Hoping for the Covid19 pan­demic to be over soon so that na­tions can start re­open­ing their borders soon

During our recent visit to the Loa­gan Bunut Na­tional Park in Ulu Baram, I have expressed hope for the Covid19 pan­demic to be over soon so that na­tions can start re­open­ing their borders and for us in Malaysia as well as in Sarawak, we can once again wel­come tourists to our shores.

We have actually prepared a lot of plans and strate­gies to be im­ple­mented in post-pan­demic and places such as in Ulu Baram is a wonderful site of in­ter­est for tourists. The re­gion as a whole could be con­sid­ered a tourism prod­uct – from its vast fer­tile land to the lo­cal cul­ture – which could a ract both lo­cal and for­eign vis­i­tors. For this rea­son, myself and our entourage from Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Sarawak (MOTACS), Sarawak Tourism Board (STB), Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) have chosen to take the 2-hour jour­ney from Miri to Long Lama town just to visit Loa­gan Bunut Na­tional Park so that all of us could see first-hand the tourism po­ten­tial in north­ern re­gion of the state.

Loagan Bunut is also the state’s largest nat­u­ral lake lo­cated in the park and it could be­come part of the tour itin­er­ary once the road link­ing Miri city to Kuala Melinau and Long Lama town is com­pleted in the next few years. I also be­lieve what Loa­gan Bunut Na­tional Park of­fers to lo­cals or in­ter­na­tional vis­i­tors can­not be found in any other na­tional parks we have in Sarawak. There­fore once our ru­ral roads are im­proved, it will en­able cre­ative pack­ag­ing to be done by tour op­er­a­tors and will def­i­nitely open up a wide range of op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cals to par­tic­i­pate in the tourism in­dus­try. Another important aspect is also on good con­nec­tiv­ity will also en­able those who love trav­el­ling on their own to add to lo­cal tourism. These are among the success factors which will help us in making our recovery efforts a reality.