Pullman in Miri

Miri in Pullman
It was two Georges one living in USA and many years later one from Europe who had started the famous railway coaches called Pullman
The US George had done it from Chicago
Another George a Belgian had visited US and travelled in Pullman trains and was impressed to start Pullman trains in Europe too and as the brand was became a hit Pullman hotels were also started by him ...
At present they are in all continents in many cities.
More than 173 hotels or resorts are available all over the world
Most of them are ultramodern five star hotels with high rise buildings, sleek modern lines of architecture and futuristic furniture.
We never knew all this as we booked to stay in a Pullman hotel in Miri ,Malaysia .
Me and friend Dr Yuvaraj had driven down to Miri on a weekend and it took 2 hours as we had to cross the border check post and immigration etc .

 It was wet and rainy as we sped along the wooded road leading to MIRI
Once we entered Miri city we had some difficulty in tracing where our hotel was as we had no mobile connection hence no WIFI to use GPS
Suddenly the tall Pullman building popped up and all we had to do was to go in its direction, easier said than done as ground directions are a bit different from say an aerial one, maybe if we had a helicopter we could have done that 

 We did manage to reach the hotel finally, it was downtown but in a quieter area and bordering the marina.

 We were checked in to the 16 floor room and ours was almost a suite
Thus we did stay a day in the famous Pullman!!
After a rest we hit the town and a snazzy bar called Mings café where great cocktails and music
























lightened the dusk, the morning saw us going for a ride in our car unplanned, we wanted to visit a famous Buddhist temple nearby.
Most people in these places aren’t good in telling directions, we had to ask two as we had no GPS after plotting in a paper and looking at it for ages the lady recited a litany of confusing direction we felt she would also have never found the temple again in her life
The man proved to be almost same as he gave directions of a route through multiple traffic signals u turns, etc
We thought we would just go without any plans and drive till we reach somewhere
Funnily we just went straight through a couple of traffic lights and reached an old town area full of lovely colonial shops ,a huge market with vegetables and meat ,we managed to get a parking in that area a real feat indeed ,

 

 There were hot buns for sale amongst others
One of the vendors at last was a clever one when asked where the Buddhist temple was he said you are almost there just walk 500 meters and you will see it, and we did just that!
Later we returned for a couple of ice cold beers and checked out by 2pm on our way back to Brunei