Miri is aiming at becoming the first green city in Malaysia with May 20 as the deadline. On May 20 this year, Miri will be celebrating its 5th anniversary as a city.

Bird's Eye View of Miri City

Since taking office, Mayor Lawrence Lai has impressed Mirians with his leadership and initiative to transform Miri into a better municipality.  He has been busy visiting many parts of the municipality to listen to complaints from the people and trying to carry out improvements where necessary.

Mayor Lawrence Lai

One of the first step undertaken by the Mayor towards making Miri a green city is appealing to Mirians to lend their wholehearted support to make Miri the first city to say no to plastic bags everyday.

The city council’s “Say No To Plastic” campaign launched on August 30 last year has garnered the support of local hypermarkets and supermarkets that give no free plastic bags on Sunday. With effect from this month, the no-plastic days were increased to 3 days every week from Friday to Sunday.

Say No To Plastic Bag

The city council has always been active in planting trees and plants in the city and the mayor has pledged to plant a minimum of 1000 trees per year. I can see nice landscaping in many areas of the city which makes the city look much more beautiful….kudos to the city council!

The city council is planning to hold landscaping competitions among schools to inculcate the “go green” culture among students. It is also encouraging all government departments and agencies to carry out landscaping too.

A major green project that the city council will implement is the bicycle track from Taman Selera to Lutong in two phases. Under the first phase, the bicycle track will link Taman Selera to Miri City Fan while the second phase will link Miri City Fan to Lutong. The aim of the project is to encourage more people to use bicycles thereby reducing the number of motor vehicles on the road.

Beach at Taman Selera

A View of Miri City Fan

The city council is studying the feasibility of installing solar or LED lightings for the whole city. With about 17,000 street lights in the city, the council is paying over RM7 million in electricity bills annually. It is estimated that the council can save between 60 to 70 percent in the electrical bills. And Miri will also become the first city in Malaysia to have such lightings if the project is implemented.

I wasn’t born in Miri but I have lived in Miri for almost 30 years and have come to love the city dearly. It is in my opinion the best place to live in Sarawak.

It has been ages ( years?) since I last visited Taman Selera. I have been thinking of going there for quite a while but I kept on procrastinating. This morning I decided to JUST DO IT.

Beach at Taman Selera

Jetty At Taman Selera

Another View of Taman Selera Beach

A Victim of the Force of Nature....a casuarina tree with its roots exposed due to erosion caused by sea waves

Remedial Work To Counter Erosion

The food stalls at Taman Selera.....the stalls only open in the late afternoon

Looking out to South China Sea

Children playground

The leaning coconut trees

Shady pathway

It was a worthwhile trip. There were hardly any people there apart from some maintenance workers doing erosion repair work and a few people fishing on the jetties.

It was a bit therapeutic to watch the waves roll in and crash on the jetties.

Waves crashing on the jetty

Mighty waves

The little crabs have also been busy….the beach was littered with their “masterpieces”.

The crabs have been busy.

A crab masterpiece

Mr Crab, don't be shy...come out and play play.

Nature's masterpiece

Sadly there seems to be hardly any flowers in the garden there.  All I can find was some small grass flowers. I cannot even find any periwinkle flowers, the Miri City Flower! How nice it would be if there is a garden blooming with all types of flowers.

One of the very few flowers I was able to find

Nice shady trees

Ferns growing on a tree

Apparition at Taman Selera.....call the ghostbusters! Nay...this is just the flower of some plants....I know with my compact camera, I will not be able to capture this flower particularly with a sea breeze blowing but I was curious to see how the photo would come out......and THIS IS IT! (no, I'm not promoting Michael Jackson's posthumous movie).