This long house was completely different to the one at Long Dano and Pa Da’lih. This was more of a town hall, a long low building raised a few feet off the ground on cement blocks. Normally devoid of furniture, for tonight it had been decked out with a borrowed suite of furniture – a rattan couch and four matching arm chairs, a low, glass topped coffee table and two smaller side tables, the couch and chairs arranged in a line, the tables in front of them – while along the centre of the long hall lay a line of woven mats. Against the bare wooden walls, the local and far-flung village people sat, quietly chatting amongst themselves or staring blankly into space, the whole scene illuminated by a row of hissing pressure lamps. Everyone was in their best gear, many of the men wearing the scarecrow type straw hats that he had seen in Pa Da’lih, while the women sat in groups, demarcated by matching clothes and their identical, heavy, bead headresses. He settled down on the bare boards up at one end of the hall and gawked at the people as frankly as they were gawking at him.
Someone got up and strutted over to the assembled bank of microphones and then gave a surprisingly short speech and instantly there was an animated stir in the crowd. A line of women appeared and laid down extra straw mats on the floor while other women doled out packages of rice wrapped in banana leaves. Men appeared lugging heavy aluminium buckets which they passed over to the women. “Ahh”, he thought, as they slopped out a grey-brown stew on to chipped enamal plates, “the fabled buffalo meat”. Other women passed up and down between the two opposing lines on either side of the hall, dispensing tepid watery tea, into which he covertly added a generous slug of whisky for himself.
For a while, all political activity was suspended while the people – there must have been well over two hundred – threw themselves into the business of eating and drinking. More by accident than by design, several other Europeans – Chris amongst them – had congregated at his end of the hall and were busy fending off generous offers of extra packets of sticky rice. He declined all offers but leaned over and helped himself to a greasy gob of fat and sinew which he had mistakenly assumed to be meat. He stuck to his tea after that and as soon as it was decently possible, he heaved himself to his feet and went out the back door for a cigarette.
Outside the hall, the likely lads, Noah amongst them, were hanging out, peering through the chinks in the plank wall and whispering furtive comments to each other on their prospects with certain girls inside, much spitting and extravagant pissing taking place in the shadows the whole time.
As soon as the food was picked up and the floor cleared of gristle and bone, all of which was tossed unceremoniously out the door he had just come in through, to the pack of scavenging, yellow curs that snapped and howled the whole night, the speeches began. Surprisingly, they were kept to a minimum, possibly because several of the older people, their bellies bursting with meat and rice, were already snoozing in a sitting position.
More surprisingly, the Minister himself, starting his speech in Malay, after a few minutes, changed into English and immediately lost 90% of his audience. He had the uneasy feeling that his speech was aimed directly at the handful of Westerners at one end of the hall. Stuffed with allusions to “leopard’s teeth in their ears”, the “hospitality of the longhouses” and the “unfailing charm of the indigenous people” he mercifully ended his speech in Malay so that the dancing could begin.
A remarkably willowy woman appeared, dressed in a long black and white dress with slits almost as far as her armpits, her hands enveloped in clusters of black and white hornbill feathers, and gracefully bobbed, twirled and bowed in exquisite slow motion to a taped music background.
By far the best dance of the whole night, she was followed by a series of local attractions, most of which consisted of a long line of very elderly women who, dressed to the nines in gold embroidered sarongs, tightly bound bodices, and the bead skull caps, slowly stamped their way down one side of the hall in a long line, their outstretched hands resting on the shoulders of the woman in front of them, their lips barely moving as they shyly mumbled some indecipherable words.
It was well after 12:00 pm when he started the long walk back to the guest house. It was very cold now and pitch black as the starlight was obscured by low, scudding clouds. The first part of the journey was alright, as we trudged through the cool, silvery dust of the track, but made very poor time on the rough ministerial road of sharp granite chips.
Back at the guest house finally, outside on the verandah to finish off the very last two inches of whisky. Noah appeared with a glass of foul smelling liquor and somehow the talk drifted into ghost stories, none of which he (Noah) claimed to believe. He told him stories of the headless Bean Sí of Ireland who always appeared before a family member died and Noah countered that with stories of Gergasi Merah, a huge red headed giant with green eyes who devoured young children and his eyes bulged with polite disbelief when he pointed out that Irish people were often over six feet tall, had red hair and green eyes and would easily devour a bottle of whisky. A long involved story began then, which he barely followed, about a camping trip Noah had gone on as a young man. They had gone fishing and that night, six of the young men had sat around the campfire and had wished for their girlfriends, while the seventh member of the group, an older and more experienced man, had cautioned against such stupidity. Lo and behold, later that night, seven women, in the form of their sweethearts / wives had appeared out of the jungle and would have seduced the group if the older man had not refused to acknowledge the woman claiming to be his wife. Instantly, the women turned into hissing serpents and the stalwart group made a determined rush for the river and their boat. On that note, feeling an abominable headache coming on, he quietly passed out.
The next morning the flight back to Miri was at 9:30. Noah was up late and the best breakfast he could rustle up was hot black tea and a brilliant yellow sponge cake. His bag significantly lighter than when he had arrived, he sat on the verandah in the early morning sunlight and fidgeted. The airport “terminal” was only two minutes walk away and there seemed little or no point in going there until he actually saw the plane make its initial approach. Noah approached and with a flourish, produced two cool tins of Heineken beer. 9:15, and the first one of the day and it was certainly more attractive than the tea and the mushy yellow cake that was the alternative. 10:00 and still no sign of the plane so there was very little he could do but have another beer and then later another one. At about 10:45, an official looking chap – he was wearing a clean white shirt with epaulettes – showed up on a motor bike and demanded tickets. The flight, he was informed, was indefinitely delayed because of unforeseen radio problems but could he please present himself at the terminal to be weighed.
Down to the Malaysian Airline Office Terminal, beer still in my hand, and an officious lady in a sarong and some kind of matching turban gave his tickets a close scrutiny as if he were to blame for the non-arrival of the only flight that day. His bag was weighed separately and then it was his turn on the scales, and because there was a crowd of local people gaping at him, he clowned around, as if he were too embarrassed to be weighed. Anything for a laugh, especially with a few early morning beers sloshing around inside him. The turbaned lady was not amused and scrawled 75 kilos on his form!
Then the inside of the shed was heating up so he moved outside to the “Departure Lounge” which was merely a roof tacked onto to the main outside wall of the MAS office. It was open on three sides, but to the left of us there were a few steps to a raised wooden platform. He almost choked on another beer when a roar of engines almost deafened him and an amphibious plane suddenly swept down out of an empty blue sky, buzzed the airstrip and then made another pass, landing at the very far end of it. The man with the motorbike roared off in a cloud of dust and an elderly man with slit ear lobes told him that it was a special charter flight for the Minister.
The man on the motorbike came back, all smiles, and he asked him about his flight. “Everything under control, don’t worrylah”, he was assured.
“Yes, I’m sure it is, but what seems to be the problem?” he asked reasonably.
The motorbike man dropped his voice confidentially and looked over his shoulder at the woman in the turban and then beckoned him closer, “It appears that they are having some sort of to-do with the altitude meter. You can imagine the problem with these bloody mountains” and he gestured at the saucer rim of mountains around them.
“Oh,” he said, a bit dumbfounded. “I thought there was a problem with the radio”.
“Yes, yes, maybe that too” the man replied and hurried off.
There was obviously nothing for it then but to have another beer, but he couldn’t help wishing for something a bit stronger.
He strolled over to the municipal notice board where a tubby little man in a rumpled shirt and a tie twisted askew under his ear was hammering up a hand written notice with the heel of his imitation Gucci shoe. It was an invitation to all neighbouring longhouse and government departments to submit not more than four applicants for the next day’s blow pipe contest as part of Malaysia’s National Day celebrations. He asked the little man what his job was and was apologetically told that he was a teacher at the local secondary school. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was 11:50 so he asked the teacher why he wasn’t in school. He grinned at him with discoloured teeth and admitted that he was the Deputy Principal, as if that explained everything. He came from the coast but had been posted to Bario about two years ago. He taught six periods of Geography a week and the rest of his time was taken up, he assured him, with administrative duties. He told him that that must keep him fairly busy, and the Deputy Principal nodded seriously, and then excused himself on some errands.
Without any warning whatsoever, there was a throaty roar of engines and the DeHaviland Sea Otter appeared, circled the field and landed beside the untidy heap of the bags on the field, literally 10 feet away from him. It was 1:35 pm, but everyone smiled and clapped when the plane turned off its engines. He hung back to finish his warm beer and to take some pictures of the plane, but the motorbike man took him by the arm and told him to hurry up as the plane was late! So he took his warm can of beer with him and nobody objected.
Take off was almost instantaneous, and there was no mention of either the radio or altitude meter problems and nor did the pilot allude in any way to the four hour delay. Someone told him that the last time the flight didn’t show for two days because of bad weather, so he supposed a four hour delay was nothing. The flight seemed much shorter this time and no sooner were they up than it seemed that they were beginning their descent again to Marudi. We got off the plane for the ten minute stop – he was aching from his belly load of beer – and the first thing he noticed was the change in temperature. Marudi was warm and humid. He had almost forgotten what it was like. Standing beside the pilot at the urinals, he asked him what had delayed the flight’s arrival, and the pilot burst out laughing as he undid his belt, opened the waist band of his trousers, fully unzipped his fly and dropped his pants as far as his knees, preparatory to taking a leak. “Oh, it is always the same bloody problem in these mountains, you know. The radio goes on the blink and then there is nothing we can do. To make matters worse, our back up radio communications went out as well, so we really had to do something this time, I tell you”.
Not exactly one hundred percent reassured, he got back on the plane again for the last final hop to Miri down on the coast. A small wiry little creature sat beside him on this leg of the trip, and bubbling with enthusiasm, asked him where he was going. As the plane had only one last stop to make, he felt this question was redundant, but he needn’t have worried, as the little man had only used the question as a polite preliminary to telling him about himself. He was a taxi driver from Limbang, who had come by way of Lawas to visit his family in Marudi but he was going back via Miri so that…Yawn!
The domestic Arrival Lounge at Miri was a small bustling affair and he was quite happy to let a taxi tout manhandle him and his grubby looking backpack through the crowd.
“Take me to the best hotel in town” he ordered, rather grandiloquently, but what the hell, he felt, why not have a bit of luxury. No swimming pool (no hotel in Miri had one, it turned out, although one was being built, he was assured), but the room was carpeted, had a well stocked fridge, a tv, a bathroom and a relatively comfortable bed (superbly comfortable, he thought, in relation to the hard floors he had been sleeping on for the last couple of nights).
There was a plastic and glass junk fast-food place, Sugar-Buns, nearby, so he set off for a feast of hamburgers. Sitting there, surrounded by plastic, chrome, glass, styrofoam containers, junk food, and not a grain of rice or a single jungle edible fern in sight, it was hard to imagine the blow pipe competition taking place the next day, the long, twisty trails to Long Dano and the myriad trails leading on from there into the centre of Borneo and on over into Indonesia’s Kalimantan province.
He supposed he was back to “normality”, now, but there was that little nagging doubt, but a couple of beers back at the hotel would soon get rid of that for him!
- With apologies to Eric Newby for copying part of his title – A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958)
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