Well howdy there partners, prepare for another wild adventure into the Borneo frontier!
So apparently we've washed up in a little town in Sarawak, the north-western state of Malaysian Borneo, that you can only access via river. That being said, there are a surprising number of cars here (shipped up the river) and it's unquestionably more modern than many places in other S.E.Asian countries (for example: all of Laos). We've been here for 3 days just kicking it around town, mostly eating at the same restaurant (because the food and people are amazing). Our original intention for coming here, though, was to visit a longhouse: the traditional domicile for natives in Borneo in which an entire community (maybe 150 people) live under one enormous roof. As the name implies, the house is very long. We managed to make it to one today, hiring a guy named Henry, who our new friend Presca, a Chinese-Malaysian girl we met here knows, with a van who "knows the villagers" to take us (turns out he´s only been there twice).
He showed up and, unfortunately for the sake of communication, couldn't speak English nearly so well as anyone I've met at any restaurant in Malaysia but he was a nice guy. He told us that they didn't know we were coming, which can be a faux pas and is therefore unideal. The roads there were, unsurprisingly, also less than ideal: windy as a Burmese python and a lot less docile, making for a bumpy ride; pretty country though (and loads of banana trees en route). Well we arrived and they were kind enough to invite us in, though, again, communication was a bit of a problem. I asked a tattooed old man in purple shorts, sitting on a plastic chair with its legs chopped off, and he said that there are about 200 people who "live there," though many are away, working in other towns (like Kapit, where we're staying now. One girl named Agnes said her husband works 5 days a week in town, only 45 minutes away, and comes home only on the weekends).
Also, there were a large collection of human skulls hanging from the ceiling! These skulls were darkened with age but grinning wildly from a tangle of woven rattan----from the tribe´s former head-hunting days (murder was later made illegal, much to the disappointment of the Iban tribe). Henry told us that they were over a hundred years old but the old man said they brought that particular batch in when he was little (showing a hand at waist level) and he couldn't've been that old. Well we had an all right time sharing the fruit and biscuits we brought as a present and sort of talking to the adults there. But the real fun was definitely playing with the little kids! They were ridiculous and, without the drain of modern media, super easy to rile up! So we ended up alternating kung-fu fighting and dance partying, with conga lines and explosions galore!
They did charge us 50 Ringet though ($50÷3), which we weren't told about and were a bit put off, considering we just came to meet these people and see their house for like an hour and we brought them food gifts. But I've heard the tourism industry has long exploited their hospitality, bringing groups of tourists and leaving them to sleep on their veranda and giving them no pay so I can see where they're coming from. Plus they have real human skulls there, which is a big tourist attraction.
Well we're at the Internet Cafe now (which has turned the internet from something we "get on" to something we "go to") but our new friend Jeffrey, whose mom owns that awesome restaurant we've been eating at, is coming to take us out on the town! So nearly every meal we get a chance to talk to him about life in Malaysia and how different life is for Malays, Indians, Chinese, and the many different tribes living in Borneo. He´s a super nice guy. And yee-haw! Here he is now!
[Later:] So Jeffrey and his amiable cousin Wesley took us out for a night on the town. They showed us the Malay village, the Chinese quarters, and took us on a winding road to a hilltop view of the whole (admittedly small) city of Kapit! We then went out for some Tiger Beer (we´re getting paid for advertising here), where we met some of their friends and had a lovely evening. It´s nice to have friends again. So we´ve now departed from Kapit, with the weird vegetables in the market and the friendly faces all around, and are continuing along on our lone adventures!
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