Into the Heart of Borneo and Longhouse fun...and stuck til the rains?

Said goodbye to Brunei and Andrew and Hannah last week. We took a car from BSB to Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia. From there I caught a night bus to Sibu, along the betang rejang river. Got in around 4 in the morning, so I had to wait for the public busses to take me to the city center and port. When I got to the river port I booked my boat and just had a couple hours to walk around Sibu, which is a pretty trashy town, so it was a relief to get on the boat to go up the batang rejang.

The river is huge and muddy and has been described as the amazon of borneo. There is lots of traffic on the river with passenger boats, little local boats, tug boats, barges with everything from coal to logs to supplies, and huge trains of logs tied together floating down the river. The area all the way up the river is being quite heavily logged, so you see lots and lots of logging ports and huge gigantic logs being floated down the river. But in my opinion it's not as bad as in Sabah where they have clear cut everything and there is only oil palms as far as the eye can see. Here there is still lots of rainforest, it's just that the biggest trees have been cut down. The reason to go up the river is that it's a cool river journey to little villages that can only really be reached by boat or helicopter and there are lots of traditional longhouse villages along the way.

From Sibu I took the express jet boat 140 odd km's up to Kapit, the last main village along the way. Kapit is a tiny, tiny little town with nothing really going on other than a bustling port bringing in supplies and then tribespeople coming down to buy supplies, so I walked around and saw everything pretty much in an hour. There were only a handful of other westerners in the town. My plan was to go upriver to the farthest town called belaga. People weren't too sure if the boat would be going as the river was really low (so weird b/c in sabah the rivers had all been flooding and here they're in a drought), but I went to get my permit to go higher up anyways. The place to get the permit used to be in the center of town, but for some reason it was moved to some fancy new building 5 hot, shadeless km's from town. It was miserably hot, but at least I got to see some of the countryside. As it was so hot and there was nothing else to do in the town and I had an aircon room with astro tv (meaning you watch whatever the front desk is watching from your own tv) I watched a couple movies that evening and night: sleepless in seattle (which always reminds me of my mom) and titanic, which is interesting to watch after being on sketchy boats. There was actually a catholic church in the town, so I went to mass that night. The priest said mass in english for my benefit I think, and they all clapped for me at the end. Probably don't get a whole lot of westerners at church there as there are hardly any even visiting the town. Being from the USA, I probably won fr greg's postcard prize for the year at this church.

In the morning I went down to the dock to see if the express boat would be going up to belaga. It was indeed, but it would be the last one, so was sure to be crowded as everyone that wanted to get to their homes up river without spending 4 days on a tiny local boat would have to go. The express boats are these super long (25meter), but very narrow boats that are completely enclosed and airconditioned to about 40F I think. They have jet propulsion instead of propellers so that they can go shallower I guess. It basically looks like a medium sized airplane without wings or a tail. There's only one door in (and out) but a 100 or so people packed in, which means that if the boat were to sink, capsize or whatever, it would be a mad rush to the one door, of which no one would make it out in the frenzy, which was nervewracking considering they were risking going up the pegasus rapids with the low water. So I made sure to sit up on the top of the boat with most the other westerners who perhaps feared the same thing and don't view the might strong aircon as a luxury but as a potential hypothermic threat, and of course a few smoking malayan youths. This really, really crazy brit, who's been teaching english in Hong Kong for 16 years mentioned the thing about being stuck inside the boat if it sinks, but he said if you were a westerner you would survive b/c according to him asians give up in boat wrecks. He was just really crazy and often full of it, but he may be a little correct on that b/c the indonesian and filipino ferries are often overpacked and about 1 or 2 a month in each country sinks and when you read the headlines you'll see that there were 800 souls on board (for capacity of 500 ship) with 790 indonesians and 10 westerners. Then you'll see that 15 people survived....9 westerners and 6 indonesians. I think it's just b/c I've noticed asians can't really swim unless they are fishermen. But anyways, I was glad to be on top of the boat, enjoying the nice breeze, watching the every narrowing river as we plowed upstream deeper and deeper into the jungle. There's a book called Into the Heart of Borneo, or something like that, and this is the route they went up. About 30 km's upstream from kapit (balegas was 160km's or so from kapit) we hit the pegasus rapids. They were definitely pretty fun and a bit scary. I would estimate them to be class III, but a whole new experience to be going upstream. And watching the tugboats take in water and struggle ahead of us added to the excitement, though our boat was much more suited to do them. After the rapids it was a calm and long (6 hours) and nice journey through the jungle river and passed long house villlages along the way

Belaga is also a tiny little town, but I really liked it. In the past few years it has been connected by a 4wd logging road, but still the only practical way is by boat. There were lots of different tribal people hanging around from the different longhouses nearby and the place was quite active in a sports sense. It was a one sidewalk town and from the shops and cafes on the sidewalk you overlooked tennis courts, a basketball court, and volleyball court, which was pretty surprising considering the size of the town. But every evening people went out to play the different sports. There were 8 of us westerners who got off the boat (me, John (uk but teacher in HK), Alex and Quinn (uk, but teachers in china), roger and gunhilde (germany), and herdy and maricqa (holland), and we were the only westerners in the town as a whole as the express boat hadn't gone the two previous days. We all gathered together for a late lunch as we were starved after the long boat ride. Crazy john bought several rounds of tiger beer and then decided we should all try the arak, the local alcohol which is 48% alcohol and has been described by some as tasting like petrol. There were liter bottles of it selling from $1.50 to $8 and he chose the cheapest. The stuff wasn't too bad we didn't think and nothing worse than the cheap drinks you buy in college for parties. Needles to say the combination of the arak and wacky john made it quite the fun afternoon. In the evening we made arrangements for tours to the longhouse (john wouldn't be joining b/c he felt he wouldn't want people with bones in their noses and huge rings in their privates staying at his house, so he didn't want to return the favor). We all gathered again that night for dinner and some of the local people brough us bottle upon bottle of tuac (local rice wine). So again another fun meal of laughing and drinking and then stumbling home. One of the best parts was everyone in the group was quite fun and with the help of what the locals call (the english teacher or the friendly juice) we had no problem having a great time.



The next morning we donned traditional sun hats and local basket backpacks and headed to the market to buy things for our 2 day long house tour. After buying all the stuff, we headed into a couple small longtail boats and headed up river to visit our first longhouse, a kayan tribe long house. The longhouses range from a football field to a couple football field in length and are divided up, apartment like style for each family. They are raised up on stilts and two stories high. I was quite surprised how big each family's place was with a large family room, a large kitchen, an area for storing things and then the bedroom upstairs. And then along the whole front of the longhouse is a huge, huge deck where everyone just kind of sits and hangs out and smokes. The first village we visited had had one of their longhouses burn down last week, which is fairly common b/c with so many people cooking and smoking it's easy for one "apartment" to catch fire, and then of course the whole thing goes. When it does burn the government helps build another one, but builds them in separate units to avoid the massisve fires, but then the people quickly attach them all as they like their longhouses. The original reason for the longhouse design was that being on stilts and all together, if you raised up the one entrance ladder, it was easy to protect the whole village from the headhunters if they were living in one place. We toured around the farming area a bit and the longhouse itself, and were invited into a few houses and offered cigarettes made from tobacco grown right outside. Our tour guide, daniel, informed us that these were healthy cigarettes as they had no chemicals. And as they only had the tobacco leaf, they were quiet healthy and could be considered as a vegetable serving. I found this quite hilarious. I didn't smoke, but the people who tried said it was quite strong and even made them a bit dizzy.

After visiting the kayan longhouse we took a boat up to the next longhouse of a different tribe, kejaman. We toured the longhouses here, handed out some gifts we bought at the market and then helped cook lunch. We all ate lunch on the floor with the family of the section we were in. One guy brought out a native guitar type instrument and a nose flute and played for us. And then several other people brought out shots of arak. This was far better arak than the other stuff, but perhaps even stronger. It really burned at first going down, but then it was ok. It's not really polite to refuse, so we kept taking shots and mroe shots of arak and before you know it, all 7 of us westerners and several of the kejaman's were quite drunk and really enjoying ourselves and having a good time. As people had excitedly warned before, a trip to the longhouse is often rice wine and arak themed. It was starting to seem almost like the last week in college, drinking from lunch till bedtime.

After sobering up a bit we took the boat back towards the belaga direction and then went to visit a crystal clear swimming hole. The water was cold and refreshing and of course the two guys that took us there brought out more arak to warm us up after swimming

After the swimming we headed back to belaga to get some coffee. sphssh...who needs coffee at that time of day and in that heat. So I went to the b-ball court. It was just the ladies playing at the time, and sort of a weird form of basketball where you couldn't dribble, but all the same, pretty fun, even though I had to go easy. But, I didn't have to wait long until I was challenged. an hour or so in, maricqa joined the game. She's about 3 inches taller than me and could throw elbows with the best of them, and I found myself working up quite a sweat in order to have any success against her. After the game, we wanted to play some real (dribbling) ball, so we played some one on one. Turns out she used to be a star forward for a big university in holland.

When we were finished with our coffee and basketball break Daniel informed us that we had been invited to a different longhouse, a kenyah longhouse. The plan had originally been to choose one of the first longhouses we had visited, but one of our boat driver's invited us to his longhouse, which apparently was having a funeral celebration. The indigenous people of borneo have celebrations as part of funerals. We felt a bit awkward about it, but decided to go. It was a huge longhouse complex (they had the longest longhouse in sarawak), and we were put at the very end. They weren't expecting us, so they hadn't reallly prepared anywhere for us to stay nor any food. We got taken to this more or less abandoned part of a longhouse and given some ratty mattresses. They lit a couple small candles for a tiny bit of light and given 10 bananas amongst us. John, the man who had invited us in and whom I called uncle john b/c he called me the "little boy", sprayed the area with nasty mosquito killer. With as bad as the stuff smelled and hurt my lungs, I was thinking I'd rather take my chance with malaria or dengue (especially after the morning when we all woke up with loads of mosquito bites). Uncle John then left and shut the door behind. So there we were, basically locked in this old dark structure, with no water (running or not), sweating on our crappy mattresses, with only bananas for dinner, and hacking our lungs off from mosquito killer (while still swatting mosquitos). But I was with a good group and we made humour of it anyways and just had quite the laugh about it. I knew asian hospitality better than that though, and I knew they would bring us out for something. In the end it was just that they were embarassed they hadn't had any food prepared and didn't want to have us watch them prepare it. So eventually John came to get us. We walked onto a large deck where the casket was, covered in gifts and decorations. At least 70 people were there on the deck just sitting or eating or drinking. We were brought inside and sat down where we were served rice baked in some sort of jungle leaf and then several dishes to add onto the rice. Now in malaysia most people do all their eating with their hands, though they usually have silverwear for westerners or chopstix for the chinese. However here they didn't have that, and a large group of 30 or 40 of them gathered around with incredible interest to watch us westerners eat with our hands. They had a good time doing it and it was for sure a jovial dinner. A lot of the locals sat down with us and you can be assured that our people watching was just as good as theirs. There were some quite crazy and itneresting individuals there, especially the ancients. There were a couple nearly 100 year old people there. One woman who was 100 and was paralyzed on one side (presumably from a stroke) had apparently risen from the dead a few years ago according to everyone. Her husband, an equally ancient man, was so funny. He just sat there and signed to us the whole night, mostly giving various thumbs up gestures, but also eating, drinking, and sleeping gestures. He also liked to come in for hugs on a regular basis. And he had huge holes in his ears like lots of the elderly locals did and in one ear hole he had a fatty local tobacco cigarette and in the other a more western cigarette.

When our dinner was finished, some other older lady, though not as old as the ancients, came by with a big box of the pure tobacco. This time Quinn and I (the only two non-smokers in the group, which is not unusual for me as the euros seem to smoke like chimneys) took the cigarettes as in some cases (like this one) it can be quite impolite to refuse gifts. But I just smoked it like a cigar w/out inhaling, so no big deal. But apparently it was pretty strong stuff according to everyone else. Of course everyone was smoking an incredible amount, including the ancients, so maybe there was something to daniel saying that their tobacco is healthy. The cigaretteds here are crazy b/c they just stuff a whole lot of tobacco into a rolled brown paper so that you just have this huge fatty joint looking thing with tobacco hanging out of it. After the cigarettes, the old lady brough out their famous chewing tobacco. It's a mix of tobacco, some sort of leaf, often a crushed nut, and some other uknown stuff rolled up. I accepted this again, but in this case did the disappearing sleeve trick, as did most b/c this stuff was known to be quite potent and I really don't have any desire to put that stuff in my mouth anyways. I think alex was really the only one to take it. He was quite the champ. The funny thing is that he had quite smoking about 3 months ago, but then with all the alcohol and locals always offereing cigarettes and their local tobacco, he got back on. It was quite hilarious to watch him take it, as his eyes and face showed just how bad and strong it was. His eyes were nearly bulging out and he began sweating profusely and you could tell he was trying his hardest to keep it in his mouth. The champ did it though, and kept it in. A little later, I looked back at him and he was in a huge cold sweat and completely pale and looking quite out of it. He later said that for a while he was touch and go. But soon enough out came the arak and tuac. In copious amounts too. After Alex got some shots of arak in him, he perked right back up. So with all the new arak and tuac the merrymaking continued. And there we were, completely drunk for the 4th time in like 30 hours. We continued just to sit there and drink and laugh and have a good time watching all the characters (white caped boy (the family of the deceased had to wear some form of white), magic thumbs, stone face, sign language man). And one point the older woman who had been handing out all the cigarettes and chewing tobacco started talking loudly. I responded a couple times with "Ogh oh", the local way to say ok, or yes. For some reason and no one really knew, she found this hysterically funny. None of us had honestly ever seen someone laugh so hard, which made it quite hilarious for us considering her age and fragility. She fell over dieing of laughter. Holding her stomach and ribs like they were going to break. She rolled and rolled on the floor and eventually got to a corner where she sat covering her mouth and clutching her ribs still cracking up. This honestly lasted for more than 15 minutes before she slightly calmed down a bit. Then she came over to me pointing and cracking up again and again. Even stonefaced smiled a bit, which means it must have been something funny. For another 20 or so minutes she'd just keep pointing at me and laughing. She calmed down again, but the rest of the night any of us could easily get her, and thus us, cracking up again by just repeating what I said. Towards the end of the night, the old laughing lady (isn't that a neil young song) disappeared and then came back with another box of what at first appeared to be more tobacco, but no, a quick smell of the first cigarette that alex lit up confirmed that it was another old lady: mary jane. Of course the two amsterdam girls jumped right in, and when in rome...or when in a kenyah longhouse. Eventually people began bedding down right there in the longhouse where we were sitting. It might have seemed as though they were just people passing out in a random house just like at a college party, but no, this is how they do it normally.
Needless to say, we slept soundly that night until the roosters began crowing at 5am. And we were all disappointed to notice that the toxicity of our blood (or the spray lingering in our bedroom) had not deterred the mosquitos from feasting on us. That morning we ate breakfast out on the deck right next to the fully decked coffin and the woman's husband who had stayed up all night next to it. There were still lots of people sprawled out and snoozing along the floor. After breakfast we toured the longhouse area a bit and visited the school house before taking the boat to an area to go hunting. We went with a local hunter toting a big knife and poison tipped spear, but in the end it was more like us walking his dogs than hunting b/c with a group that size any wild boar or deer was long gone. Once we got back from our forest walk..err...hunt we went back to belaga...and it was here it became a bit tricky...

It hadn't rained at all, so it was obviously inpossible to take the express boat back. An option was to take a local long-tailed boat for the 3 or 4 day journey back down. But it was the 16th and I had a flight the night of the 18th from Kuching which was an additional 10 hour journey from the river's mouth and the brits and dutch also had flights on the 18th and 19th in Miri, so that option seemed out. There is a long and rough 4WD road now connecting belaga with the trans-bornean highway which would have worked; however, they were out of diesel in the town as no boats had been able to make it up river to bring fuel. So this left us with one option, take a long-tail boat 3 hours up river to the site of an on-going dam construction site (highly controversial as it is destroying lots of rainforest and displacing 12,000 tribal people) where there is a road and likely people b/c there is also a lot of logging going on. So we hopped in the tiny boat with all of our stuff and headed farther upstream and deeper into the jungle. When we got as far as we could go upstream, we climbed up the muddy bank to luckily find some 4WD's to take. We drove for a bit before coming to a junction. Here, the two germans had arranged something with daniel to stay at a more agricultural based longhouse, so he took them, what he said was 15 minutes away and had us wait at the junction which was congested with logging trucks going in and out. After more than an hour Daniel finally arrived and we were relieved to have our ride finally come back as we were getting nervous. But... It turned out Daniel had decided to go back to guide the germans, so we were stuck there with no ride and the sun quickly setting. We set the two dutch girls out to the road to find us a ride, going with the traditional thinking that two attractive girls are much better at getting rides and unshaven dirty guys. An hour later, no luck, so I decided it was my turn to try for a ride. Apparently, herdy and maricqa had been quite new at getting rides in asia, b/c in about 3 minutes, I had us a ride. You have to utilize the special asian hitch-hiking hand motion (waving a hand up and down, palm down as opposed to sticking a thumb up) as well as calling out for a ride. It was a guy driving a pickup, so most squeezed into the truck, but I got the nicer ride of sitting on the bags in the bed, while unfortunately watching the unbearable scenery of clear cut land and newly planted oil palm plantations which I had origincally thought were only in sabah and not in sarawak. The land looked just like it's depicted in fern gully, except maybe even worse, especially with the setting sun through the smoke of burning trees adding more symbolism. The whole crowd got dropped off at the trans-borneo jct, so I said my goodbyes and continued on in the truck with the guy who picked us up as he was going to bintulu, which I figured afforded me a better chance of catching a non-full night bus than that little junction. He had an ipod plugged into his car and told me I could have free wheel at the music. I don't know if he knew what he was getting into as his ipod was full of...what else on an asian ipod?...80's power ballads and remixes of akon's na na na. So we cranked up the volume and I began singing full blast. He looked at me strangely for a while, but it wasn't long before he joined in with all his lungs, and I'm pretty sure he was quite sad to drop me off at the bus station. That night I caught a night bus from Bintulu to Kuching, and nasty 11 hours when going by bus, but only 4 or 5 hours if by day on a boat.

When I got into Kuching that morning, I had hoped to go to Bako NP, but I got in a bit too late, so I just kind of toured the city and took it as easy as, someone like me can, which means I did an awful lot of walking around the city. Kuching is actually a pretty cool city with lots of culture and diversity. It's a pretty famous tourist city with it's culture and proximitiy to the rainforest, so there were a lot of wealthy tourists in the area as well as families. It has a really nice river waterfront to walk along and buy fruitshakes in the intense heat and watch racing regattas go by. There's a lot of old british buildings from the time of british colonialism as well as an Indian Street and China Town. It also has several fancy areas that remind me almost of san diego and some giant fancy hotels. So I kind of walked around taking in the sites, getting some grub here and there, and of course visiting the mandatory cat statues. Kuching means cat in Malay. I walked away from the main area to check out the catholic cathedral and see about mass times. In a hibiscus garden on the way, by a fountain in the shade where I stopped to re-apply some sunscreen, there was a group of seemingly harmless teens on lunch break. They were in their school uniforms and I started up some conversation with them as I put on my sunscreen. But soon they started asking for money and then getting pretty pushy about it. They started moving in a bit more, but I wasn't too nervous as I was wearing my sneakers (yes, another pair of asian sandals had bit the dust), and I knew for certain that I could outrun them. As I was getting ready to start running away, a policeman walked by and the kids scattered as I think they weren't supposed to be in the garden at all in the first place.
Back along the river front, I saw Hannah and Andrew (the brits I travelled with in Brunei) having cold drinks and watching the sunset. So of course I joined them for that, but they were off to see harry potter VI and I had only seen the 1st, so I didn't join. I walked some more along the river walk looking for a place to eat. Stopped at a little stall and got some food, but I was too hot to go on (it may have been the hottest I have been yet on the trip), so I just sat behind the stall on the bench with the two girls running it. Only a few minutes later, Brody (the aussie that was the only other westerner at my hostel in brunei) showed up. So we hung out talking and sweating there on the bench by the kebab stand. One of the girls eventually gave us ice to put on our heads and cardboard to use as fans. After brody and I departed, I walked around looking for a place to watch the tour de france. One of the guesthouses that thankfully had a/c was playing it. There were 6 other people watching it, an american couple from cali and family from Denver. It was interesting b/c the couple were both attending yale: john at the divinity school and freddie the school of forestroy in environmental science. She had spent her first year of the master's program studying up in the cordillera of the philippines. She said that I should definitely check out yale's forestly program for grad school (and echo from the loveable strawberry mystique sherman). They knew some law students, but no, they didn't know chris sherman, but thai taste was their favorite restaurant in new haven as well.
The next day I just kind of hung out and then took a van to the airport. At the airport waiting for the gates to open there was a family with their cats there. The cats weren't flying anywhere, but just there to say goodbye to the mom who was going to visit some other family. The cat's were very well behaved and just sat on the chairs patiently waiting for the gate to be called. Thought it was rather hilarious as that would never happen back home, and fitting considering kuching is the cat city. Arrived into singapore and at the Carlisle's house late that night.
This morning was back to the amazing buffet at the American club, but before that we all went working out at the club to try and burn away some pre-calories. Today I've been just kind of hanging out doing some computer things (producing a fake flight itinerary and receipt that shows I will be leaving indonesia b/c in order to get the visa on arrival or a 2 month tourist visa you have to either have proof of leaving the country (airline ticket) or 5,000 dollars of hard US cash. Since I don't carry that kind of cash around and I don't really know when or how (bus to east timor or Papua New Guinea, boat to malaysia, australia, or a flight) I'll be leaving indo I don't have the airline ticket, so I'm using the skills mr. evans gave us in his computer class back in highschool to make a forgery of a ticket going from jakarta to san fran, so we'll see if that works), and hanging out with vivian and cleo the dog