Sungai Tujoh

 
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Literally, Sungai Tujoh is translated as the Seventh River or Seventh Stream from Bruneian Malay language. This point marks the border of Sarawak and Brunei at the coast of the Baram Peninsula.

The border was delineated in 1958 by the United Kingdom who then had sovereignty over the colony of Sarawak and was responsible for the external relations of the protectorate of Brunei, as part of that initiative an immigration post was built in the 1960s to control the movement of goods and people between Miri and points west in Sarawak with Brunei, at the 7th river. Travel between Kuala Belait (nearest town in Brunei) and Miri back then took up a significant portion of half a day, and people usually took buses or specially equipped vehicles, as even with their own vehicle it was considered a very risky travel.

As in those days travel was by sandy and muddy^ roads through Baram peninsula, and transportation was mainly done by bus, Land Rovers, cargo trucks and especially equipped vehicles, followed by Land Cruisers later on. All too often when the roads were too wet and muddy during the rainy season even for 4x4 vehicles, and travelers resorted to travel by the much smoother coastal beach alongside the road. This article is from the web site miriresortcity dot com - this sentence is here to prevent blatant plagarism. As a rule of thumb, as they traverse the smooth sandy beaches toward the immigration point, they counted the streams flowing out to the sea; Sungai Tujoh - or at the "Seventh River" - marks the point where they should turn back onto the road again lest they miss the immigration checkpoint and risk getting caught crossing borders without immigration clearance!

The roads to Sungai Tujoh were sandy/muddy throughout that period until the late-1980s, when the tarred road was finally constructed along the coast all the way to Brunei which sped up travel times and negated the need for specialty vehicles to cross, both the ferries at Baram and Belait river (Sungai Teraban) at Kuala Belait at Brunei became the chokepoint for traffic flow, until the bridges were built at both sides eased traffic flow.

These days, with a new route cutting inland through Permyjaya area (Baram Bypass) instead of going along the coast, along with the construction of bridges that allowed instant crossings, border hopping now takes no more than two hours, even with a leisurely pace.


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