We Kept Our Heads About Us

We've gone back in time.  I can't believe what we saw today.  It was absolutely incredible.  James picked us up this morning at 8:15 to take us to the Orang-utan feeding.  There are about 24 Orangs living in an area of about 10,000 acres just outside Kuching.  The jungle sustains them somewhat, but until the fruit ripens in the jungle, which will be very soon, they feed them in a designated area.

They don't all come for the feeding, but there were about 10 or so that did come out.  Here was the biggest guy we saw, eating bananas.

This was a mother and baby who walked right out to the area where people were standing, through the parking lot, and with a detour, walked up the road a bit.  The feeder guys were busy trying to keep people away from them because they can be vicious.  Here she stopped to eat some more pineapple.

The Orang-utans hung out for a bit, then they would just wander off back to the jungle, one by one.  Quite an amazing sight.

We then went off to the Bidayu villages.  The first stop was at a river near a village.  Here are boats the people would have used on the rivers (and still do when floods wash out roads) to get from A to B.

After a while, James then took us to 2 different Bidayu villages.  These are village people of Borneo who have lived in the mountains/hills for centuries.  Their way of life is changing (i.e.) education, cell phones, TV, cars, but their way of living hasn't changed.  They live in longhouses as a community, with separate units.

And the longhouses are built up on stilts, to keep away from the creepy crawlies, you know, cobras, king cobras, pythons...just the usual critters.  And the water, which can wreak havoc.

Here is James is between 2 women offering rice wine.  It was actually quite tasty.

A photo of a cat.  Notice the cats here typically have sort of bobbed tails.

And this is rice they've picked themselves, drying in the sun on a mat they made themselves from bamboo and other fibres.

So, we're walking along in the longhouse, and we come to the Head House, which sits a little higher up.  

So we thought it belonged to the head of the longhouse.  But nooooo...it was actually where they kept THE HEADS!  Skulls of people - as in head hunters!

This is a practice not very long out of vogue.  Basically, people from "across the river".  I remember reading about the people of Borneo in National Geographic when I was a kid, and about the head hunters.  Wow!

James then took us to a place for lunch.  It was a house owned by a friend of his.    First we had to walk across this bamboo bridge to get to her house.

Dolly served us traditional Bidayu food from the jungle.  It was all vegetarian - phew.

Here are some village children and a woman dragging a bamboo stalk back to the village.

One village only had access via a bridge.

James took us down to an area by a cave and a waterfall.  The 2 kids were at the top and followed us down to the waterfall where they put on a show for us, swimming in the pool and jumping off a rope strung across the top.

All in all, it was quite a day.

Near Kuching are these Chinese cemetaries.  They all face the same direction and all look similar.

We finished up with dinner at the James Brooke Cafe on the river.