Sungai Simanggang

Dear travel journal,
I seriously can't even remember the name of the town I'm in (sri amen). But we had the best fun today. Up early and all had breaky and shoved as much as we could into little backpacks, left our big bags at basaga and locked our valuables in a safe and jumped in the back of the vans. Alvin drove one and his old army friend Frankie drove the other, that had me, Kirsty, maria, Jason, callum and Sam in it. We drove for about an hr and had lunch at Alvin and Christina's. The whole family was there except the kids who where at school. Christina's mum kept coming up and hugging me and when we were leaving she just hung on and told me I had to come back. Which I will, Borneo will always be my second home. Then from there we jumped in the vans and drove to a market place in Serbian, with all the stalls set up with sooo many weird and wonderful fruits and vegi's and herbs and spices and dried fish. Its really quite awsome. We got some water shoes and stopped at the chemist. Then off to port Alice where the old raja used to be based and Alvin told us all about how the British chief raja has brought in the 22 laws of Sarawak which based around 'Sarawak belongs to the locals, it can be governed and managed until such time that the sarawakians can govern and manage themselves.' Which is already starting. Last yr one of the local chiefs in batangai national park claimed back his land and deemed it a tungang. Which means he put self imposed no fishing and hunting laws on the land - and he won through the local Sarawak courts. Which is a first promising step in the right direction. Especially seeing as government run national parks are logged and hunted and fished on a daily basis. The trick now is to get the chiefs who are taking back their land to protect it and become involved with sustainable ecotourism. Not plant palm oil or coffee or pepper after clearing their land. This will not only bring them income into their village but will mean they won't have to destroy parts of their lands and hopefully keep good care of it, especially if tourists regularly visit and leave the habitat perfect for orangutans to move into /stay in those areas and coexist with the locals. The point of us being here is to meet this chief and show him the benefits of ecotourism and the importance of conservation and start building a mutual respect relationship. And hopefully impact the tribes all along the batangi rivers. The land of the traditional headhunters. Headhunters traditionally hunted heads, and collected skulls. It was a right of passage along and show of strength and bravery along with their first needle tattoo on their shoulder. Having skulls showed bravery and power and that he would be able to protect his wife and babies if need be. Today this custom has changed and boys have to find other ways to show their bravery. Alvin swam across a crocodile infested river to show he was brave and entered adult hood and proved to Christina's family that he was worthy. Another custom is for boys to sneak into the bed of a girl in a traditional long house where the family all sleeps in one room without getting caught. After the fort we booked into a fancy hotel and finished off the shopping for our trip. At the super market we got lots of looks and people asking to take pictures. Most of them haven't seen whities before so to them we were the odd ones. This obviously is not a tourist area. All through Town we got lots of pictures and stares. Being a whitie (as they call it) is not a bad thing. Its something they value, lots of people try to lighten their skin and become more pale. Is a phrase to purely represent what we are not a nasty term. Walking through town there were swallows everywhere down the main street and even when it poorer they stayed. It was quite awesome to see, the shear amount of tiny birds. After shopping we went for sundowners -drinks and nibbles (at sundown :p) and then had a meat and noodle dinner in an open plan eatery type area. A few people got pretty drunk which was slightly funny and then we stopped for ice cream and bad jokes and then we were off to bed.Read more