Somerset Maugham
called it "a terribly jungly place". the island of Borneo.
This is my kind
of background music. Insects prattling like powertools. We are walking
through the Southeast Asia jungle. My kind of place. I love the sss
sss.steam heat. As long as I don't have to do too much. I would have
been one of the first ones kicked out of "Survivor."
This is Borneo,
home of some of the world's oldest rainforests. It is an island that
houses a freakshow of flora and fauna unmatched on earth: 1500 species
of flowers (170 types of orchids), 262 brands of birds, monkeys, flying
lizards and, should the jungle floor look at times as if it were moving,
458 appellations of ants.
Butterflies flutter
by. Scientists have counted 281 breeds of them here. You see signs
in villages advertising the local "Butterfly Taxidermist."
When I was a
kid, I had a walk-in closet papered with National Geographic maps.
Borneo was near the floor just below the hem of my rain slicker. Borneo
always intrigued me because it was this huge island -- a big green
blob on the map -- with a few rivers and very few names of towns.
What was there?
Who knows?
Later I read
tales of pirates and headhunters, of the Brooke Brothers, the fabled
White Rajahs of Borneo. One of the brothers was missing an eye and
had a collection of exquisite glass eyes that a servant carried around
in a case
There are still
pirates in the waters near here. No headhunters, though.
We
are told that the snaggle of skulls hanging from the rafters of this
longhouse are antiques. We are being treated to some very graceful
dancing. Tatooed men with hornbill feathers and headdresses, women
with dresses and crowns adorned with silver coins.
We
had been led up the Skrang River river in a tippy canoe powered by
an outboard motor. Our driver was a woman, of the Iban tribe..with
a cigarette handing from her lip. Our guide was Malaysian Chinese.
His name was Donald Duk.spelled DUK.
Borneo is divided
among three countries. There are Malaysian and Indonesian sectors]
And Brunei is here, too, with its Sultan.
It
was really quite spooky to sit in this longhouse .a long structure
on stilts that houses a whole tribe,.along with their dogs and gamecocks.
Chickens and pigs run around below.
Even spookier
was sleeping here, through a jungle storm. With those antique heads.hanging
from the rafters. The only tourist death I have heard about from around
these parts was a German who got swallowed by a python. It pays to
watch your step. Didn't sleep at all that night.
There
is a fascinating underworld side to Borneo. The next way we began
our hike through the Niah Caves.a cathedral of limestone in the jungle.
I feel like jungle man. The sight of the mouth of these enormous caves
strikes a chord. I look up, eight stories perhaps, at swiftlets slaloming
through limestone icicles. From deep inside I hear water dripping
and the flutter and screech of birds and bats blending and echoing
through holes and passages like chords from a prehistoric pipeorgan.
As I walked
through the cave I looked up through the cavern's chimneys at blue
sky and the lush vegetation of a jungle plateau. (half expecting a
B movie brontosaurus to poke its head through the hole.)
It is easy to
see how cavemen developed their vocabulary; they had to schlepp around
on bat and bird guano. The experience is sort of like a Laurel and
Hardy pie-fight. You can't avoid getting dirty so you might as well
dive head-on into the action.
There
is quite a business in harvesting this..stuff. You see men hiking
through the jungle carrying huge bags on their backs. Makes good fertilizer.
But its not where the big money is. In the cave's ceiling, flashlights
swirl like fireflies as the birdsnest collectors poke to dislodge
their delicacy. Swiftlet nests, scraped from the ceilings of the caves,
are a hot commodity for the Chinese who boil them to make bird's nest
soup (which is actually bird spit soup.as the nests don't dissolve).
The Niah nest trade began about 700AD during the Tang Dynasty. The
going price when I was there was about $260 U.S. a kilo.
"Hurry,
we'll miss our flight," insists our guide. Indeed we will have to
march four kilometers through the jungle, shuttle across a river in
a tippy canoe, and drive several hours to the airport in Miri, an
oil town on the Sarawak-Brunei border. Alas, I will miss Niah's daily
media event. Around sunset there is, they say, quite a stirring. Bats
screech and birds scold and flutter as the cave cycles from daylife
to nightlife. Swiftlets swarm by the thousands into the cave (perhaps
to find their nests missing) and bats flap out into the night.
Visitors to the
caves at this hour are warned to wear disposable headgear.
We do a forced
walk through the jungle. Looking up into the trees snapping pictures,
I lose my step on a bridge and jam my knee between two planks. It
takes two people to pry me out. Hurting badly, I hobble on.
Arriving at Miri
airport ten minutes before the day's last flight to Kuching, the capital
of the Malaysian state of Sarawak's, we find that there are no seats
left in economy. Cool.an upgrade to first class. I limp on board the
Malaysian Airlines jet, sweating, knee throbbing, feet swelling inside
of terminally soiled sneakers. I am seated next to a Malay man in
a perfectly tailored dark business suit. There is Dom Perignon on
the menu but I sheepishly settle for a local beer which I gulp while
trying to avoid eye contact with anyone or making broad gestures so
as not fan my ill wind around.
The man speaks
politely with an educated English accent. "Are you here on holiday?"
he asks.
asia 
