KatieTheKat

Selamat Pagi! Over the last 3 days, I decided to head off on a tour to visit a longhouse, the traditional dwelling of the Iban people. Aside from our guide, Harry, there were only 2 others on the tour - John and Jenny from Sweden.

On the morning of our departure, we met in the dining room for our breakfast of white bread, toasted, with tea or coffee (this seems to be the standard "Western Breakfast" here in Malaysia). Luckily, the food was to improve on the tour, except for the breakfasts, which remained the same at the longhouse minus the toasting. I'm not sure whether anyone will be able to follow that last sentence, but so be it.

Our first stop was the Semenggoh Nature Reserve, where we arrived just in time for feeding time. The reserve was the site of a successful orphaned Orang-utan rehabilitation program, so there are many Orang-utans that now live wild in the surrounding jungle. They still get a little help in the form of twice daily feedings for times when fruit is scarce in the jungle, which gives tourists a good chance to see them. We had a very good visit where we saw a large dominant male who had big flaps of skin on his cheeks and a large pot belly, a mother and son, and a few others.

The next stop was a crocodile farm/zoo. Again we saw a feeding time, but in this instance it was raw chickens tossed out and strung up from a wire over a pond so that we could watch a couple dozen large crocodiles heave themselves out of the water to eat. There were a number of other assorted animals that mostly didn't look very happy in their small cages - particularly the porcupine whose pen was mostly just a big slab of concrete. The sun bear was awfully cute as he sprawled out on his back to soak up the sun though.

Other than lunch, the other stop of interest on the 5 hour journey to the longhouse on the Krian River was a fruit market where our guide introduced us to a few exotic fruits and vegetables. Jenny and I were both big fans of the salak fruits which were scaly and somewhat avocado-like on the outside but inside tasted a bit like a combination of apple, pear, and strawberry. Which reminds me, I must try to find some more of those today, on my last full day in Malaysia.

Before going to the longhouse where Harry's parents live and where we were to stay, we stopped at an older, more traditional house to meet his uncle. The uncle explained in good English how his house was a second-generation house, as evidenced by the zinc roofing which had taken over from the original wood. There were no longer any young people staying in his longhouse, as they had all gone off to the city to work and would only come back three times a year to celebrate various festivals. So it was a bit like a nursing home. Except that there were no nurses. In fact, the older people, when ill, would not visit a doctor, but would still rely on the witch doctors of old. Harry's uncle, at 50-something, said he was happy to go into town to see a modern doctor whenever he fell ill.

Harry's longhouse, too, looked quite old and simple from the outside, and even in the shared verandah area that is used by all the people of the longhouse. But when we stepped through the door to Harry's parents' place, we walked into a brightly painted and neatly tiled, modern-looking home. Though they lacked the satellite dishes that many contemporary longhouses have, it wasn't as rustic as we had expected.

[hm. I'm getting hungry.]
To be continued...