Miri Again

After two days at Batu Niah I finally escaped to Miri by bus with my new found friends Martyn, Janina and Eva.  They were planning to get a bus from Miri to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, a journey which involves crossing the Brunei border four times and gathering an unfeasible number of passport stamps, while I was headed for the luxury of the Marriot hotel to meet Sue.  I said goodbye to my friends over a very indifferent lunch in the centre of Miri and with time to kill decided to walk up the hill overlooking the city centre to visit the Petroleum Museum.

After slogging up the hill in the afternoon sun it was, surprise, surprise, closed until further notice and
serving no other function than to provide some shade to a pack of disconsolate dogs.  I took a photo of "the Grand Old Lady", Miri's first oil well, had a diet coke at a nearby cafe, then said "fuck it" and walked back down again.  It would have been easy to get a taxi to the Marriot, on the outskirts of the city, but having spent the last few days as a parsimonious backpacker, I decided to walk, arriving tired and a bit footsore in the late afternoon.

I passed the time waiting for Sue by sitting in the foyer cafe drinking cappuccino, eating expensive cake and watching the people come and go.  I have a love-hate relationship with places like the Marriot.  If I'm honest I like the comfort, coffee and cake and that feeling of being "looked after", but I hate that sense of being part of a privileged elite that upmarket hotels foster so deliberately.  I especially hate this because it is so seductive and so quickly morphs into a sense of entitlement.  I've actually been part of this hotel foyer society for much of my life and I feel I know so many of these people personally, particularly the white ones that make up about half of the total.  I've worn those slacks and carried that briefcase and it has been my sporty little number in the hotel carpark.  I've also worn that Timberland shirt and cotton shorts and those deck shoes.  I want to walk up to some of these people and say "hey, don't pretend that you deserve this, remember you're just lucky to have been born in the right place at the right time and had the right opportunities."  But maybe I'm just frustrated that as a grumpy and jobless old git I'm not really part of this society anymore and that what I really hate is my own irrelevance and exclusion.  Or all of the above.