It's official. We *heart* Borneo. Kuching was our home base for the last week and it's a great city (even though it has a sprawl problem) built along the Sarawak River. It also has excellent dining. We think that each meal we ate was better than the last. Kristen's sister Megan has a 'fear no food' policy and we have become practicioners and have yet to be disappointed. Mike's favorites include Tom Yum soup and whole fish in a black pepper sauce. Kristen's favorites include battered prawns and jungle ferns. We would do something touristy during the day and then walk on the river and eat good food at night. Not a bad life!
During the day we tried our best to learn about the people and wildlife in the Sarawak state of Malaysian Borneo. Our first day we took a tour of the city and visited the ethnographic museum to learn about the different indigenous tribes. In the afternoon we went to an orangutan rehabilitation center. It was pouring down rain when we first got there, so we weren't sure what we'd see, but we got quite the show. There was a momma and her little baby and another one building a nest in the rain. Then when the rain stopped we checked out the other feeding site and saw the big guy himself- Ritchie, the dominant male. He was without question the dominant one. He was probably twice the size of the next biggest we saw and he really enjoyed eating bananas. Apparently he's got the strength of ten men so it probably takes a lot of bananas to fill him up. Across the way there were two teenage boy orangutangs hanging out and showing us just how easy it is to open up a coconut.
Our next adventure was to visit an Iban longhouse community. The Iban people are the people formerly known as headhunters who have transitioned into more peaceful ways of living. They are gracious enough to open up their traditional longhouses for home stays for tourists so people like us can learn more about them. Truth in advertising: a longhouse is in fact a long house- it's like a single story apartment buiding on stilts where all of the apartments are in a single row. There are connections between each of the "apartments" because most of the people who live in the longhouse are related.
Our trip to visit them involved a 4.5 hour car ride, a beautiful boat ride across a lake, and a walk from the dock to the longhouse itself. One thing we noticed at first was that most people didn't speak English. But, we were able to get by with hand gestures and translation from our guide. They served us tea and we said hi to the different people who were at the longhouse. Our guide told us that 100 people officially live there, but there were only about 20 people there when we were there- the rest were working in the cities. They were very friendly and welcoming. We checked out their farmland until it started to rain on us and then got a cooking lesson on how to prepare jungle ferns and other tasty things. We endeared ourselves to the community by helping to bring out the food to eat and clear the dishes after dinner. With that, we were declared 'mana' or good people. We really didn't help out all that much seeing as we don't know how to cook jungle ferns or speak the language to understand what's going on, but were glad they appreciated the little we did. And boy were we appreciative of them- they were great to us. Dinner was followed by drinking of rice wine whiskey. Even Kristen had a shot, but since one made her turn red and lightheaded, she stopped there. Mike, however, was more adventurous and had a few more shots with the guide who was more than happy to sling 'em back. We slept in the chief's quarters on a foam mattress under a mosquito net. We woke up very early to the sounds of the roosters and then had a tasty breakfast. And then it was already time to say good-bye.
Our final stop in Borneo was Bako National Park, which is the home of beaches, mangroves and proboscis monkeys. We saw each of these things and they were very lovely.
However, the part of Bako that brought us the most amusement was the naughty macaque monkeys that liked to hang out around the open air canteen were we'd take our meals. They would wait until the right moment, bound into the space and then steal the food out of someone's plate.
There was a young fellow who had a sling shot who had the job of trying to dissuade the monkeys from coming onto the porch. However, these monkeys are very fast and very naughty. Inevitably, a monkey would make it on the porch and make off with someone's food. They also had the nerve to sit in a tree in view of the canteen and eat whatever they stole. Mike took on the role of monkey tamer and would pick up an empty chair whenever they came close to shoo them off. Kristen just ate quickly. Fortunately, neither of us lost any of our food to the monkeys. The park is building a new canteen that's and safe from the invaders, but smokers will still have to eat outside. It may be an effective way to convince people to stop smoking so they can avoid having half their food stolen by voracious monkeys.
Next stop, New Delhi!
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