use Encode;
$clob = "this is string with [micro sign here] in it";

$convertedstr = decode("utf8",$clob);

print $clob;
print $convertedstr;
bytes($clob) ;
bytes($convertedstr) ;

sub bytes {
  my ($s) = @_ ;
  my $w = utf8::is_utf8($s) ? "utf8" : "byte" ;
  use bytes ;
  print join(":", map(sprintf("%02X", $_), unpack('C*', $s))), " -- $w\n" ;
} ;