Bedbugs & Headhunters

Rose Cabins, Mt.Kinabalu National Park, Sabah, Malaysia

Malaysia developed the policy of 20/20 along time ago.

The theory was to be a modern, first world country by the year 2020 and have they had a crack at it. Kuala Lumpur, more commonly known as KL, is one slick city, dashed with old world Asia. There are parts of KL that look like scenes from a futuristic video game. The Petronas Towers were the tallest buildings in the world for a while, standing space age proud like enormous alien fangs. In KL there are shopping centres so large you’re issued with a microchip device when you enter because it is not uncommon for those lacking a sense of direction to become lost and need to be recovered by the specially trained, highly motivated and slightly feared Malaysian SARS team. (Search and Rescue Service).

Malaysia produces their own cars called the Proton and they have one model called the Proton Saga. To me, that sounds more like some kind of intergalactic commuter pod rather than the family shopping trolley. Or possibly a new fangled wonder drug from California that firms all parts of the body that are on the autobahn heading south, tightening, firming and toning in the process rather than a racy go fast muscle car. Every Abdul, Rosaly and Soon Hock drives a Proton with the dashboard a veritable fauna park of fluffy animals.

The folk of Malaysia who in general are quite petite in vertical proclivity are probably the most high tech wired in, dialled up, IT savvy folk outside of Hong Kong or Singapore and their devices are suitably tiny as well. They can utilize these toys for all manner of things but mainly to listen to overproduced horrible kiddy dance garbage that sounds as though it was ripped off from the Wiggles whilst the boys were on a helium sucking bender and then punched through a super computer under a program called “c.rap” which can turn out gazillions of songs that sound exactly the same – all of them awful.

Malaysia also loves muzak. Hotels have it piped through the corridors 24 hours a day, restaurants, cafes, shopping centres all have Kenny G meets Richard Clayderman insipidly dripping from secret orifices. Unless it’s a shop for the young and funky which has Kenny G meets Richard Clayderman produced by c.rap.

And because in general it’s hot in Malaysia they have embraced air conditioning in a way that needs to be experienced to be believed. I can’t understand it. For me growing up in a place that has 4 seasons in 1 day I often find the humidity quite unbearable. The heat is OK but sweating is uncomfortable. Malaysians live in this climate. They are born into it. They work, they play, they go to school in the heat and humidity and they seem to function pretty well but buses, express boats, shopping centres, restaurants and anywhere else they can seal off are turned into freezers.

Are they trying to keep people fresh?

It’s so cold, sometimes unbearably cold. I keep a fleece jacket in my daypack just for this reason, which is not something one should really need to carry around in a tropical country. How do the locals bear it? I have no idea. When I step back into the world it’s like walking in to a sauna with out a bunch of scantily clad towel draped Scandinavian women smiling invitingly giving you a reason for being there. More likely a grim faced old Chinese taxi driver dragging hard on cigarette and fixing you with a steely gaze wondering why you’re melting and hoping you won’t leave unsightly puddles in his cab.

Imagine you are colder than a forgetful polar bear who’s left his fur coat on the back seat of a taxi somewhere in the Arctic Circle, then BAM! a suffocatingly hot wet blanket gets thrown over you. You then step inside another shopping refrigerator, the fear of being audibly assaulted by Kenny/Clayderman distressing you to the core, knowing fully well you’re about to get lost, possibly never to see natural daylight, family and friends ever again. Acutely aware that with in three milliseconds the sweat that just burst forth from every pore in your body is about to snap freeze, causing you to be held in some kind of cryogenic suspension until you are thawed out by the SARS team.

The only things that aren’t futuristic in KL are the toilets. The Malaysian word for toilet is “Tandas” which sounds like “Tardis” the time machine Dr Who scampered around in. However, here a Tandas/Tardis will only ever take you back in time to a very primitive age before form, function and cleanliness ever met.

Malaysia is made up of a variety of peoples. These include Malay and Chinese as the dominant groups followed by Indians and all the indigenous tribes. Peninsula Malaysia (West Malaysia) is predominantly Malay/ Chinese. Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo in East Malaysia have a lot more people from different tribal groups like the Iban, Kayan, Kadazan, Kenyah, Kelabit, Murut, Penan, Punan and Kejaman to name a few.

It was some of these groups that I have just returned from seeking out.

My first seventeen-day trip in Sabah and Sarawak ran smoother than a well lubricated otter fired out of a small bore cannon, across a taut piece of plastic. Once it was wrapped up I had a bit of time off to go exploring. But my timing was good and yet no so good. Things were coming up to the Iban Harvest Festival called Gawai, a time of holidays for a lot of people and time for a lot of folk to head back to their traditional lands to be at the ancestral longhouse. This made getting a ticket on boats and buses a little tricky. Consequently I had to fly from Kuching to Sibu, on an aeroplane that is, if you were suddenly struck by an image of me soaring through the stratosphere either like a rhinoceros hornbill.

But once I arrived in Sibu I headed for the wharf area where the “Ekspress” boats depart from. I’ve described these things as waterborne airplane fuselages that thunder up and down the rivers of Borneo powered by massive Mercedes diesel engines before. Passengers can sit in high backed seats down below in the freezer section, all the while pole axed by WWF wrestling screaming out of an abundance of TV’s or perch themselves on the roof being blasted and baked in the tropical sun amongst chickens in boxes some soon to be deep fried or sent in to battle, hunting dogs and all manner of household stuff, slabs of beer and outboard engines.

But by the time I arrived all the boats to Kapit had already gone screaming up the river so I had no choice but to find some digs for the night. I realised this was going to be difficult proposition as so many people were lurking around waiting for buses or boats but I had to start somewhere so I walked in to the River View Hotel the first place I saw. From the outside it looked tired and faded from its one time glory. Inside it looked worse. The joint had died a long time ago from a hideous internal injury. The entrance smelt like decay, it was untidy and dank, the tiles were cracked, and the paint was peeling off like skin off a burn victim and in the corner of the stairs stuff had accumulated like tummy lint, except it was moving. The reception counter was a cage where two mad women sat.

“Hi ya. Don’t suppose you’ve got a room for an old digger?” I asked furtively kind of praying for a negative response.

With a maniacal gleam in her eye, mad woman one thrust forth a key and shouted, “Good room, big bed, you like 50 ringgit.” Then she cackled as if she was watching Funniest Home Videos and a man a had just come a cropper and smacked his gentleman’s department onto some solid object like a tree, a pole or a set of handle bars. Her companion was already giggling just seeing some dumb white boy in their wretched hotel. I snatched the key and went and had a look at the room assuming the worst but it wasn’t bad. There was a window, a good start. No karaoke bar opposite or nextdoor, the toilet flushed, there was hot water and the lights worked. I was very pleasantly surprised, so I took it.

Well, I didn’t take it, I left it exactly where it was and it was I who did the moving. So realistically the room took me.

Accommodation sorted I then bought a ticket for the early boat to Kapit for the following morning before ambling off for a squizz around this part of Sibu. Later, I sat in an ice cold café with my new computer. It was a great first date. We chatted and laughed, shared something to eat, probably drank too much, talked about everything and nothing at all. Then I poked it with my fingers for a while before we retired back to the glorious River View Hotel. By this time I was pretty tired so I read for a short while before switching off the light conveniently located in the corridor. I must have been asleep for about 10 minutes when I felt the first itch, which I assumed to be a pesky mosquito. Too tired to track him down I pulled the covers over me and dozed off but then I felt another itch and another and I knew that it wasn’t mozzies. I scrambled out of bed and turned the light on to see bed bugs scattering. Fat, bloated, bastard bugs. I had been bitten about 30 times in a matter of minutes. Furious I killed as many as I could, smearing the whitish sheet with my own blood and theirs.

This was not good!

There were no other rooms available when I checked in and the staff had gone long ago so what was I to do? I killed more, I took out my pen and drew circles around their dead bodies, I paced, I showered and I scratched a lot. At 4.30am things were stirring outside so I thought I might as well get out of the room and lo and behold there was a café downstairs doing a roaring trade. So I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes for couple of hours before climbing aboard the Ekspress to Kapit and beyond.

It was still dark when I got to the wharf ready to board, wired to the gills on coffee yet stumbling around from lack of sleep. The boat was scheduled to go at 6.30am but was loaded to the hilt and left before the allotted time. The freezer section was tightly packed with people heading up the largest river in Sarawak the Rejang. I found my seat and tried to doze for a while to no avail, it was just too cold. So, I made my way up to the roof to watch the banks whoosh by in the near darkness. It was cool up there but warmer than below. On my way to the roof a gaggle of young girls asked where I was from, where I was going, was I married etc so I stopped for a chat. They were all living in Miri and going home to their longhouses for Gawai. Within minutes I was invited to join two of them 3 hours drive from Kapit. But then they told me that their place is a modern longhouse not all rickety, hanging skulls and tattooed old people so I declined the offer to hold out for a better one.

Kapit is the last town of any size on the Rajang River and only accessible by boat as the aerodrome shut down about 10 years ago. It’s about 5 hours upstream from Sibu, which is quite a distance when you consider how fast these boats travel. This is the major place for trade in the region, full of Chinese shophouses, small hotels, noodle joints and a market with some interesting bush meats like snakes and pangolins. I still hadn’t found a longhouse to be at for Gawai but in the meantime I heard there was another boat going further up, then heading up the Baleh River so I consulted my map located Nanga Gaat and climbed aboard hoping to be invited by somebody heading home. Again perched on the roof I watched as we passed massive longhouses, all modernized sprouting satellite dishes fresh coats of paint and some with tended lawns. Amazed as I was I wanted something more suitable, more rustic more headhunterish. Before too long the guy who collected the tickets sat down next to me and asked where I was going. I offered him a cigarette and said nonchalantly, “I have no idea.” He asked if I wanted to celebrate Gawai and did I have a place yet and when I answered “no” he said he’d arrange it, so he did.

It took about another 3 hours to get to the longhouse where I was going to be spending the night and this was the end of the road er river, or as far as the boat could go, so I kind of had no choice. Unfortunately, it too was a more modern place but that was, in the end, the only disappointment. I was taken under the wing of the boatman’s young colleague named Lee, a happy fellow with a reasonable amount of English. Up the hill we went with a bunch of others from the boat and I was taken directly to Lee’s family’s bilek, or rooms. I met the whole extended family and within minutes was offered my first rice wine with arak chaser. Rice wine is ok; arak is jet fuel - lit jet fuel. Some Gawai snacks in the form of cakes and assorted sugary sweets were laid before us and we ate and chatted. Others joined us for a drink before sauntering off. Then I had to walk the length of the longhouse, which in this case was at least 100 metres, stopping to have drink with anyone who invited me to.

This completed, including snacks and many cigarettes I was walked back to the river funneled into a small boat and ferried across the rapids to the other side with Lee and friends. I should have known it but in my sleep deprived drunken state I wasn’t really too aware what was going on, we were at the cockfights. About 30 blokes, many very drunk, some playing cards, some getting their birds ready to rumble, others just chatting and smoking and into this scene stumbles little old me, probably the only white fellow in this neck of the woods. Did I cause a stir? Nup, not particularly. Birds fought and died, hot cans of beer were drunk and money was wagered by many, some winning others not so lucky, I took photos and smiled a lot. I finally picked a winner. This is now the fourth cockfight event I have been witness too and so far I have only ever had that one win. I don’t condone cockfighting but nor am I am willing to try and stop it, so I don’t bet I just take pictures and eat lots of chicken.

We piled back into the boat and back to my Iban friends longhouse and I was feeling very shabby indeed. Lee, realizing that I was worse for wear showed me a place to rest up as long as I promised that I would be awake by 7pm. So I collapsed in a heap and woke up at 7pm. This is the time when everyone in the longhouse, though all Christians these days perform a very sacred Iban ritual which involves bowls of rice, eggs, chicken blood and various other wrapped objects all laid out in rows of eight. A chicken is taken and a tail feather removed with a bit of blood on it. Each person has this smeared across their upturned palms before the chicken is circled over their heads. With help from my friends I was asked to perform this intricate and very important ceremony. I was feeling mighty proud about then and horribly wobbly. Unfortunately no one had good enough English to explain the ritual to me so I am bamboozled as to what I performed. Maybe it was opening night of the annual headhunting season and white boys were first up for the chop? Meanwhile the chicken was tethered and sat watching the events unfold quite happily.

For me the next and last things I can remember are, rice wine, eating various miscellaneous oddities, rice wine and arak, fireworks, arak, more fireworks and phenomenally loud music blasted from a mega stereo and that’s about it.

I was awoken at the awful hour of 4.45am to catch the boat back to Kapit with Lee. This was a decision I made the night before when Lee mentioned he had to work on the boat the following day. It also explained why he wasn’t drunker than ten men. I needed to get some sleep more than anything else in the world by this stage and if I stayed in the longhouse that was never going to happen. Once back in Kapit I said farewell to my new friend and lurched off to find a hotel. I found a pretty good one opposite “The Fully Inn”. Great name, right up there with “Pakenham Inn” and the brothel in the same neck of the woods, “Pakenham Upper.”

I slept virtually all day on and off and then all night. That was bliss beyond belief.

The next morning was a bit of a slow start as I wandered through the market to a bakery in town where I gorged myself on sweet breads and black coffee. Satiated, it was action stations as I was on the move again, this time on my way further up the Rejang River to the small town of Belaga approximately 5 hours upstream blasting through the treacherous Pelagus Rapids en-route. This was to be an exciting journey. The rapids stretch for about 3kms and have claimed a bunch of boats and lot of lives. They are supposedly un-navigable during the dry season, which is the season I thought I was in, but it had been raining a lot so the crew were pretty sure that we’d get through, or *die trying. (*added in to spice things up)

The boat to Belaga was jam packed and this time even had a few foreign bodies on board in the form of 2 Irishmen, 1 Russian, 1 Norwegian, 1 American and 3 Koreans. Strangely I thought, I was the only foreigner on the roof for the section through the rapids. I had no desire to be below in a sealed frozen tube for a dangerous section of river nor did I want to miss the view either. As a ferocious section of river it lived up to it’s reputation and was certainly spectacular to travel through. We made it without a hitch zigging and zagging, pitching and rolling but it certainly was exciting.

The journey down river however nearly ended in disaster. The boat was phenomenally overloaded, everyone leaving the longhouses to head back from whence they came and the force of the river surging violently through the dreaded Pelagus Rapids after a lot of rain nearly rolled us in one of the very violent sections. The freezer had seating for about 80 but there was at least 150 onboard and all their belongings too. People panicked when the boat heeled over in a really brutal rapid. The man sitting next to me with his family panicked grabbing his terrified son when things got nasty. The look on his face said it all, he was terrified and that moment had really spooked him. Nobody looked very comfortable as the boat was on a razors edge and I think it was more luck than skill that kept it upright. The rapid’s sections translate into English as The Python, The Knife and The Grave. Nice. I certainly haven’t had that much adrenalin pumped through my system in a very long time. I thought we were all goners but at the very last second the boat righted and twisted slowly back onto the correct line like some lumbering serpent exhausted from the fight but from that moment on everyone was ready to bail if necessary, and I was going to be the first off and away if it came to it.

The town of Belaga is a cute little place made up of two parallel streets inhabited by small guesthouses, noodle shops, general provisions stores and one pool hall. But the best thing about the place is sitting in a café and watching the tribes people wandering by carrying children in amazingly beaded Kayan baby carriers, sporting huge intricately decorated hats the size of radar telescopes and baskets of all manner and complexity all the while choofing away on big fat cheroots. Tattoos of various styles and designs adorned hands, arms, shoulders, throats and feet.

Meanwhile the Koreans I had met on the boat told me they had arranged for a guide to take them upriver to various longhouses and asked me if I wanted to join them. I was dubious and hesitant, as I didn’t want the standard tour experience so they arranged for their guide to meet me and have a chat. The guide arrived with a big infectious smile and introduced himself as “Hum” a local from Belaga who’s worked with scientists, anthropologists, documentary teams and bird watchers around the region since 1981. His plan was to take us upriver to a Kayan longhouse first followed by two Kejaman longhouses, stopping to checkout some other stuff along the way. The highlight would be going to a wedding at the second Kejaman Neh longhouse in the late afternoon.

Sounded good to me so I gave him the thumbs up and caught up with all the other Orang Putih (white men) and had dinner and a few beers. The Irish guys were in great form and had us in stitches as the rain crashed down. The mosquitoes were smart and hid out of the rain, cunningly inside my room having managed to sneak in through the gaping hole where the a/c used to be. By the time I made my way back soaked to the bone the blood sucking freaks had got word out to all their mates and they plastered every surface before attacking en-masse. I awoke a husk of my former self, litres lighter.

The following morning dawned bright and sticky. I met the Koreans who were loaded up with more camera gear than I have ever seen before and into a dugout powered by 15 horses of Yamaha grunt and up the river we sliced.

Longhouses slipped by often with a mob on the work area to wave at. I had the best seat right in the prow, always the best view but even better than that, the coolest position, the quietest position and first off before some bozo upsets the delicate balance of a very narrow canoe.

First stop was a Kejaman longhouse. Most folk were out toiling in the rice fields, maybe at school, or hunting all manner of exotic and rare creatures. Or they just might have been shopping in Kapit for two minute noodles or leg of Pangolin so the place was very quiet but nonetheless, not a bad first stop. I managed to take photographs of some great tattoos on the elderly women hanging around and learnt from Hum that a woman needed tattoos on her hands up to the elbows and on her feet to be eligible to marry a warrior that has lopped off enemy heads. Well, if that be the case then there may have been quite a stash of noggins somewhere nearby coz all the women I met had some pretty hefty artwork. But when the missionaries came about 30 years ago to this area they were very successful at converting the local heathens to a much better religion where instead of chopping off the occasional cranium to give to your girl you caneat the body and drink the blood of Christ which is much more civilised.

The Kejaman and the Kayan are famous for the beadwork they use to decorate clothes, hats, headhunting sword scabbards and baby carriers. The hats are gigantic as I have mentioned and the baby carriers are very small. The beads decorating everything originally came from parts of Europe and the Middle East as an ancient trade currency and the smaller the bead the older and more valuable it is. The designs ward off evil spirits and protect the owner from all manner of trouble but of course now with God on their side they don’t need that kind of back up. But I don’t think the locals are completely convinced as they are still adorning everything they can with the same motifs.

We spent quite awhile in the longhouse and it was really a very relaxed and educational experience. Once back in the dugout we continued for another 45 minutes or so. Hum pointed out Kayan burial plots, elaborate carved motifs tucked in the jungle painted in lurid colors again to ward off evil spirits. This was exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to see. Hum realized that I was excited (the Koreans not so) and told me that at the next longhouse a funeral totem is situated right out the front and if I thought the graves were intricately carved then I’ll be astounded by the work in the totem. He went on to tell me that the craftsmen from the next longhouse were commissioned to carve a totem for the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur from a single tree trunk and after 3 months work it stands proudly as a symbol of the traditional art of the Kejaman people. He told me that he was the liaison between the Kejaman craftsmen and the government officials as well as taking care of “his” people in the big smoke for the first time.

“Headhunters carve up KL” screamed the Herald Sun.

The funeral totem didn’t disappoint, carved as the resting place for the greatest headman (tuan) of the village. It stands about 5 metres tall and though very old it has weathered beautifully. Unfortunately the original longhouse burnt down the previous year so now a new one stands in it’s place, all concrete and wriggly tin. But the highlight of the place, other than the totem was the current headman spoke excellent English and took the time to explain life in a typical Kejaman village. He talked about the battles that took place between the Kayans and the Kejaman and the very warlike Iban. He told of raiding parties of up to 300 warriors paddling massive dugouts down river to fend off the marauding Iban who, being the largest tribe in the area were forever expanding their territories and snaffling the heads of the locals. But it sounded as though it was an eye for an eye or they often went head to head in these battles slashing and chopping and taking prisoners for slaves. If it wasn’t for a) the White British Raj quelling the trouble and preventing the Iban from their natural habit of needing war trophies and b) missionaries converting everyone in the area to Christianity it would probably be still be on for young and old today.