Sibu is Sarawak’s third-largest urban centre, a working river town about 60km up the Rajang from the coast, and the heart of the state’s Foochow-Chinese community. People go there to eat, mostly: kampua mee for breakfast, kompia from a wood-fired oven, and whatever the night market is frying. It is not a postcard town and it does not pretend to be. The honest version is that Sibu is a food trip with a river attached, and for a lot of visitors a single full day covers it.
Part of our guide to Discovering Sarawak.
If you are coming from Kuching, you can fly in 40 minutes, drive in about five hours, or take the Rajang express boat in roughly four. I have done the boat and the flight. Below is what each costs, what there is to do once you arrive, and where Sibu genuinely differs from Kuching.
TL;DR
- What it is: Sarawak’s third-largest town, a commercial and river-transport hub on the Rajang, strongly Foochow-Chinese in character.
- Getting there from Kuching: Flight ~40 min (around RM90 and up); express boat ~4 to 4.5 hours (around RM50); road ~5 hours by car, longer by bus.
- The draw is food: kampua mee, kompia, mee sua, and a busy night market. This is the real reason to come.
- The sights are modest: Tua Pek Kong temple and its seven-storey pagoda, Sibu Central Market, the riverfront esplanade. A few hours covers the lot.
- The catch: the riverfront is muddy and industrial, the town is built for work rather than wandering, and many visitors find a day is enough.
- How long to stay: one full day if you just want to eat and look around; two if you are using Sibu as the gateway further up the Rajang to Kanowit, Song, or Kapit.
So what actually is Sibu?
Sibu sits at the meeting of the Rajang and Igan rivers, roughly 60km inland from the South China Sea. The Rajang is the longest river in Malaysia, at around 563km, and for a long time the only practical way deep into Sarawak’s interior was by boat from Sibu. That is the town’s whole reason for existing: it is the port and trading centre for the Rajang basin, the place where timber came downriver and supplies went up.
The character is Foochow. Sibu was settled in the early 1900s by migrants from Fuzhou in China’s Fujian province, brought in under an arrangement with the second Rajah, Charles Brooke, and the town was once nicknamed “New Foochow.” That heritage is not a museum thing. It is in the food, the dialect you hear in the kopitiams, the clan associations, and the bakeries turning out kompia. If Kuching feels like a mix of Malay, Chinese, Iban, and Bidayuh in roughly equal measure, Sibu feels more concentrated, more Chinese, and specifically more Foochow.
How do you get to Sibu from Kuching?
Three options, and the right one depends on whether you care more about time or about the river itself.
| Option | Time | Rough cost (June 2026) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flight | ~40 min in the air | From about RM90 one way | MASwings and AirAsia run it. Fastest by far once you count nothing else. |
| Express boat | ~4 to 4.5 hours | Around RM50 | Departs Kuching morning; part open sea, part river. The experience option. |
| Car / bus | ~5 hours driving; buses longer | Bus roughly RM50–70 | Pan Borneo Highway most of the way. Long but flexible. |
The flight is the sensible choice if Sibu is the destination and you want your day there. I took it the second time and was eating kampua mee before I would otherwise have been halfway down the highway.
The express boat is the one people romanticise, and I understand why, but be clear-eyed about it. The first stretch out of Kuching crosses open sea before the boat turns into the Rajang estuary, so it can get rough, and the cabins are air-conditioned to Arctic levels with the curtains drawn and a film playing loud. I was starved, as we’d say back in Manchester, meaning frozen stiff, an hour in. You do not actually see much river for a lot of it. I am glad I did it once. I would fly next time, and that is not me being soft about it. Four and a half hours of cold cabin and a bumpy sea crossing is a real cost for the novelty.
What is there to do in Sibu?
Honestly, not a long list, and I would rather tell you that now than pad it. Here is what is worth your time.
Tua Pek Kong Temple and the seven-storey pagoda. This is the town’s signature landmark, a Chinese temple on the riverfront whose pagoda was added in the 1980s. Climb it. From the top you get the best view in town: the brown sweep of the Rajang, the boats, the rooftops. Entry is free; you may need to ask for the pagoda to be unlocked. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty.
Sibu Central Market. Local sources bill this as the largest indoor market in Malaysia, and whether or not that holds up, it is genuinely large and genuinely a market rather than a tourist set-piece. Upstairs is a hawker floor where you eat; downstairs the Iban traders sell jungle produce, river fish, and things I still cannot always name. Go in the morning when it is fullest. This, for me, is the most interesting hour in Sibu.
The Sibu Night Market (pasar malam). Streets near the town centre fill with stalls from early evening, heavy on Foochow snacks, grilled food, and cheap eats. It is where the town actually relaxes. Come hungry and skip dinner beforehand.
The riverfront esplanade. A paved walk along the Rajang, fine at dusk, useful for getting your bearings. I will be straight with you here, covered in the downside below.
Wisma Sanyan, the tall building you will notice, was Sarawak’s tallest until 2019. It is a shopping mall now. Worth knowing as a landmark, not a destination.
What is the food in Sibu, and what should I order?
This is why you come. Foochow cooking is its own thing, and Sibu does it better than anywhere in Sarawak.
Kampua mee is the breakfast. Thin egg noodles tossed in lard, shallot oil, and a little soy, topped with slices of char siu or minced pork, served dry with a small bowl of soup on the side. It is plainer than Kuching’s kolo mee, less sweet, more about the noodle and the fat. A plate runs around RM4 to RM6 at a kopitiam. Order it dry first; that is how locals eat it.
Kompia is the one to seek out. A round, baked Foochow bun, sesame on top, traditionally cooked stuck to the wall of a hot oven, sometimes plain and sometimes stuffed with minced pork. The good versions have a crisp base and a chew to them. People call it a Foochow bagel, which undersells it. A few of these for RM1 or so each is the snack to carry around.
Mee sua (longevity noodles, often in a wine-tinged broth) and dianbianhu round out the Foochow staples worth trying if you have the appetite. Most of this is breakfast-and-lunch food. By mid-afternoon the kampua stalls are winding down, so eat early.
How is Sibu different from Kuching?
If you have been in Kuching, you will feel the difference within an hour.
| Kuching | Sibu | |
|---|---|---|
| Feel | State capital, spread out, tourist-aware | Compact working town, trade-driven |
| Ethnic mix | Malay, Chinese, Iban, Bidayuh, fairly even | More Chinese, specifically Foochow |
| Signature dish | Kolo mee, Sarawak laksa | Kampua mee, kompia |
| River | Sarawak River, landscaped Waterfront | Rajang, working and muddy |
| Visitor pull | Days of things to do | Mostly a food day |
Kuching has spent two decades making itself pleasant to walk around. Sibu has not, because that was never its job. The reward in Sibu is that it feels unperformed: the market is a market, the kopitiam is full of people who live there, and nobody is selling you a version of Borneo. The trade-off is that there is simply less laid on for a visitor.
The honest downside
The Sibu riverfront is not pretty. The Rajang here is wide, fast, and the colour of milky coffee from all the silt it carries, and the waterfront is a working one: barges, jetties, the express-boat terminal, the smell of diesel and river mud. The esplanade is a decent walk, but I went in half-expecting the kind of landscaped, café-lined river promenade Kuching has built, and it is not that. It is an industrial river doing an industrial job, and that is just what it is.
The bigger thing to be honest about is the pace of a visit. Sibu is a town to eat in and pass through, not a town that rewards a long stay. Outside the market mornings and the night market evenings, the centre is quiet, the formal attractions are few, and you can run out of things to do by mid-afternoon. Most visitors find one full day is plenty, and stretching it to two only makes sense if you are pushing further up the Rajang to Kanowit, Song, or Kapit, where Sibu becomes the staging post it was always meant to be. None of that is a knock on the town. It just is not a place that fills three days, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling.
Should you go?
Go if you like food and you want to see the Foochow side of Sarawak that Kuching only hints at. Fly in for the morning, eat kampua mee at a kopitiam, climb the pagoda for the river view, work through the Central Market, and let the night market be dinner. That is a good day. If you need a town to keep you busy for a long weekend, Sibu on its own will not, and it would rather you knew that than found out at 3pm with nothing left to do.
The thing that stayed with me was the market at eight in the morning: an Iban woman selling ferns and tiny river fish next to a Foochow uncle weighing out kompia, both of them speaking over a counter in a town that exists because a river runs through it. You do not get that hour anywhere else in Sarawak.
Last updated: June 2026. Travel times, fares, and food prices checked June 2026 and will drift; confirm flight and boat schedules before you travel.
Keep exploring Kuching Insider: kolo mee, what to eat in Kuching, and Bario and the Kelabit Highlands.