SARAWAK, East Malaysia – 28 September – 6 October 2024
The main focus for our time in Sarawak was, of course, the caving. But we did a few things that I thought were blog worth, so here are a few random snapshots of some of the other things we did …
Arrival at Mulu on the first day, we had to cross the river on this suspension bridge. It was very disconcerting for me … it moved the whole time. When you go to places like NZ, there’s a “people limit”, like 1 or 2 at a time. Not here LOL, can’t say I enjoyed crossing over whenever we had to go to the conference!
THE BIG RAIN EVENT … Photo from the bridge on the first day, note the steps. These steps lead to the National Park.
And, 6 or 7 days later we had a BIG rain event, bucketted down for hours. Here’s the same shot from the bridge, you can see how high the river rose.
The day after the rain, this is looking out from the Cafe, the water was about 1m from the Cafe balcony.
VISITING THE LOCALS – one of the Conference field trips was a half day when we were ferried upstream in longboats to the local village.
One of the villagers who was weaving, using her toes to hold the ratan. Was really cool watching here weave.
This is a photo taken of a Penan Salup which is how the villagers in the area lived prior to the National Park being created and the caves being opened for tourism.
Batu Bungan is a Penan village located on the Melinau River. It’s 15 to 30 minutes from the Mulu National Park. Prior to the establishment of the National Park/exploration of the caves, (roughly the 1970s) there was only 1 family group living in the area. They were nomadic, moving around the area sourcing food. Now there are around 100 villagers living in the area permanently.
The Penan villagers don’t own any land for themselves, it’s an egalitarian society, social classes don’t exist. There is no wealth or poverty and all food is shared. The greatest transgression in Penan society is probably sihun which translates to mean failure to share. No-one is ever let go hungry, they have no concept o private ownership. Each group has a headman who acts as spokesperson for the village. They are an incredibly friendly warm-hearted people and there doesn’t appear to be any violence among the villagers. It was a privilege to be allowed to walk amongst them and see what they created for sale.
THE CANOPY WALK – if you know that I don’t really like heights, and I’ve already said that I didn’t enjoy walking across the suspension bridge, putting my hand up for the canopy walk was a bit of a stretch. Marge and John let me go first so I wouldn’t chicken out. Can you believe that under that black matting are a series of aluminum ladders!
The infrastructure in place, wooden blocks to stop the wire from biting into the bark of the tree, apparently, it’s inspected regularly.
Towards the end of the walk, I was feeling a lot more confident LOL.