Topic
#borneo
2 articles
Car Rental in Kuching 2026: The RM90 Headline, the RM5,000 Excess, and the Ring Around the City You Cannot Drive Out Of
Kuching is one of the cheapest places in Malaysia to rent a car and one of the easiest places to misread the bill. Eight operators publish daily rates and the cheapest headline is RM75 a day, but the daily rate is the smallest number in the contract. Two bigger ones sit underneath it. The first is the damage excess: Alpha and Wagons both print an accident liability of RM5,000 on a compact car and RM13,000 to RM14,000 on a van or a luxury MPV, and buying it down costs RM40 to RM150 a day and only halves it. The second is geography. A Kuching rental car is contractually confined to a ring covering Kuching town, Kota Samarahan, Bau, Lundu, Sematan and Serian, and driving past it to Sibu costs RM300, to Miri RM600 and to Limbang or Lawas RM1,000, with a RM500 penalty at one operator for going without asking. We read all eight rate cards and every published set of terms this run.
8 Things to Do in Bintulu, Sarawak 2026 — and Why the Official List Is Sixteen Years Out of Date
Bintulu is the town most travellers drive through on the way from Miri to Sibu, and the official reason to stop has not been rewritten since 19 August 2010. That is the date printed on the Bintulu Development Authority's own Places of Interest page, which still describes the nightly pasar malam as a place to buy smuggled cigarettes and liquor. Sarawak Tourism Board's Bintulu page is current but lists only five major attractions and leaves Similajau National Park — the division's best-known park — off it entirely, while its Useful Information boxes for Kidurong Tower and Tanjung Batu Beach are empty: no hours, no fee. Similajau itself is the bigger problem: Sarawak Forestry Corporation's own page for it says repair works have the park closed to visitors, and its live registration portal will not let you book a slot. So we went to the operators themselves. Taman Tumbina, the only zoo in northern Sarawak, publishes RM2.00 for an adult and RM0.50 for a child of seven and above, 9.00am to 4.30pm daily — on a website whose copyright line still reads 2004. Here is what is actually there in 2026, what it costs where anyone will say, and what has been built since the official list was written.