Siniawan

Siniawan is one street of wooden shophouses on the road to Bau, built in the early twentieth century when the settlement was a river trading stop for the gold district, and by the 2000s it was nearly abandoned - shutters down, families gone to Kuching. What turned it round was a night market: from 2010 the community organised a Friday-to-Sunday evening street market, hung the street with red lanterns, opened food stalls in the ground floors, and it became a fixture for people driving out from Kuching. The buildings are the point - a continuous run of timber shopfronts of a kind that has mostly disappeared in Sarawak - and the food is Hakka and Chinese Sarawakian, with live music and a good deal of noise. On weeknights the street is empty and silent, which is worth knowing.

What you actually see

• A timber shophouse street - an intact run from the early twentieth century.
• The lantern-hung night market - Friday to Sunday evenings only.
• Hakka and Sarawakian food - stalls in the ground-floor shopfronts.
• A village that came back - near-abandoned until the market restarted it.

When to go

Friday to Sunday evenings; there is nothing on other nights. An evening.

Honest expectations

Outside the three market nights the street is closed and empty. Parking overflows onto the road. It is one short street - an evening, not a day. Rain empties it quickly.

Nearby

Bau, Fairy Cave and Wind Cave are further along the road; Kuching is east.