Visiting Belaga, you will see few small but comfortable hotels around. Due to incessant logging, Belaga has grown larger where some of the old wooden buildings remain, although increasingly they are replaced with ubiquitous concrete shophouses. But sit in a coffee shop, sipping on a mug of thick coffee sweetened with spoonfuls of condensed milk, and watch the passing parade of people : Kayan women wearing heavy metal decorations in their ears which have stretched to their breasts; young warriors who devote their ferocity to football rather than collecting heads; children sent down to school to learn the ways of the other word; a collection of traders, hustlers, would-be tour guides on the make, and labourers fresh from the logging campus, money burning in their pockets. It’s raw and primitive, with an energy you will never find in the city.

From Belaga, express boats head upstream when the water is high, but it really is necessary to find a guide or an invitation before venturing afar to visit an upriver longhouse. In spite of their long traditions of hospitality to travellers on the river, most longhouse folk are just not interested in entertaining people they can’t talk to and who have little to offer to their lives. Officially, foreigners wanting to head further upriver from Belaga must obtain a permit from the local police station, and it is neither possible nor desirable to travel near the controversial Bakun hydro-electric dam site.