Pangeran Muda Hashim

Pada abad ke 19, sebahagian daripada wilayah Sarawak berada di bawah kuasa Kesultanan Brunei pada masa itu. Namun begitu, James Brooke, seorang rakyat British dan pedagang persendirian telah berjaya menguasai Sarawak selepas membantu Pangeran Muda Hashim, wakil Sultan Brunei menghapuskan pemberontakan oleh penduduk tempatan. Mengikut perjanjian, Sarawak akan diserahkan kepada Brooke jika beliau berjaya menghapuskan pemberontakan tersebut. Brooke kemudiannya berjaya menewaskan pemberontakan tersebut. Akan tetapi, Pangeran Muda Hashim telah mengingkari janjinya. Akibat tidak berpuas hati, Brooke telah berjumpa dengan Sultan Brunei dengan membawa bersama kapal perang dan senjata untuk mempamerkan kekuatannya. Akibat bimbang dengan kekuatan yang dimiliki oleh Brooke, Sultan Brunei akhirnya bersetuju menyerahkan Sarawak kepada James Brooke. James Brooke memakai gelaran Gabenor Sarawak dan memerintah secara dinasti. Dinasti Brooke memerintah Sarawak selama 100 tahun iaitu dari tahun 1841 hingga 1941.

THE BORNEAN FROG RACE 2014

Venue: Kubah National Park |  Start Date: 04.26.2014  |  End Date: 04.26.2014

The 3rd International Bornean Frog Race 2014.

The race itself is modeled after the annually-held and highly successful “Bird Race”, and would entail participants going up one or more trails at the Serapi foothills within Kubah National Park, for a period of 2 hours, and returning with digital images of amphibians

Amphibians comprise some 6,771 species, and living representatives include frogs, salamanders and caecilians. From a conservation standpoint, it is remarkable that a large proportion of the world’s amphibians- a third of the known species, are recognized as being under threat

PESTA BENAK (TIDAL BORE FESTIVAL)

Venue: Batang Lupar River Front At Sri Aman Town  

Start Date: 05.16.2014  | 

End Date: 05.18.2014

Pesta Benak is one of Sarawak's iconic event and celebrated on a grand scale. Centered in Sri Aman, there will longboat paddling competition, tidal bore surfing, water sports, food and trade fair and; nightly entertaiment.  Two new activies for this year are a body-building contest and hot air balloon rides.

Niah Caves

Niah Caves is located within the district of Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia. Part of Niah National Park, the main cave, Niah Great Cave, is located in Gunung Subis and is made up of several voluminous, high-ceilinged chambers. The Great Cave lies in a large limestone block, about a kilometre long in general north to south direction and about half a kilometre wide, that is detached from the main Gunung Subis complex, by a valley between about 150 to 200 meters wide. The main Gunung Subis complex rises to about 394meters above sea level at its highest point. The whole "Gunung Subis Limestone Complex" lies some 17 kilometres inland from the South China Sea coast and about 65 kilometres south west of the town Miri. It is roughly heart shaped measuring five kilometres from its northern tip to the south and four kilometres across. The Gunung Subis is surrounded by a low countryside with gentle hills from which the small limestone massiv and its smaller detached blocks rise rather appruptly out of the jungle, some with cliffs over 100 metres high.Though it is not an extensive cave system compared to others in Sarawak, it has been estimated to cover some 10 hectares and the roof rises to about 75 metres above the cave floor in some places. In geological terms, the limestones are part of the Subis Formation. This is dated to some 20 to 16 million years ago during the Early Miocene.The caves have been used by humans at different times ranging from the prehistory to neolithic, Chinese Sung-Era and more recent times.

The cave is an important prehistorical site where human remains dating to 40,000 years have been found. This is the oldest recorded human settlement in east Malaysia. More recent studies published in 2006 have shown evidence of the first human activity at the Niah caves from ca. 46,000 to ca. 34,000 years ago.Painted Cave, situated in a much smaller limestone block of its own, some 150 metres from the Great Cave block's south eastern tip, has rock paintings dated as 1,200 years old. The caves are also well known for the birds' nest (Swiftlet) industry. It is a popular tourist destination in Sarawak. Archeologists have claimed a much earlier date for stone tools found in the Mansuli valley, near Lahad Datu in Sabah, but precise dating analysis has not yet been published.

Research was pioneered by Tom Harrisson in the 1950/60s.Since then local universities and foreign scientists have continued the archaeological research, and many articles have been published in the Sarawak Museum Journal. The site has been re-excavated (1999-2003+) by a joint British-Malaysian expedition to determine the accuracy of Harrisson's work.

Items found at Niah Cave include Pleistocene chopping tools and flakes, Neolithic axes, adzes, pottery, shell jewellery, boats, mats, then iron tools and ceramics and glass beads dating to the Iron Age. The most famous find is the human skull dated at around 38,000 years BCE.Painted Cave has paintings and wooden coffin 'death ships'.Niah National Park was 31.4 km² when it was gazetted in 1974.

Visit Sarawak, Lambir Hills National Park.

 Lambir Hills National Park is 30 kilometres (19 mil) south of Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. It is a small park, at 6,952 hectares (17,180 acres), and is composed largely of mixed dipterocarp forest, with some small areas of 'kerangas' (heath forest). The park is 150–465 m (492–1,526 ft) above sea level.

Animal life

Biologists have recorded 237 species of birds, 64 species of mammals, 46 species of reptiles and 20 species of frogs in the national park. Large mammals such as gibbons and sun bear are absent or very rare due to the small size of the forest and illegal hunting.  The park's invertebrates include the Rajah Brooke's Birdwing butterfly (Trogonoptera brookiana) and more than 300 species of ants. Leeches are rare

                                                                                    Plant life

In 1991, the Sarawak Forest Department, Center for Tropical Forest Science/Harvard University, and the Plant Ecology Laboratory of Osaka City University, Japan created the Lambir Hills Forest Dynamics Plot. This is a 52-hectare (130-acre) area of the forest in which all trees thicker than 1.5cm at breast height have been measured, mapped and identified. Every few years, researchers do a census of these trees so they can track their growth and changes in the population structure of each species. A census of all trees in the plot found 1175 different species. This gives Lambir Hills National Park possibly the highest diversity of trees of any forest in the Old World.The dominant family of trees in the park is the Dipterocarpaceae, whose members include Shorea and Dryobalanops species. As Lambir Hills National Park is the last intact patch of lowland dipterocarp forest left in Sarawak it is an important refuge for species that have been heavily logged elsewhere.Among the tallest trees in the national park is the tapang (Koompassia excelsa), which can grow more than 80 metres tall, and which honey bees like to build their hives on.Other interesting plants in the park include several species of Macaranga that have formed a symbiotic relationship with ants. The ants live inside the plants' hollow stems and protect them from herbivorous insects.The park also has a very high diversity of figs (Ficus species), with nearly 80 species.

 

Visit Miri Sarawak

Miri is the 2nd largest city in Sarawak and has a population of 300,000 people with a mixture of Chinese, indigineous tribes who have moved down from their native lands that have been logged, and Malays (mostly immigrated to Miri by way of government postings or from forefathers emigrating from Brunei).

Miri is Sarawak and Malaysia’s first Oil producing area. Oil was first officially recorded in 1882 by Claude Champion de Crespigny, the British Resident of the Baram district in Sarawak. The locals had been using this black substance long before, collecting it for medicinal use, for waterproofing of boats and for lighting oil lamps. It was not until 1910 when the first oil company moved in to exploit its wealth.

Sarawak Shell were given the sole rights to mining oil in Miri until 1954 when the onshore oilfields dried out and exploration turned to the rich oil wells located in the seedbeds. Today, the oldest Oil Well in Miri is a reminder of the humble beginnings of Sarawak and more appropriately, Malaysia’s dependence on this commodity that has made the country what it is. The oil well is affectionately called ‘The Grand Old Lady’ and is located on Canada Hill. According to local myth, the hill is named such because of a Canadian who relocated in the early years as a recruitment manager, recruiting local and foreign workers as hands at the oil wells that quickly sprung up around the area.

For those interested in parks and gardens, there are a total of 14 such locations around Miri locale. Miri also has their share of music festivals with its International Jazz Festival held May annually.After a productive run with an estimated 660,000 barrels of oil drawn from the oil well, The Grand Old Lady was shut down in 1972. Next to the Grand Old Lady, the Miri Petroleum Science Museum exhibits the history and technicalities of the industry. Miri has not much else to do and so a visit to this museum would be pretty much the highlight of your stay. 

The other interesting place of visit is the tamu market called Tamu Muhibbah. It’s open daily and is located just a stone’s throw from the Tourist Information Centre. There are 2 sections to the market: the wet section where local and imported vegetable and meat produce are sold and the dry section where you can get local fruits like Buah Salak, durian, lime on sale here. Hill rice from Bario and Ba’Kelalan is also on sale here. The indigenous people bring their produce from the hills and jungles to sell here. However, it’s certainly more noticeable that compared to a decade ago, the variety in jungle produce has reduced greatly. The local people laments that it is not due to the weather conditions (Miri has been encountering strange weather conditions in recent years) but because there really isn’t much of a jungle for them to go to.

Living Museum Sarawak Cultural Village.

Known as the 'Living Museum', the Cultural Village was set up to preserve and showcase Sarawak's cultural heritage. Located at Pantai Damai, Santubong, just 32km from the state capital, Kuching, it is the perfect place to get introduced to local culture and lifestyle. Sprawled across 17 acres, there are about 150 people living in the village, demonstrating traditional daily activities from Sarawak's diverse tribes like the processing of sago and the making of handicrafts. They wear traditional costumes and also put on dances for visitors. The village residents provide information on their various traditional cultures and lifestyles. You can see replicas of buildings that represent every major ethnic group in Sarawak; longhouses of the Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu, a Melanau tall-house and a Chinese farm house among others.