Everybody seemed to have a cardboard box with a few small holes poked in and the occasional chicken's head poking out. We even saw a number of cats being transported. One of them looked very upset from inside a plastic jelly bag from the 80s, but she didn't have it nearly as bad as the poor bugger in a roll of square mesh fencing wire with the ends cardboarded up. Accompanying this were the consistently alarming huge explosions of Chinese bangers tossed down from above by bored teenagers waiting impatiently for the new year.
We had absolutely no idea as to which boat we needed to get on, and helpfully there was no indication whatsoever as to which one it might be. We had arrived in plenty of time. We were there by eight and the boat was due to leave at nine, so we hoped we would get a seat for the four and a half hour journey. As the time approached I grew increasingly worried at the vague indications that anybody could give as to where and when the boat might be there. Leaving Clairy with our hefty packs I squeezed my way past the staring children and laden adults to the boats and asked anybody who looked like they might have an idea for help, but everybody gave me different answers and insisted I head back up to the wharf.
Eventually as a surge of people pushed past us, a kind local asked if we were travelling to Belaga, and told us to follow him as the boat had just arrived. We were still determined to get inside, but obviously we were now right at the back of the queue. Clairy went ahead with our little bags, but we had to get over three other boats parked in the way and it was a miracle we managed to get to our boat without ending up in the river. I headed for the back of the boat up top to try and find some safe place for the rucksacks while Clairy joined the semi-riot that was in progress down below. After five minutes, looking bruised and battered she came up to find me to say that she had practically been pushed all the way back out.
Ah well. The roof it was then. We plastered ourselves with sun block, crossed our fingers about getting through the Pelagus rapids without being thrown off and were on our way.
We squashed in next to some mothers with small children and held on tight as the boat revved its enormous engine.
Once we were going, the cooling breeze made it quite bearable. The start of the journey was marked by a seemingly endless huge logging sites.
I couldn't quite believe the size of the shipment on the left.
Some of the barges were just enormous, and such huge beautiful trees. An absolute tragedy. According to a recent UN report, if the deforestation of Borneo continues at its current pace, apart from the tiny sections left in the national parks, there will be no primary rainforest left by 2022.
A very rustic looking longhouse on the banks of the river.
Here's a little vid of us speeding long..
The river was still very wide at this stage and not too ferocious. We were really enjoying the experience.
A beautiful lady on a very full boat. Only slightly pinkish.
The Pelagus rapids. This section could only be crossed by the express boats when the river is high enough. It was pretty high at the time we were there so it was quite spectacular.
The boats have a very flat bottom (unlike me), so coped quite well, with only the occasional stomach churning lurch.
The main strategy seemed to be just keep the speed up and power on through.
We got chatting to this very nice chap a little while later and he told us he was from one of the longhouse communities on the river. He was coming back to spend the new year with some of his family.
The end of the rapids.
Another longhouse with a nice garden out front.
Some of the boats we passed on the river looked a little un-river-worthy.
A modern concrete longhouse construction in progress.
Oh yeah...getting super singe-ed on the roof.
This longhouse was particularly stunning. Huge crowds of people came out to meet the arrivals. I thought this would have been a
As we roared upriver once more there was some rather sudden brake-age. I briefly thought we were about to collide with our counterpart coming in the opposite direction, but we were in fact just exchanging some passengers.
And on our way again.
It was great to see so many people from the communities coming out to greet the arrivals.
The driver of this boat seemed to have bit of a dispute with ours and some words were exchanged before we bumped gently in to him and various passengers used him as makeshift jetty.
This young dude was positively smashed by the time we took this piccy. When he had first got on he was whacking away the beers, and then he moved on to a two litre coke bottle full of tuak, a well-poky home made rice wine. He insisted I try it, and it actually tasted pretty good, but I didn't think it was the safest place to be guzzling the liquor. He was at that familiar drinking stage where he was insistent that I had to listen to him, and was endlessly tugging at my t-shirt to get my attention, even though he could barely remember his own name in his own language let alone English. In this picture he's moved on to his last gallon container of tuak. When he finally got off the boat, watching him attempt to get up the slippery log that passed for a jetty was quite a sight.
Our bags. Still on the roof after nearly five hours! Nice and toasty by the engine too. Shortly after this we headed downstairs to avoid the drunken bloke and the savage sun. There was a fair amount of room by now.
And finally we made it to Belaga.
You can just see me at the back trying to negotiate my way back up the boat with our two big ruckies.
Our guide for the longhouse visits, Daniel, met us at the wharf and pointed us in the direction of his place, known as Daniel's Corner. He rode his motorbike the 200 yards back from the wharf and we noticed later that he would avoid walking if all possible. He seemed very cheerful if a little serious, and quickly whipped us up some food when we said we hadn't eaten since breakfast (which was about 7 hours ago - god knows how I was even still alive).
After eating Daniel outlined the plans for the next two nights. He seemed very together and we were happy with the intended itinerary. He asked us to be back in an hour and we headed off to check out the town.
Belaga was a pleasantly laid out and surprisingly pretty little place. It certainly felt a lot nicer than Kapit. It even had giant concrete hornbill above the well planted playground.
The main street. Not quite a hive of activity at this late stage in the day.
Clairy spotted this enormous beast that was sadly no longer with us.
Check out the size of that leafage! Feckin huge.
Some naughty little kids running around on the old jetty.
After we had had a good wander and I had had my obligatory ice-cream (this time a rather sad soggy pretend cornetto - it had nothing on the colossal trumpets of NZ), we made our way back to Daniel's and Clairy spotted these stunning butterflies feeding and courting.
This is a great picture. Just look at that big reed-heed.
After getting our day bags ready for our overnight stay, we were introduced to some of Daniel's helpers. Some looked slightly worse for wear, and he explained that he tried to help out some of the local alcoholics by providing food and shelter for them in exchange for helping the tourists. That evening we were travelling with Hussein who drove the boat, and there was also Jason and another chap who's name we didn't quite get. Initially I was a little sceptical of Daniel's benevolence, but it was nice to have some company on our trip upriver, and Hussein at least spoke English pretty well.
The first longhouse we went in to, called Uma Aging, was just upriver from Belaga. It was a longhouse of the Kayan tribe. The jetty was another huge log chained to the bank that was very wet and slippery and required some careful balancing to get up the muddy banks. There was a huge pile of children of all ages splashing about in the river and me and Clairy were slightly concerned due to the crocodile stories we had been told in Bako. We later found out that there are no crocodiles in the Betang Rejang possibly because it is such a large and fast moving river and crocs prefer the small more docile varieties.
The longhouse was enormous and two rows deep.
Daniel used the opportunity to drop off a poster detailing his lost puppy, a fact that seemed to be sympathised with by the locals. We were shown into one of the many doors on the side and found ourselves in a huge empty living area with just a few chairs around the side. After saying hello to various adults and little children we were walked out to the back where the evenings cooking was in progress in large metal pots above two open fires. Everyone was super friendly, and we were introduced to various relations of Daniel's.
Outside Clairy asked about the poster near by and Daniel explained that it was a community notice describing what was going on. Clairy particularly like the small writing describing various ideas about planting with relation to the phases of the moon.
We got back in the boat and headed on to our next destination where we would be staying the night. It was so lovely, cool and calm on the river, I didn't want to stop.
But after about twenty minutes upriver we reached the Uma Kejaman Neh longhouse of the Kejaman tribe. After another treacherous climb up a slippery trunk, we were greeted by a lovely shady entrance decorated with pandanus grasses all the way up to the main buildings. I thought they wouldn't have had time to do it all for us, but really thought it might have been in preparation for new years eve, the following day. It turned out to be because they had had a huge celebration the previous day.
We were greeted by various members of the community and lots of very cheerful groups of kids. It really did seem like an incredible environment for kids to live in as there were just so many others around to play with all the time. We were then shown to the chief's house, where we would be staying that night. Unfortunately the previous days celebrations had been so huge that the chief (and pretty much everyone else) had been up all night and most of the next day (today) too! The chief was fast asleep on a particularly uncomfortable looking two person wicker sofa, and we didn't see him at all that night. We felt a bit sorry for him as no one seemed too worried about noise levels.
After being introduced to the whole rest of the family we had some fabulous chats with Alex, who was the Chief's son-in-law and was staying just for the Christmas and the new year. He said that the place was filled with many more people than usual at this time of the year due to everyone being back with the families for Christmas. Alex and his wife Kendy were very attentive and spoke near perfect English so told us all about the community.
Whilst Kendy and the other women of the household prepared the dinner, we watched a DVD of the previous day's celebrations. A neighbouring longhouse had been invited over and were welcomed with a huge ceremony involving the whole community, traditional costumes, massive two hour dances and lots of home made tuak. It was absolutely fascinating to watch.
Afterwards Clairy and I were invited to eat dinner with all the men. Clairy had rice with baked beans (possibly kindly put out for the vege lady), and I had a tasty selection of curries and fish soups. Unfortunately this was the first indication of Daniel's unique eating style, which would ultimately prove almost too much for Clairy to bare. There was an awful lot of things going in, being chewed and then coming out again, but possibly the most gross was when he emptied the contents of his nose on to the floor beside the table (and Clairy). Ho hum...you've got to expect a certain amount of cultural differences eh.
After dinner, we went for a walk with Daniel, so he could show us the rest of the longhouse. After a swift distribution of the toothbrushes and toothpaste we had purchased for dispersal, we only got as far as another house about six doors along before we dragged in by the most hilarious group of thoroughly drunken women who we decided had just been going for it since the previous day. They quickly offered us some tuak, and another stronger spirit also made from rice. This second option really burned, and me and Clairy both got savage heartburn from it. Daniel asked for some cash off us and nipped of to purchase some tobacco for the ladies as a present from us. They seemed pretty pleased with it after only a small amount of drunken squabbling.
They really were pretty damn drunken, and started singing only to crash to the floor in huge pile reminiscent of Clairy and Lean-Bean at Alice's wedding. Soon they had us out the door and marching along back towards the chief's house in kind of slow motion konga with incredible singing. Clairy found herself attached to oldest most lovely tiny lady who didn't let her go for another half an
Oh god yeah. She was loving it!
Daniel was in front getting slightly distracted.
Clairy's lovely old dear is in the background here, next to Daniel. She had the long stretched earlobes and beautiful brass earings of the tribe before the missionaries told them everything they valued was wrong.
Eventually we went back inside the house. The chief had been roused from his frequently disturbed slumber and had gone off to no doubt find somewhere a bit quieter. We found ourselves the subject of the kids attention. All doors seemed always open for everyone in the longhouse, even if they are physically closed. This group traipsed in and had a good look at us. Angelina, the first one on the right was very smiley.
It wasn't long after this a fairly mahoosive karaoke system was cranked right up outside the door, but even if we could have sung and read the language we were far too pooped to participate despite the best efforts of some of the drunken ladies to get us involved.
Soon enough we were shaken awake and presented with a rolled out bed and pillow each on the floor. We had both dozed off where we were sitting after such a long day. The Karaoke and lights were off and we happily obliged and were asleep within moments. I woke up a couple of times in the night and found the karaoke was back on and in full swing, but fortunately our earplugs did us proud. This was especially good as later on when I woke at 4am, I heard some of the loudest snoring I think I've ever come across emanating from a tiny curled up old man on the hard floor just metres away from us.
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