The Longhouse visit

There is nightlife in Kuching! We have had a couple of experiences of keeping restaurants open past about 7.30pm but tonight we strolled down to the riverside, stopped at a restaurant beside the river (which advertised itself as open for 24 hours) and were rewarded by the most spectacular sunset behind the distant hills and along the river, followed shortly afterwards by the flocks of egrets returning up river. Later as we strolled back we came across an indigenous musician wearing just a loin cloth and plenty of tatoos and then heard some noise up a street with a Chinese temple to come across a sort of talent night with karoake - we seemd to catch the Cliff Richard soundalike.

Cliff Richard was very much on our minds as we went inland with Ahmad today towards the Indonesian border to a longhouse. He turns out to be a big fan and we were rolling along to the sounds of 'Summer Holiday' and trying to temper Ahmad's admiration of George Galloway who he must see on Al Jazeera I guess, we tried to tell him that even if you agreed with him you had to suspect his motives but its an uphill battle ('but he's so clear, such a good orator!').

The longhouse visit was certainly a highlight of the Sarawak visit, it took about an hour to get there on a very good road into some beautiful hills until we reached Kampong Anna Rais. There we first registered and paid a small donation to the Bidayuh people's co-operative who run the visitor side of things. The village has some separate wooden houses but is mostly composed of raised bamboo platforms with houses on each side. As we entered we were given some rice wine and then left to stroll along the bamboo 'street' where some people sold beads etc or were busy making things, the street often filled with large mats with rice and barley drying in the sun.

At the far end of the third long house we were invited to sit and chat by a couple of guys, one proved to have excellent english and told me I could be a returning British serviceman - in the colonial days they had a camp nearby building communications and some of them used to come to the longhouse in the evenings and talk. He proved to have a strong grasp of world affairs (they all have satelite television) and we discussed everything from the Palestinians to the Premier League (on which subject he knew a great deal more than me since he confessed to having subscribed to 'Shoot' since the 1970s). It was peaceful and I have to say everyone treated us like guests, we really were sorry to leave - they obviously value the traditional way of life enough to keep it going, albeit in modified form.

Tomorrow William and Becky are taking us to the Bako National Park where we hope to see Proboscis monkeys and other wild life (and nothing too dangerous we hope!)

Brian