April 3rd 2004:

Email from the Ship: We arrived in Miri, borneo malaysia Sat 6am 4-3-04 and had to anchor 4 1/2 miles from shore since there is no docking space in Miri.There were 4 other ships anchored around us and lots of oil rigs all around. We will not be going to shore. They brought the plywood that needed loaded out to the ship by barge. So for 5 hours we watched how they loaded from the barge to the ship. We are very near Brunei which is the smallest and wealthiest country in the world because of it's vast oil reserves. I wish we would have stopped there except they say it is very expensive to be there.

We left Miri at 3pm on 4-3-04 for Bintulu and arrived here at 9:30 pm same day. This is a harbor full of oil refineries and they were all lit up at night. We were told we could not take pictures of the refineries.

This morning it was raining but we went to town and had a great day even though it was Sunday.We did lots of things, like getting our hair cut, going to internet cafe,visiting the beautiful market (I took a picture of it because they had all the vegetables and fruit arranged so neat.When I asked the gal if I could take a picture she got so excited and invited others to come too. Since I have a digital camera I could show them the picture and they loved it. Then as we were walking along the river Kemena there were loads of delapidated ferry boats and on the spur of the moment we decided to cross the river on one to go shopping at the super market. There was one little bench for us to sit on and we were the only passengers besides the few motorbikes that went too.So we chugged across the river, browsed in the market and came back on the ferry safe and sound.We got back to the ship at 6pm just in time for dinner. We were all tired out from our busy day.