If dirt-cheap shopping spree and unabashed bargaining in a rural setting with beads of sweat dripping down your brow sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend morning, then a short hop to the frontier boom town of Serikin is not a bad idea.  Located at the border with Indonesia just a kilometre or so away, its ”cowboy town”  character  makes visiting  even more appealing and exotic.

Indeed this sleepy hamlet, only about a hour’s drive from Kuching, roars to life on Saturdays and Sundays with thousands of city day-trippers and tourists converging on it in the hope of picking up some real bargains or just plain sight-seeing. As the heat of the day may be quite uncomfortable, many people start as early as 6 am from the city and take a leisurely drive amid lush and scenic countryside road of Batu Kawa - Bau road. Road signages are placed strategically along the way, even first timers have no problem reaching the destination.

It may be a long crawl of vehicles in the final approach to the small town as the road narrows down to a single lane two way traffic. There is a huge open ground which serves as visitors’ car park as touts shepherd the vehicles into it. The going rate for parking a private car is RM3, and most visitors pay up presumably to buy peace of mind, rather than faced with the prospect of a mysteriously punctured tyre or worse, scratches and dents.

There may be a long queue of vehicles in the final approach to the small town as the road narrows down to a single lane two way traffic. There is a huge open ground which served as visitors’ car park as touts shepherd the vehicles into it. The going rate for parking a private car is RM3.00, and most motorists pay up presumably to buy peace of mind, rather than faced with the prospect of  mysteriously punctured tyres or worse, scratches and dents.

An air of carnival and festivities greets the visitors as soon as they get out from their vehicles and walk the short distance to the shopping area. This is a rag-tag collection of wooden stalls and sheds joined and arranged to form a “main street” stretching for a few hundred metres. Side lanes radiating from this Main Street snake to more shops and stalls and many a shopper may get disorientated by the labyrinthine maze.

Do not be fooled by the ramshackle appearance of these trading outlets for within their unassuming confines are found many merchandise of good quality. However the majority of them seem to be selling clothings and garments and household items.  Almost all the goods are imported from nearby Indonesia.

 The are overwhelming choices for colourful batik and sarongs, a seemingly endless array of exquisite baju kebaya and baju kurung, the traditional Malay women dress. Prices of these apparels are usually much cheaper than those sold in the Kuching city area. There are also many other garments like fake designers T-shirt and jeans, belts, caps and other fashion accessories, all at tantalizingly low prices.

Walking along one may come across other household items like cooking utensils, curtains, rattan furniture, fake branded watches, exotic local fruits, cookies and pastries, drink stalls and many others. Most of the Indonesians are from the nearby Kalimantan towns of Pontianak and Singkawang, but a significant numbers of them are from Java. As Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia are quite similar, communication between shoppers and the traders does not pose any problem at all. Playful and friendly bargaining is the order of the day as sellers feign mock horrors at counter offers from shoppers and the shoppers pleading and showing their opened depleted wallets. In fact, you’d look like you are from another planet if you do not engage in haggling with them!

There is a nice coffee shop just outside the shopping ground, presumably for husbands and boyfriends to cool down and nurse their tired feet over glasses of iced drinks while their shopaholic mates continue their forage under the hot sun. By mid morning, busloads of excited shoppers are still streaming in making the place even more crowded.

On the way back to the city, there is a cluster of stalls selling jungle fruits and vegetable a few kilometres outside Serikin just by the main road and it is worthwhile to stop by to gawk at the exotic offerings on sale. If you are lucky you might get to see baskets of sago worms the size of one’s finger. The uninitiated may shriek disgustingly at the sight, but for insiders, swallowing this bundle of cute wrigglers purportedly cure many ailments from asthma to cough.

There are two ways to reach Serikin, one is by the new and better built Batu Kawa -Tondong highway which bypasses Bau town by a few kilometres. The others is the old Bau road via Batu Kitang, which is slightly longer and a more winding road, but will pass through Bau, a delightful district town with many good eateries. It may be a good idea to return via this route to have a bite and a little “bonus” sightseeing before returning to Kuching. Both routes pass through the twin attractions of Wind Caves and Fairy Caves, themselves popular scenic and outing spots for locals and visitors alike, and if time is on your side, a visit would be a welcome respite from the noon day heat especially with a cooling dip in the shallow river nearby amongst towering limestone outcrops.

Fact box:

• How to get there: Take the new Batu Kawa-Tondong Highway, on seeing the traffic lights before reaching Bau town, turn right and continue. Watch out for a T-junction with sign pointing to Serikin on the right and go straight. The whole journey takes about an hour leisurely drive.
• When to visit: The market only trades on weekend, ie Saturday and Sunday. Trading hours start early in the morning and finish around noon.

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