First Glance At DAESCO Hypermarket Sibu

No doubt the hottest table topic of Sibu people recently is about the completion of the latest shopping complex called Star Mega Mall and the opening of the first hypermarket in the region - DAESCO hypermarket.

Star Mega Mall and its main tenant DAESCO hypermart was developed and operated by Daesim Group. Located at Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman Sibu, it is reachable by 10-15 minutes of driving distance from Sibu town center.

At this moment of writing, the mall itself has not yet entirely completed, but Daesco hypermarket had started its business (soft opening) on 29th July 2011 (Friday). I believe many Sibuians were "long necked" for this day for quite some times as they were lack of place to spend their leisure and weekend.

Yeah! I admit I am a typical Sibuian and thus I took the break on Sunday noon to take a look on this new place. As expected, the place was flooded with cars but luckily the parking space is big enough and it didn't took me long to get myself a parking space.

Entering the building, there are shoplots on the ground floor, but most shops are not yet open for business. The hypermarket is located on the 1st floor and viable through a long escalator.

Nothing much to elaborate about the hypermart, just a typical hypermart with tall racks, lots of trollies, long row of checkout counters, tonnes of goods and daily necessities which you can purchase on. I believe these photos are self-explanatory enough on its outlook. It is a pretty warehouse style of hypermarket with no fancy interior design.

Frozen foods department is not yet ready.

There is a special section for selling non-halal products and also wine and liquors.

The other direction on this 1st floor is the departmental store mainly for selling children and men's attires.

The corridor-style 2nd floor is mainly for women's attires.

There are still quite a lot of efforts need to be done to make this place a better and comfortable choice of shopping, including the air conditional, the lighting, arrangement as well as some polishing and cleaning touch up. As this is just a soft opening, I believe the management is working hard on all these to make this place the first choice of shopping for the people from central region of Sarawak.

Sibu Lake Garden @ Permai Sibu

Sibu Lake Garden is one of the few recreational park available in the town of Swan. Situated inside the housing area called Permai, Sibu Lake Garden also been known as Permai Lake Garden or Sibu Lakeside Garden.

According to a trusted source, this garden covering an area of around 130 acres and is a joint project between Sibu Municipal Council and National Landscape Department under the "Taman Awan Scheme". No detail on this scheme, maybe you can googling it! ;)

At its earlier stage, the garden only consists of lakes, fountain and nice landscape. Children love to play with water at the shallow pool while remote control enthusiasts utilized the lake facility as the venue to show off their radio controlled boat.

Recently the garden became more happening with the addition of new concrete structures which was named "Lakeside Corridor". The highlight of this corridor is a building which is conical in shape and mimic the Melanau traditional craft - Terendak hat or Melanau ethnic in some area called it as Tapou.

Beside the conical building is Lakeside Corridor restaurant.

The dining area of the restaurant which is facing the lake is a good place to dine on while enjoying the relaxing ambiance of the lake view.

In front of the dining area, there is a small section equipped with golf training facilities for golf enthusiasts to train their wood swinging skills! You may feel curious where the golf ball will be landed?! If I tell you the balls will fall into the lake, will you believe?

Yes!! That's exactly what happened!! The golfer will just let the balls to fall into the water! Luxury? But the trick is.... natural flow of the lake water will then bring all these balls back to the edge and the golfer can then scoop up the balls using the hand net or dip net.

So far I have no information if this golfing facility is open for public or just for private use. However, what is for sure is that the pedal boats are ready to be rented with charges of RM3 per head for 20 minutes of pedaling on the lake.

However, I strongly believe that whoever operate this boat pedaling business should improve the quality of the pedal boats in order to attract more people to ride on them.

There is also a boardwalk or jogging trek facilities which I didn't explore. Anyhow, I believe Sibu Lake Garden is a good recreational park for family activities during leisure and certainly worth a visit for its great relaxing ambiance and pretty landscape.