Borneo is an island in the South China Sea comprised of the small country of Brunei, the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the Indonesian state of Kalimantan. Andrea and I will visit Brunei and Sarawak for a week. We flew into Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital and only major city in Brunei. On the cab ride from the airport to the Empire Hotel, we could see and hear (no constant load horns) Brunei is obviously more developed than Indonesia. We stayed at the opulent Empire Hotel, originally built as the Sultan’s beachside guesthouse. Brunei does not have a lot to offer travelers. In the first afternoon we did all the tourist things; saw some mosques, took a boat tour through the water village, and walked around the city a bit. A cab driver told us that tourist don’t stay here long because it is against the law to sell alcohol. You can bring in a limited amount for your own consumption, but can not drink it in public. So much for collecting a Brunei bottle for my beer bottle collection.
By the following afternoon, we took a cab ride across the border to Miri, Malaysia. The plan was to spend the night in Miri, and fly to Kuching, Sarawak the next day. We arrived in Kuching on Saturday afternoon. It appears to be a Chinese city. The population of Sarawak is one third Chinese, one third indigenous Iban, and the remainder a mixture of other ethnicities; but the merchants are mostly Chinese.
The primary purpose of getting here was to arrange a trip into the jungle and a stay with a local tribe. On Sunday we visited the cultural center, where during a performance of their dances and customs, the “Wild Man of Borneo” who was demonstrating blow darts, asked Andrea onstage to try it. First he pointed it at me, and instructed Andrea to shoot, but she didn’t. Lucky for me because she’s a good shot; she was able to break a balloon with her second attempt.
We had dinner that evening at the Junk Restaurant, with good seafoods. But the interesting part was a family sitting at the next table. A boy about 10, who was playing a hand held electronic game, kept yelling “shit” out loud, every few minutes. The family just ignored it; we wondered if they had any idea what he was saying in English. In a similar situation, a clerk at a kiosk in a department store was singing out loud to the Lilly Allen song that uses the F word repeatedly. She had no inhibitions about clearly singing “f*#k you, f*#k you very much” out loud. Maybe they have seen enough American movies to think this is normal behavior.
Tuesday morning we left for a five hour drive into the jungle to an Iban village. On the way we stopped at the Semenggoh Orang Utan Center to see orangutans. We were lucky enough to spot one and watched it for 40 minutes as he tried to crack open a coconut by banging it against a tree. He was eventually successful. It looked human like in its actions, but could swing so quickly through the trees. Also saw a colorful green snake and a pitcher plant. Borneo has many varieties of pitcher plants that trap prey in it.
When the road ended, we had to take a 40 minute long boat ride to the Iban village up river near the Kalimantan border. The boat is a narrow long boat. Iban tribes were the original headhunters of Borneo. The center of the village is the “long house” for the 33 families in the tribe. The house is 400 feet long, with a front common area, and individual rooms for each family along the side. They have electricity from a generator; but only turn it on from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. The tribe is self sufficient living off growing rice, gathering wild fruits and vegetables, and hunting. They purchase fuel with lumber sales and pepper sales. The older men have identification tattoos, shoulder tattoos represent their tribe, the neck tattoo is for health, and other tattoos tell stories about their life. After dinner, everyone gathered in the common area for the evening, where we drank rice wine, watched some dances, and went to sleep on mats. The Iban traditions are dying out with the younger generation, who want their own private house, and are leaving to make a living in the cities.
I slept well until 4:30 when many roosters began crowing, it was nonstop. After breakfast we had a blow gun demonstration by the Shaman. I tried it and hit the target. Next they had a cock fight demonstration. The roosters were very aggressive, but not armed with knives on their feet. Cock fights were used to settle disputes before implementation of a formal judicial system. On the boat ride back, we stopped at sandbar in the river and had a picnic lunch; the same as they eat when working in the fields. Rice was rolled in banana leaves and stuffed inside bamboo and placed over a fire. Some meats and vegetables were cooked the same way. It was a fun and interesting experience into the lives of the indigenous people of Borneo.
Take care, and hope all is well.
Jim
