Benvenuto in Italia!

The last few days in Saratok passed in a whirl of packing and ticking off jobs on lists, all the time my view of our little town shifting from the present to the past.  On Sunday 22nd September Sue drove me to Sarikei to get the boat to Kuching.  I looked out of the window at the jungle, the banana plants and the roadside shops and longhouses thinking this may well be the last time I see them.  As the boat surged up to the pontoon I said my goodbyes to Sue and passed my luggage (a rucksack and my bicycle encased in a large cardboard box) up to some helping hands on the rear deck.

This was the start of three days of relentless travel by boat to Kuching, then a plane the next morning to Kuala Lumpur followed by a dash across the airport to catch my flight to Heathrow.  At Heathrow I got a taxi to Sue's brother Mike's house in Uxbridge where I left the bike.  After a pleasant night catching up with news from Mike, Tina, Adam and Tim, I got the bus on Tuesday to Stansted where I caught the plane to Bari.  Feeling very old, tired and disorientated I staggered out of Bari Airport into the neon-lit night and was collected by a van which drove me to a nearby industrial estate to collect my cheap hire car.  I drove the car out of the compound observed by two quizzical and soppy looking Alsatian gaurd dogs and made my way hesitantly to my hotel a few kilometres away on the other side of the city, everything feeling both strange and familiar at the same time, the streetlights flaring in the windscreen as I tried to focus my straining eyes.

Next morning I got the lift to the rooftop terrace where breakfast was served and "bam" - I was hit by the crystal-clear azure blue light of the Adriatic.  It's just an ordinary business hotel but the beauty of it all nearly made me cry - there's an aesthetic sensibility in Italy that can transform even the most mundane of locations into something truly exquisite.  I looked out from the balcony at a glassy sea disturbed only by the odd darting fishing boat, then turned to my left and saw the old town of Bari with its creamy stonework marking the division between the sea and an almost identically blue sky and my chest swelled with excitement as I thought to myself "benvenuto in Italia!"

Junglebluesdream

After three wonderful days at Batu Ritung Homestay I really felt sad to leave.  Supang gave me a farewell present of Bario rice and a rice scoop and showed me, William and Michele around the family museum, a room where Supang and her husband keep heirlooms and mementos.  Including the battered old leather briefcase her father used to use.

After saying our goodbyes Matteo came to guide us back to Bario.  Instead of walking the water buffalo trail it had been decided we would travel by canoe.  This is the route most supplies take to get to Pa Lungan and still involves a fifty minute walk before reaching the boat, then a two kilometre drive at the other end.

It turned out to be an eventful trip as the river level was very low and instead of a thirty minute journey we bumped and ground our way over shallows and half submerged trees for about an hour and a half.

At the end of our river journey we were met by Stephen Baya of the Junglebluesdream Homestay, where we were to spend our last night in Bario before flying back to Miri.  Stephen is an artist, highly influenced by his native kelabit art and culture.  He runs the Homestay with his Danish partner Tine and they have a young son, Noah.

We had another evening of excellent food and spent a long while talking with Stephen and Tine about their life in Bario and the difficulties of running a tourist business there.  Bario is a very special place, but tourist development is problematic because the only realistic way to get there is by the heavily subsidised MAS Wings daily flights, which even at full capacity are going to deliver no more than a handful of tourists a day into the area.  As it is there are about twenty-five Homestays all struggling to get the odd guest.  You do the maths!

On Wednesday morning Stephen and Tine drove us back to the airstrip for the short flight back to Miri where I said farewell to William and Michele, who are travelling on to Kota Kinabalu.  Bario and Pa Lungan and the people I met there will stay with me.  If you ever get the chance to go I'd thoroughly recommend it.  The perfect place to spend a few months writing a book or meditating on the future and at eighty ringgits (20 euros) full board distinctly affordable.

Boarneo

 

As a paid up carnivore there is no flesh I love more than wild boar.  It's pork with all the flavours turned up, fantastic in rich sauces, sausages or straight off the barbecue, dribbling in fat so good you could drink it by the cupful.  It's a staple meat for the villagers of Pa Lungan and as luck would have it they had killed two the day I arrived and I got an invite to the barbecue the next day.

So on Sunday afternoon I joined Stephen and his family and friends around the fire.  The combination of woodsmoke, fatty meat and thin crispy crackling was divine.  The hunter-gatherer ambiance was completed by the salivating dogs circling around the group, waiting for tossed scraps, a reward and an incentive to do their job on future hunts.

The following day Stephen's brother Matteo, the village Headman, took me out for a day trekking in the jungle, accompanied by Supang's young dog Baddei.

We ate lunch by a stream.  Mine was fried rice and wild boar prepared by Supang, while Matteo had to make do with stewed civet (aka cat).  In the afternoon as we tramped through primary rainforest, Baddei mooching behind, Matteo went very quiet and held up his hand.  He raised his rifle and fired it with a loud crack which sent Baddei scampering home.


Matteo disappeared and after several minutes returned through the undergrowth with a wild boar piglet over his shoulder and a broad grin on his face.  It had meant to be a day showing a tourist around the jungle and the boar was an unexpected bonus.  I watched as Matteo eviscerated the creature and emptied its warm guts onto the jungle floor, before lashing it in his pack.

That evening in Batu Rintung Homestay I was joined for another superb supper by Michele and William from Lyon.  I went to bed early only to be woken by Supang about half an hour later to be told Matteo had invited me to another barbecue.  So Michele, William and I ate more boar, this time roasted over an oil drum illuminated by head torches, the milky way arcing above us, the dogs circling yet again.

Pa Lungan

Life moves at its own pace in Bario with no compromise for visitors on a tight timescale.  Douglas' promise that he would get a guide to come and see me at De Plateau Homestay finally materialised on my second morning there, by which time I was climbing the walls with frustration.  Liam is an amiable middle aged local kelabit who has returned to his roots after taking a "package" from Shell down on the coast.  He quickly disabused me about the availability of guides and trekking routes, which have dwindled as a result of logging activity.  During a chat with Liam I conceived a plan to walk to the village of Pa Lungan about twelve kilometres away, on a track which can be managed without a guide.

I set off soon after my meet with Liam and followed his fairly vague directions.  It turned out to be a delightful walk through a small village, alongside quiet streams and paddies and into gentle woodland.  I had expected a track negotiable by four-wheel drives, but the trail turned out to be for water buffalo drawn sleds only.  Despite carrying a ten-kilo rucksack my damaged knee held up well and after four hours I arrived at Pa Lungan followed by a curious water buffalo.

 It's a little hamlet of twenty or so houses, a church and about a hundred people.  A wonderfully peaceful spot far, far off the beaten track.  Liam had recommended the Batu Ritung Homestay run by Madam Supang, so I made my way straight there, knocking on the front door a little anxiously, a lone traveller from God knows where.

Supang came to the door as if I had been long-expected and showed me to a simple room on the upper floor of the large wooden house.  Shortly after, her husband took me on a short tour of the village megaliths, said to range in age from two thousand to six hundred years old.  En route we took in some clumps of pitcher plants, which he took delight in describing in detail.  That evening I dined with the two of them, being, unsurprisingly, the only guest.  The food was a superbly prepared range of local vegetables, harvested from what Supang likes to call the "jungle supermarket", Bario rice and chicken.

I went to bed early and content and was happy to dive under the blanket when the generator died at about ten o'clock, the lights flickered off and peace descended.