air.
• Draining of peatland to reclaim for agriculture or other purposes will cause organic carbon trapped in the water initially to be exposed to air and start decompose and turns into carbon dioxide.
• Peat is easily compressible under minimal weight and hence cause difficulty to build roads and building on peatland.

The Peatland of Sibu

In Sarawak, about 13% of the total land area equivalent to 1.7million hectare is covered with peat soil of varying depths. In Sibu there is near 70% of the land is covered with peat. Most of the Sibu town located on deep peat soil which causing allot of development constraints.

The peat soil in Sibu town is very deep at certain areas, causing less feasible for building effective foundation for every structure. The fortification of the foundation requiring extensive piling into the deeper rock layer and thicker fortification filling, hence it is more feasible for buildings. Fortifying road will be less feasible as it may involve in high expenses per meter of road.

Overtime the pressure from the structure above will cause the compression of the peat below, causing the “sinking” or subsidence of non fortified structures.

It is further worsen by attempt to drain the water out of the peatland as removing water will further reducing the waterlogged peatland and worsening the compression of the peatsoil causing further “sinking”. An alternative is to build artificial lakes and pond around the peatland to keep the moist of the land to prevent accelerated “sinking”.

It is indeed a very delicate balance between the environment and the human structure. Understanding the nature and cause of the land subsidence had change direction of newer development projects.

Newer development of Sibu town is focus on non peat lands, which is further away than the downtown area. In the near future there might not be a high rise race in Sibu Town, but the battle with the peat might not be an end.

Stay Tuned !

Most of the time this question is asked because of curiosity rather than a statement to enrage. But why occasionally we still face such questions ? It is a pure myth or a conditional truth ?

Stories from the other sides

There is allot of links between Sarawakians and trees, there is no denial. Sarawak is a huge state of Malaysia with the most abundant natural resources from the thick evergreen rainforest.

Sarawak being a part of Borneo island with 130millions years old rainforest and well preserved cave drawings of prehistoric beings have a proud legacy to be kept on the list.

From books we know that Sarawak is the major export of timber, have beautiful caves and river, friendly natives who roam around with traditional clothes and have fancy dances. Occasionally there are stories about Head hunters and tribal ceremonies.

From the media we learn that the vast of biodiversity, huge trees, big waterfalls, wide open space with endless greeneries. We have huge caves, prehistoric cave drawings, huge rafflesia flowers, forest with orang utans and big nosed monkeys, flying hornbills in the wild, deep blue sea with lots of fishes. The people are always portray as friendly and always dance or holding a blow pipe in the jungle. We have long house with everyone seems to be wearing traditional clothes everywhere.

So is any of the statements false ? Not really. All are true to a certain extent.

However most of the time the above statement is bias towards promotional of unique culture and natural beauty that focus on tourism purposes.

Behind the scenes will unfold that Sarawak have two extremes of development. The preserved natural and cultural wonders and the well developed cities with various mega malls comparable with any other major cities in Malaysia and extensive of infrastructure of major roads and flyovers, with housing prices comparable with any other major cities.

If it is so, why the promotional videos still show only the primitive aspects of Sarawak in the national and international level of tourism promotion? The reason lies in the “capture the attention” aspect of promotion. If a tourism videos only show how big is the city, how nice is the mall, how luxury is the housing … all these will be less attractive to the tourist eyes, as it is everywhere around the world.

The tree house in Sarawak

So back to the original question, do Sarawakians stay on trees? The most mainstream answer in frustration is “we stay in trees with lifts and escalators to reach up the tree house”. This statement is of sarcastic nature.

Another more neutral way of replies is “we don’t stay in tree house anymore, because they are very expensive and only available in Rainforest Resorts and only tourist stays there”. This statement is true as the Permai Rainforest Resort at Kuching Sarawak do offer Treehouse for tourists to stay, with prices above RM360 that subject to change depends on seasons.

So do Sarawakians stay in tree house in the first place ? The answer is yes, but only in certain conditions in the past before urbanization. That was long long time ago.

Tree house is usually built in selected trees which is tall and sturdy enough. In densely packed Primary Rainforest, tree house are build high up in the canopy to prevent attacks from vicious animals from the land below. Tree house also give a good view of the surrounding forest. It is useful for nomads and early settlers. Once they finally settled down at a designated location with flood plains and good river sources, they will build tall stilt long houses. Hence tree house is mostly a temporary measures.

Due to extensive logging , many pristine huge trees are timber down and the remaining trees are not suitable for building treehouse. Building tree house itself is an art that not to be take lightly.

The Urban Forest

If staying in tree house in Sarawak is a near extinct myth, then what to expect to find in Sarawak?

We are proud to present you the Urban Forest. In big cities like Kuching, we had a balanced ratio of trees and buildings. In fact the view from high ground will reveal high rise building in between sea of green trees. Some of the trees may date back to the early Brooke era, like the famous cotton tree of Padang Merdeka which as listed as a heritage tree and a landmark not to be missed.

So when you have chance to roam around Kuching, try to relax and enjoy the Urban forest. We might not have tree house for you but we have house surrounded by trees.

Or you can say Sarawakians stay on a concrete tree in a Urban Forest…