Malaysia – Page 3 – Where is Phil now?

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Day 20, Monday 16 January 2012 – Mulu / Miri

I forgot to mention that when I got back the national park hostel I discovered it was almost full with another group of Australian World Challenge teenagers and this time they were mainly boys. Awful awful, so loud !

After breakfast of egg on toast with a guy I met at camp 5 I decided I would have an easy morning to let the legs recover before getting the bus to the airport for the 2.55 flight back to Miri. I wanted to find Skylar and Alexandra so I could get a copy of their photos and do a backup to memory stick for them. However it appeared they were not in the main hostel so I expected I would find them at the airport later.

I took the walk to the Moon milk cave as this could be done without a guide and was an easy walk. At the start I ran into the teachers with the teenagers who said they were also doing it, this gave me an additional burst of energy and I power walked the 2 or so kms to the start of the steps. Steps, what steps, my legs cannot do steps ! Just under 400 steps (yes I counted them) later, drenched in sweat and barely able to move I reached the cave – to find the lights were not working ! I had my torch (thanks Aiden) so was able to see but I was hoping to spend thirty minutes with the camera and tripod taking photos in peace before the horrible hoard arrived. The cave was just too dark to do that sadly. Nice cave though.

I left the cave area when the hoard showed up and took a leisurely walk back to the camp, taking some photos of butterflies on the way. The butterflies are large, colourful and of such a wide variety here. excuse the crap photo, but they would not keep still.

Also found this amazingly spiky palm tree, those thorns are very sharp and very strong.

I packed up my stuff and went to find the bus to the airport, where I finally caught up with S and A. As we had such little time and they had so many photos we had a mad session trying to copy photos from the Pinnacles to my laptop and then all their photos to their memory sticks. Sadly we just ran out of time, even though we were copying as the bags went through x-ray, walking to the plane and until we HAD to shut the laptop down as we taxied. So I got what I could and the girls have said they will email me some when they get home.

We had a bouncy flight back to Miri where the girls and I said our farewells as they flew on to Kota Kinabalu. I went back to the Dillenia Hostel and booked myself into a dorm room, time to get into the cheaper method of travelling! There were three of us in the dorm and I got “talking” to a French guy named J, his English was significantly better then my French, but we were not able to have major conversations. There were a few others at the hostel, mainly couples and all unsociable, possibly due to language, who knows, some didn’t even say hello.

As the sun set I went out for a walk and headed down to the river front to try and get a sunset photo.

I then wandered back into the centre of town to grab a light meal from Ming Cafe as I had eaten there before, I ran into J so we ate together and hung for a bit. Back at the hostel I blogged and emailed and went to bed. In a very squeaky bunk, I pitied my roomies.

I love this T-shirt, it has two probable meanings, as i did not do one of them I had no need for the second 🙂

The Pinnacles (or not in my case)

Day 18/19, Sat/Sun, 14/15 Jan 2012 – Mulu /Camp 5 /Pinnacles /Mulu

Hopefully I will get all the facts right as I am catching up with the blogs today (3 days later), this is my first multi day post. Firstly I will start with two confessions, just to get them out of the way nice and early;

Firstly, I did not finish the Pinnacles (yes I know yesterday I said I wasn’t going to do it !) I chickened out, failed to take concrete pills, whatever it was – I quit when it got scary.
Secondly, the battery in my camera went flat on the boat ride to the walk to Camp 5…. I have some photos but not many.

So, if you have arrived at this blog post via some search engine and are looking for a triumphant tale (with pictures) of the Pinnacles climb, then this is not the read for you!

Saturday

Up earlyish after a good sleep, surprisingly cool considering the heat of the day, I even pulled the blanket over me in the early hours for some warmth.

I met the English guy from last night for breakfast, I have totally forgotten his name – hopeless! We were planning on doing the second cave tour together after breakfast and then planning the rest of the day. While I was sucking down my third coffee the two girls who arrived in the dorm late last night, due to the night walk, sat down at the table next to us, so I went and asked them what they thought of the walk and if it was worth the $$. in return they asked me if I wanted to do a 2 day 1 night Pinnacles trek, leaving in 30 minutes as they had to have a third person or they couldn’t go. I said yes, then rushed to pack….

My daypack is too small !!! I had to take a mandatory 3 litres of water plus clothes, first aid kit, food etc etc. I had to make a few hard decisions to fit things in and grabbed the small light camera rather than the GF1, sadly I did not check the battery! There was also no food choice at the park and no shops nearby either, so food for 2 days of walking was 3 packs of 2 minute noodles, a bag of peanuts and 2 small packets of biscuits ! I just think of all the stress I went through with pre-run meal planning and shake my head…

I met Skylar and Alexandra (S and A) out the front of the park, paid our guide (Oondy – that was how his name sounded) and off we went up the Melinau River in one of the outboard powered canoes. S and A are both in their early twenties and are on holiday from teaching English in what sounds like a rather remote part of NW China. They were only marginally better prepared than me for this trip ! But they were good fun, interesting and I really enjoyed their company.

The boat man and our meagre day bags

The first part of the journey took in the remaining two of the big four caves, Wind Cave and Clearwater. Wind cave was very cool, some awesome formations inside and one I would have liked to have spent more time photographing – however, my camera expired just after the entrance ! No tripods were allowed anyway so it would all have been via flash which would ahve been less fun.

All other photos came from Alexandra’s camera. Unfortunately we did not have time to do a proper download so I only got some of the later shots.

Clearwater cave is equally as awesome, this cave system goes for over a hundred kilometres and apparently there are some massive chambers, again I would have loved to have had some time in here, especially with a tripod. The trips through the caves were fairly quick as we were on a mission ! after a quick lunch of fried noodles that we bought before jumping in the canoe we were off up river. The trip took another fifteen or so minutes before we parked up in the jungle at the trail head. This section of the jungle is pure primary rain forest – so cool !!

The eight km walk took us just under three hours, we stopped to look at a host of interesting bugs and plants on the way and the guide knew a lot about the jungle and its inhabitants. We arrived in Camp 5 mid afternoon and pretty much went straight into the river for a swim to cool down. Unlike the larger rivers I have seen the Melinau is crystal clear – just don’t drink it ! Camp 5 is surrounded by towering limestone peaks on three sides and the river and jungle on the other. The camp has been there for a number of years and has 4 bunk areas, a kitchen and a toilet block (with proper loos!).

There were about a dozen other people staying there, some having completed the Pinnacles that day were nursing sore legs and stories of hardship and sweating more than they have ever sweated in their lives ! After an early dinner, during which a gecko fell from the ceiling and landed in a plate of vege – to much hilarity, we were chatting with some of the other walkers when one of the guides brought in a small bird of paradise he had caught with his hands, it was a stunningly beautiful bird ! He gave it to S to hold who promptly, shrieked, let it go and it flew away. Soon after that it was into “bed” under a mossie net for a totally sleepless night. Apart from another inspiringly heavy rainstorm, we had rats (or something) rattling around outside in the middle of the night.

Sunday

Up at five am for a breakfast of two minute noodles and water to drink (no coffee, yikes !).

Just after 6 we – S, A, our guide and another party of two and a guide set off under torch light and into the jungle. The trail is marked in 100 metre sections and basically has 200 metres of flat and then almost straight up. It is roughly 900 vertical metres in 2k, for those who cannot work it out it is STEEP ! not only is it steep it is also rooty, rocky and slippery. If you take the steepest, rootiest bit of the waitak’s on a wet day, change the clay to rock, some of them razor sharp, quadruple the number of roots, make it 10 times as long and add 100% humidity, this is what the Pinnacles walking section is like. There is no respite – at all. The whole trail is only 2400m’s long yet has 1175m of vertical gain, fit walkers are expected to take 7-8 hours – to cover 2.4k !!!! At the end of the 2.4k is a series of sharp limestone pinnacles pointing to the sky, some (apparently !) are very tall.

I was pouring sweat by 6.30 am and it was still close to dark ! I am so glad for all the bush running I have done in the past year as it really paid off on this section of the walk, it was hard but I was pretty Ok when we got to the climbing section after 2 half hours. On the way up at one of drink stops we saw a small group of red leaf monkeys playing in the tree tops, very cool, almost worth the trip !

On the “climbing” section I managed the first 2 ladder sections and 3 of the rope sections before realising I was finding it harder and harder to go on. I wasn’t freaking out or anything but after talking to the guide, who said it got harder as it went on, I decided to stop while the going was good and before I slowed the others down on the descents. Looking back I am pretty sure I could have made it and been fine, but I am in Borneo, an accident out in the jungle here is not something I want to ponder for too long. I know I made the right call, and am disappointed in myself a bit, but at least I made it part way up and conquered a wee bit of my fear of heights.

Oondy, our guide at the section I decided not to do (that is not a blood splat btw 🙂 )

Me deciding to bail while Skylar starts up

After I pulled out the guides told me to head back down to Camp 5, with health and safety in mind I descended down the 3 rope and 2 ladder sections on my own and unwatched, then back down the mountain. I took a number of breaks on the way down, mainly because I was in no rush, the view was restricted for most of the journey, so not a lot to see. If I exclude the break times it took me 3 hours to cover the approximate 2km’s. The descent was far harder than the ascent, both the rocks and the roots were very slippery and I had a few twitchy moments on the walk, falling over meant the likelihood of a nasty cut on the rocks. I got back to Camp 5 with no issues just before 12.00 and went straight to the river to cool down, all my clothes were already drenched so I did not bother getting out of anything but my shoes and socks.

The others all arrived back an hour and a half later, as S and A and I were only on a one nighter after a breather for them we and our guide started making our way back along the 8km trail (flat, thank God) to the boat.

About a km into the walk I saw a flash of movement on the edge of the track and saw a 2 metre snake slither off into the undergrowth, thankfully in the opposite direction to me. I said a bad word very loudly ! After discussing it with the guide later he said it was probably a cobra….

My first snake is finally done ! I have been waiting and waiting to see one to get the inevitable out of the way. Nice that it was a decent sized one, and even nicer that it heard me first and chose to go the other way.

We knocked the walk to the boat off on in just under 2 hours, which gave me about 8 hours on my feet today, considering my diet of noodles and biscuits I felt pretty good, though once back in the park I didn’t do much more than eat and lie down !

I am disappointed in myself for not finishing it off, however, I enjoyed the day, it was hard, but fun. I AM pissed off that I have no pictures, though.

Mulu Caves

Day 17 – Friday 13 Jan 2012 – Miri – Mulu.

I have been away from the internet for a few days so am having to play catch-up on what was a very regular posting regime.

My last night in Miri was marred by a total lack of sleep. It was a noisy night outside, lots of street noise and a prolonged thunder storm which featured the heaviest rain I have heard. Thankfully the downpour was only short lived, but the mosque was its reliable self and kicked off its morning call to prayer at 4.50 AM.

After breakfast I shared a taxi to Miri airport at 7.00 AM with the Swiss guys from the other night, which got me there far too early, but at least it was cheaper and I was only going to hang about the hostel anyway. The plane was virtually empty and the flight only lasts thirty minutes and was pretty smooth. There was a lot of high cloud but we stayed below it so there was a good view of a devastated landscape most of the way. There is a lot of palm oil plantations in Borneo, though fortunately as we approached the park the natural forest seemed to be prevailing. There were a few very cool windy rivers on the way, I cannot believe how some of them snake around so much, especially compared to rivers like the Waikato that run quite straight in comparison. (photos from plane not worth posting !)

I got to the park later morning, checked in and staked my bed in the dorm room. I am in a space with five beds, three of which were subsequently taken by some young Canadians who were on the flight and the final one by Skylar (you will meet her tomorrow).

I was considering doing the Pinnacles walk, but have decided against it, I am not enjoying the heat and I have not allowed myself the required amount of time in the park to do the walk, everything I read suggested it is a two day activity, but the park stipulate two nights and three days. It is also quite expensive, so I will save the bucks and aim to do Mt Kinabalu in a week or so. I will do some of the smaller walks here instead.

In the afternoon I took the first of the guided cave walks, for the four big caves you have to go with a guide, which you naturally have to pay for! The four caves are split into two walks, one done in the morning and the other the afternoon. Our group had about fifteen members which was larger than I would have liked but we had a fairly leisurely time so it kinda worked out OK. The walk to the caves took about 45 minutes, we saw very little wildlife and I assuming that is due to the number of people in the group.

A stick insect, about the only thing I saw, but very cool.

Langs cave is the smallest of the four caves in park but had fantastic stalagmites and stalactites, as the group was so big it was nice and slow so I lingered at the back and used the tiny tripod I had brought with me (no tripods allowed !) . The guide was OK, but I missed a lot of the commentary as i was at the back of the group the whole day.

Deer cave is the biggest cave passage by volume in the world, and I am going to say it is huge !!! the cave houses around three million bats and the smell is pretty overpowering. The walk through the other cave was quite impressive, different again to the caves i have seen so far.

After the cave we all went along to the bat viewing area to await the bat exodus which occurs almost every night between 4.30 and 6.00. After a boring almost hour and a half the guide came running down to the area calling “the bats are coming, the bats are coming”. We asked how they knew this was about to happen, I was thinking they could tell by the action of the birds or a strange sound or some other method passed down through the generations, but no, they have a camera in the cave !

Over an hour long period the bats (all 3 or so million) fly out of the cave in waves of a few thousand at a time, they swirl in long spirals into the forest to look for food, between each wave there is a gap of a few minutes. Circling above and diving and hunting the bats on the edges are a few bat hawks looking for their nightly feed. It was I am going to say an awesomely awesome site !

After the bats it was a quick walk along the path in the ever increasing gloom back to the lodge. I had dinner with an English guy I got talking to late in the wait for the bats and then an early night and a great (though medicated) sleep.

This is my first night in a dorm !!

http://www.mulupark.com/htm/cave_activities/index.htm#langs

A slow day in Miri

Day 16 – Thursday 12 Jan 2012 – Miri.

Firstly, thanks for the emails, Facebook messages and comments and likes on the blog, I love them, so please keep them coming 🙂 Though replies maybe slow over the next few days.

Final day in Miri ! Lizzie and Dave thought their flight to Bario was tomorrow, but they found out this morning they were wrong and then had to make a quick dash to the airport. I enjoyed their company and wish them well for the rest of their travels. If we manage to catch up in Myanmar it would be great. Lizzie left half a bar of chocolate in the fridge, it didn’t make it through the night…

This morning the hostel had the pleasure of greeting a dozen or so Australian school girls and their guardians who arrived for the night as part of a month long cultural trip. When I wasn’t out I pretty much stayed in my room as they, and their guardians, will drive me insane ! (I have music playing (Jakob), the door closed and I can still hear them.)

I had a good chat with Aiden and mum on the phone before heading out, good to hear their voices, and hopefully chatting with family will be a regular thing (Meliesha, Dom – you can message me you know !)

I went for a walk through town again with the vague idea of doing some shopping and maybe picking up a t-shirt and a small souvenir. I stopped for a very nice ais kacang (shaved ice, red beans and coconut milk in this case) and got talking to a charming English anthropology Phd student, Rachael. She has spent a year living with the Penan people in the Kelabit Highlands and has another six months to go. It was a fascinating conversation and I learnt a lot over the two or so hours we chatted.

Me and my ais kacang, starting to look tanned.

That pretty much used all my available time so I went back to the hostel with a couple of cans of Carlsberg and mooched for a couple of hours before packing for Mulu and an early night. I know drinking beer on your own is not a good sign, is drinking beer alone in bed worse ?, but I was writing this:)

I leave here at 7.00 Am in a taxi to the airport with the two Swiss guys from the other night. I am catching a thirty minute flight with MASwings to Mulu National Park, which I am really looking forward to, the park, not the flight !

I have four days in Mulu, there is limited internet access so I may be off line for a few days before I return for a final night at the Dillenia and then on to Brunei. I have had a good time in this hostel – till the big group arrived anyway! It comes recommended to other travellers. I have taken the brave step of booking a dorm when I return as well !

I have been keeping a lost and tossed list, so after just over two weeks…

Lost

Power plug adapter, left in first hotel.
Sunglasses bag, somewhere in Miri

Tossed

Mirror, smashed on the flight to Singapore.
Camping washing line with pegs, hopeless ! got some string from Alex.
Portable water bottle (sorry sis), water comes in bottles !
Book I bought in Auckland airport with all the NZ coins I had – left in hostel library today.
New razor blades I bought in Kuching, by mistake in Kapit about $30NZ worth.
Old NZ razor as I could not get blades for it here, bought a new one and the above blades.

My bag is lighter already !

I amazed at the amount of reflexology clinics there are in town, those oil rig workers must spend an awful amount of time on their feet. Like this one in the downtown bar area. It must pay very well as a Hilux like this would cost upward of of $50kNZD here.

Laughed at this sign yesterday..

Niah Caves

Day 15 – Wednesday 11 Jan 2012 – Miri – Niah Caves

Mrs Lee, who runs the hostel, organised a car for myself and the English guy and girl (Dave and Lizzie) to go to Niah Caves, which are about 110km from Miri. It is possible to get a variety of public transport to the caves and a number of people do this, but for me this was the easiest option not much more expensive than the more complicated bus option, plus the driver waited for us so we had a guaranteed lift back to town.

The Niah Caves are in a small national park and in 1958 Tom Harrison discovered a human skull that has been dated back to 40,000 years ago, along with igns that the cave system was used for human habitation up until quite recently. The human remains were known as “Borneo Man” and are the oldest human remains found in SE Asia.

The caves are primarily populated by thousands of bats and a small bird, the switflet. The swiflet make their nests from their own saliva and these nests are prized in China as the source for birds nest soup. For many years the local iban people have collected the nests and bat guano (for fertiliser) for sale. Throughout the cave system there are massive ironwood and bamboo poles used by the collectors, who will climb high up the caves to knock the nests down to the ground were they are collected.

From the park office you take a boat across the river and then take a two kilometre walk through the bush on a very slippery raised boardwalk to the first of the caves, the Trader Cave.

The Trader cave is more of a large overhang that for was used as a market – mainly the trading and selling of birds nests and guano. The cave was pretty cool…

remains of some of the traders stalls.

This shows the scale of the cave

From the Traders Cave there is a short walk to the Great Cave, the entrance is 60m high and 250m wide…. Impressive ! to the side of the great cave is the original excavation site.

There was some great stalegtites ! I am not sure what this buiding is for, no signs! possibly used by archeologists ? place for visitors to rest without being poo’ed on from above.

The cave is huge, a boardwalk allows you to wander through the system and I took a number of photos. I was not supposed to take the tripod in but I did and snapped a few shots, most of which were rubbish ! need to practise taking photos in the dark with this camera !

In the middle of the cave we found some birds nest collectors, they were slightly too far away to get a decent pic, so this is it.

After the Great cave there is a short walk to the painted cave. The painted cave contains a fenced off wall where some old cave paintings were discovered. There is no information on when these were found, or how old they are. It is fairly typical of Borneo to not have a lot of info about things, the museums have been the same, there will be a long of masks on a wall, with a sign saying Iban masks, but no info about what they all mean !)

From the painted cave you walk back they way you came to the park entrance. We met a couple of people in the park, but it was largely deserted which was awesome ! It meant we could take our time walking through, stopping to take photos without blocking the paths. I can see why tripods are not allowed, on a busy day they would be one heck of a hazard.

I really enjoyed the caves, though very humid (I was dripping as usual ) and a nice pong of bat shit ! We had a lunch of rice, okra and fern roots at the park and then went back to the hostel for expensive beers.

There are more photos on Flickr as it is too time consuming to add lots to WordPress !

A good day, probably the best one so far !

Miri

Day 14 – Tuesday 10 2012 – Miri

Another fairly late night with loud karaoke bars nearby (as I found out later, one was actually downstairs), they love their karaoke bars here. I was then awoken at 4:50 by the call for prayer from the local mosque. Oh well, sleep is over-rated and think I am going to have to get used to that !

I was up early for coffees and breakie with the other guests, most who are moving on today, it was nice to eat fresh fruit and toast for a change.

I had planned a day in Miri, so left the hostel after 9.00 to get out for a walk before the worst of the heat of the early afternoon. It was still hot and humid though ! Miri is a fairly new town compared to some of the others I have visited, so the old town areas were not that interesting, and there was not a whole lot else to look at really. I wandered around for a couple of hours and then went to a local food court for lunch.

After lunch I wandered up to the Petroleum Museum, the museum is about a 2km walk up a hill and it was pretty tough in the heat, lots of people driving past in cars gave me funny looks as they drove on by. If this had been Auckland I would have run up there in minutes, but this was a bit of a mission.

I think Vicki is the only person I know who would have appreciated the museum for its sake, I enjoyed it for the air conditioning and the view of the town was OK.

For Vicki !

One of the walking tour highlights 🙂

I arrived back in the hostel in the early afternoon to cool down and chill for the rest of the day. It was a quiet hour on my own before the new round of travellers arrived. I soon get chatting to an English guy and girl travelling together and an American guy living in Japan. The poms were planning on visiting Niah Caves tomorrow which is what I want to do as well so we will all go together in a car organised by Mrs Lee who runs the hostel. This will be cheaper and easier than us all using the bus, assuming one actually runs.

I hung around the hostel for the rest of the afternoon catching up on some emails and blog reading while the others had a late lunch. When they came back we sat around and chatted over a beer with a couple of Swiss guys who had just arrived. The six of us went of dinner to Mings Seafood Cafe and I ate the most food since new year – fantastic, BBQ’d fish, calamari, okra, native ferns and bamboo clams ( a long thin shellfish). It was a good night, moderately expensive as beer is a horrendous price in Miri. We bought another big bottle of beer each and went back to the hostel to chat till quite late. It was a good night.

I regret not taking my camera (or even my phone) for dinner as the food porn was great!

Miri is the border town with Brunei, Brunei being completely alcohol free, everyone comes to Miri to drink – and they know how to make a buck here The beer in Kapit was half the price and Kapit was 200km up a river.

8 hours on a bus, Sibu – Miri

Day 13 – Monday 09 Jan 2012 – Sibu / Miri

I am going to attempt to start a post and maybe edit yesterdays photos while having my spine pounded and my body shaken as we travel on the Pan-Borneo Highway, typing is very slow !

Last night was the worst of the trip so far, I would have expected Sunday night to be reasonably quiet in Sibu, but there was at least two karaoke bars and a nightclub within hearing distance of my hotel room, it took a while to isolate the sounds over the noise of another heavy downpour and the noise finally stopped about 1:30am. At 5:30 the cafes over the road opened up and a large generator kicked in as well. As I was planning on leaving the hotel at 7.00, there was no point in attempting more sleep so I gave up and went to see if I could breakfast at 6.15. I could ! more eggs on toast.

I got a cab from the hotel to the bus terminal which was a good 10km away. When i arrived at the terminal I was surrounded by touts flogging their bus company but had elected to stick to the main ones and got the 7.30 Bus Asia to Miri. The price is fixed at 40 ringit for all companies so the choice was made on the state of the bus, I must say the “VIP” buses all looked fine. The ride is supposed to take 7 half hours. There were only three passengers so I took the pack on with me.

The first thirty minutes were fairly smooth on good roads, but once we had passed the far outskirts of Sibu the ride got very rough. After about three hours on the road we stopped to pick up a load of passengers from a competitors broken down bus and all of a sudden we were full. My decision to take the pack on with me backfired as I now had it under my legs for an hour until Bintulu. My neighbour was a nice young Malay man names Faz Wan, who spoke Ok English, so we chatted in a rather stunted fashion for the remainder of his journey to Bintulu where he works.

We lost most of the new passengers at Bintulu and I got my double seat back which was a relief to my legs. The low lands area we are driving through has been largely deforested, though there is a bit of secondary growth. It was not till after Bintulu that we started passing large palm oil plantations, these were massive, strecthing for tens of kilometres.

Miri is an ‘oil’ town, near the Brunei border and has a population of around 270,000. We arrived in town just after 4.00 and I got a taxi to a randomly selected hostel, which appeared to be closed. I then tried my second choice, The Dillenia Guest House, which is a bit further out from the centre of town then I wanted as I will be here for four nights. I planned on booking for one night and checking it out first before committing to the full four, but it had a single room available and such a good vibe I took the full four. Hopefully that vibe was the right one !

Once I checked in I went an introduced myself to some of the other guests, it is a small hostel so only a few people and most appear to be checking out tomorrow, and most going up to Brunei and onto Kota Kinabalu like I am. I went out and had dinner and a beer with a Canadian girl, Jessica, she reminds me a lot of Meliesha and had been staying in NZ since Feb and now returning home. Nice evening, enjoyed having company again.

As an aside, photo editing is fairly basic, I am just running a few basic steps in Lightroom, contrast, sharpening, noise reduction. I am shooting GF1 and I cannot be bothered converting them first.

Long houses and old heads

Day 12 – Sunday 08 Jan 2012 – Kapit / Sibu

Saturday night in Kapit was a quiet one ! The rain really came down around 8:00 and didn’t let up for hours, this seemed to clean the stragglers from the street, so apart from the sound of rain it was a fairly quiet night. Glad the Fox movie channel was available on th rather small TV.

I was awake around 4am and sort of up around 6.00 when the town started to wake up. I wasn’t meeting Joshua (the Iban guide) until 9.30 so I kind of hung around till 8.30 and then went and hunted down coffee and noodles for breakfast at the cafe I was to meet Joshua at. He arrived early and we shared a couple of coffees and talked for an hour or so – and he chain smoked the entire time, must have had 6 smokes, all stubbed out on the floor of the cafe. You are not in NZ any more Phil ! No more tourists had arrived in town so it was not worth him, or definitely me doing an overnight trip up river, he said the market had been badly down for the past two years, his usual market is Europeans. However, he did arrange a trip to one of the local Kapit Longhouses – Sebabai.

The Iban bring in jungle and garden fruits from the longhouses to sell in the market.

Even the visit to Sebabai was expensive, costing me about $100NZ, payment has to be made to the driver, the guide (Joshua), the headman and a wee bit to the warrior chief if you want to see the heads… Normally of course this can be split amongst a group, but I was a group of one.

Joshua met again at the jetty with the longhouse car and a cold can of beer. The longhouse has a number of old Toyota Hiace vans and this one was full and had no aircon and little suspension. Joshua smoked his way to the longhouse. The trip took about forty five minutes about 50% on sealed road, though the unsealed road I think was in better condition. I was sitting in the middle of the back seat and was unable to photograph two guys on a scooter carrying a foam double mattress!! Even the local girls were laughing.

Sebabai long house sits above a small stream used as the communal wash house.

My chain smoking friend Joshua, crossing the swing bridge to the longhouse.The Iban Sebabai longhouse is one of the few remaining old long houses left, a huge number have been replaced with new concrete ones, some of them look very nice too. At Sebabai they are building a new brick house as well, but will keep the old one for a while longer. The house has some very old ironwood sections but a lot of the roof has been replace with corrugated iron. The long house sleeps 42 families, some quite large. The house is in two rows, with a ‘street’ in the middle. Each house has separate homes and a long common area where people hang out together.

The street in between, the boards were quite dodgy in some places!The still being built new longhouse, with a proper bridge.Sunday morning is market day so the house was fairly quiet when we arrived, but over the couple of hours we were there a large number of people arrived, and a massive amount of kids. Of course these days everyone wears western clothes, lots of football shirts on the boys. The house has fallen off the tourist trail in the last couple of years so some of the younger kids were very fascinated by me.

The common area where I was allowed to go.The young boy could not keep his eyes off me, good to see kids the world over love the same toys.

The house shaman was working on some ceremonial clothing when I arrived (not sure if this is staged, but I enjoyed watching him work) and soon after the house hard man came out. We all shared a couple of glasses of extremely potent rice wine and talked a bit about our families. The shamans sons (like a number of the local young men) work overseas, and are not taking on the shaman role, when he dies the house will not have one.

The Iban men are quite heavily tattooed and a number of the women were displaying some tattoos as well. The tattoos all display individuals memories so the shaman had airplanes as he flew on one on holiday. The Iban people are the only indigenous tribe to tattoo their necks and all the older men had them. Apparently the shaman featured in a Nat Geo article in 2002!

The house hard man, he is the warrior chief of the house, as were his father, grandfather etc asked if I wanted to see the heads his grandfather collected, which of course I did. They hang from the ceiling in the common area but are covered up. When he went to unwrap them a number of the kids, and some parents, came to look. Apparently this is very rare and some of the younger kids were quite frightened by it ! The heads were very old.

After the heads we talked a bit more and then left so I could get the ferry back to Sibu.

A lot of the men in the house smoked, the hard man was coughing up a lung every five minutes, so I imagine he was not well. The other negative to the longhouse was the amount of rubbish underneath, all cigarette butts, fruit peels, other bits of rubbish get pushed the floor boards, it was a shame to see. Malaysia (the bits I have seen so far) is quite grubby though.

The ferry ride was uneventful, the Rejang river was up significantly on the day before due to the massive downpour overnight. As we were running down river the trip was 45 minutes faster – it is a fast flowing river.