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His name's George
of the Jungle? Really? Where's your creativity?That bang-ups and hang-ups CAN happen to you.
That little diddy from everyone's favourite doctor (seuss of course) was certainly true of the few days following my last blog entry.
After a final enjoyable day at the temples of angkor, I said goodbye to khawp, my sole companion for my time in siem reap, and flew to kuala lumpur. On arrival at my hostel (red palm backpackers - i'd recommend it) I decided that now was about the time to dive into the depths of my pack and get the US$500 cash i had hidden in the "secret" compartment at the back of my pack, only to find the envelope open and the cash gone. I found this odd because I've been quite obsessive about locking my pack whenever it left my sight, and i never noticed anything packed differently than when i had packed it or anything, so i never had a reason to check that it was still there, so it could have gone anytime in the five weeks i'd been travelling. Less than amused.
So after calling the insurance people, who were surprising helpful - i always thought insurance companies were supposed to be a
pain to deal with - they said i needed to report it to the police. So out i went onto the streets of kuala lumpur at 10 pm looking for the "tourist police", apparently the regular police don't deal with tourists. So i got my hands on the required police report, and that's the end of that.
After that little episode, i had about 4 hours to sleep before i had to get up (at 3.30am) to catch my flight to kuching to start my borneo tour. I got to the hotel that was supposedly the meeting point for the tour, and they had no record of any such tour, but if i wait a few hours they will try and get hold of the travel agent that usually deals with them. So i listlessly wandered the streets of kuching having not showered and bearly slept in two days. Went back to the hotel and they couldn't get hold of the travel agent, being saturday and all. Not knowing what else to do, it being well outside business hours in NZ, Australia and England (where the kumuka offices are located) i took my bags and checked into a cheap
hotel around the corner, locked myself in my room and promptly burst into tears.
After i regained some sort of composure i looked through the documents i had and found a number for house of travel ponsonby (who i booked the tour through), rang the number and the answer machine gave the cellphone number of someone working there in case of emergency. I figured this was such an emergency and rang that... so after MANY hours of waiting to hear back, I discover that the tour had actually been cancelled in early april due to lack of numbers, and they had sent an email to my deloitte address (which ofcourse ended with my deloitte employment in march) and left a message on my cellphone (which wasn't on at the time because i was in laos and there's no roaming there). So there i was stuck on borneo without the faintest idea of what to do.
It was a dark time.
"and when you're in a slump, i'm afraid,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done"
But un-slump myself i did. The next day i found my way to the semenggoh wildlife
My Score
you wanna mess with me? centre with plenty of time to spare before orangutan feeding at 3pm, which resulted in many cute pictures of one large male and one female with her baby. too cute.
That evening (sunday that would have been), i arranged, with an english couple (lou(ise) and dave) at the hotel i was staying at, to go on a 3 day 2 night tour to an iban longhouse. We had heard from some other people that these tours were a bit touristy, but decided to give it a go anyway, and thank christ we did!
After our tour guide, Harry, picked us up on monday morning, we went (back, but nevertheless) to semenggoh wildlife centre, but this time we only saw one orangutan, and from far away. Then on to a crocodile farm, in time for the 11am feeding, and a four hour drive to harry's family's longhouse. Then, because there was free food and drink, we went to the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party function at a nearby longhouse...
...What about that time we went to an election campaign party in the depths of the borneo jungle?...
Honestly, we couldn't have attracted more attention if we'd each had
Bedtime!
My home away from home, away from home.
two heads - three white people at a political function of over 1000 local iban people. Harry got substantial amounts of grief for bringing us, but luckily it was all in iban (or bahasa or something) so we couldn't understand any of it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Some people pointed, some stared, some thought we were journalists, but nobody was blatantly rude, and in fact heaps of people wanted to shake our hands... dave more than lou and I - conservative people that they are. News travelled fast, after a couple of hours a lady came up to us and asked where we were from, when lou said the UK, the lady said "oh, i heard you were from New Zealand", "I am" I say, "oh, my son-in-law is from taranaki!" classic.
After the food and about an hour of songs and speeches in a language we couldn't understand, Harry sensed we were getting bored (perhaps me falling asleep had something to do with it) and took us home, where we perked up and stayed up for a few more hours drinking rice wine and playing darts with a traditional iban blow-pipe... i was quite the shot! Then
Skulls in the longhouse
pretty morbid, but they're about 200 years old, so they'd have died of natural causes long ago it was off to bed on mattresses under mosquito nets, very cute.
Then next morning, woken by roosters who had apparently been crowing since 3am (i had earplugs and an eye mask thankfully) we go up and had a "shower" - a huge barrel of cold water that you scoop up with a smaller bucket and sluice over yourself - and went into the local town for more political activity and more stares from everyone. One guy asked, in broken english, if we had got "our story" yet. "almost" we said. Another guy stopped talking to his friend, mid sentence, when he saw us. Harry later told us that he's the only one who brings tourists to this area and he never takes them into town, so white people are a real rarity around those parts.
in the afternoon we went on a short jungle trek to a waterfall which reminded my very much of home... except for the frogs, dragonflys and novelty oversized ants. Then to a more traditional longhouse - complete with skulls from the headhunting days. That evening i asked Harry if there were other ethnic tribes around the area "not really" he says "we
have most of their heads".
The next morning Harry handed us over to Thomas and Thomas' uncle, whose name escapes me right now, for our "jungle trek"... This was all very lovely, and not terribly strenuous because we had to keep stopping for our guides to collect leaves and stuff (using the massive machetes they had sheathed at their waists), the reason for which came into focus when we stopped beside a lovely clear stream and Thomas started building a fire and his uncle came back with huge bamboo stalks... in which they cooked the leaves and rice for our lunch! It was really amazing, they started the trek with only three bowls, four spoons, a little dry rice, a little salt and two tins of sardines and made this feast for us, served on plates made from leaves as well.
When the fire wasn't as big as Thomas needed it to be to cook our food, he chopped a bunch of leaves and started fanning the fire with them, which worked fine. But i had my fan that i had bought in cambodia (the one i bought in chiang mai flew off the moto when khawp took
a pothole too fast), which i offered to Thomas... after a little demonstration by myself he tried it out... and that worked a treat!! He said to his uncle what i can only assume was something to the effect of "now we're cooking with gas!!" and they spent quite some time examining this tool and (again assuming) discussing how they could totally make one - increasing productivity substantially. I decided that giving them the fan was the least i could do, given the feast they had cooked us, but i did have visions (a la "the gods must be crazy" - who saw that 80s movie?) of disrupting hundreds of years of traditional cooking methods, and the degeneration of the iban culture as a result. They were very grateful.
And that was the end of our tour, we drove back to Kuching and I've spent most of today trying to sort out my next move - up to Mulu national park, with caves packed with superlatives, and bats.
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Kel
non-member comment
All fun and games til they try and give the item back to the gods. Friggin' kumuka! Nicely handled tho, we're very proud of you. ttfn K