A visit to an Iban longhouse offers a unique glimpse of an ancient way of life that-although changing fast-is still fascinating for outsiders. Longhouse life is a microcosm of a well-run society, where a close-knit community lives together under one roof with one chief, or Tuai Rumah, in charge. Within the structure, a kind of horizontal highrise, each family has its own quarters or bilek, where they sleep and eat. The main room is often lined with Chinese ceramic jars much prized by the Ibans. At the rear is the kitchen, where a wood fire provides the heat for cooking, adding a distinctive smokey taste to the food and a dark patina to the surroundings.

CHANGING TIMES

Times are changing in the longhouse. Walls which once held faded photographs of the Brookes and Queen Elizabeth II are now adorned with colour magazine pictures of beauty queens, racing cars and the latest pop icons. Many Dayaks have converted from spirit-sensitive animism to Christianity, and evenings once spent performing tribal chants and sacrificial ceremonies are taken up with prayer meetings. Children who once enjoyed carefree days frolicking in the longhouse and the rice fields are ensconced in schools studying Bahasa Malaysia and physics. Yet still the community spirit lives on.

Longhouse life is hard. Men and women spend long hours working in the fields, planting and tending their crops. Much longhouse activity takes place on the tanju and ruai – from drying cocoa beans to socializing. Cockfighting is a popular male pastime. Animistic beliefs and legendary spirits surround many of the festival cockfights.

Fighting Cock or Sacrificial Pet?

Cocks play an important part in Iban culture, and they are kept and cosseted as pets while being prepared for their first big fight. The men of the longhouse play with them regularly, engaging them in mock battles with their neighbours, but without the razor sharp spurs attached to their rear claws. Those are reserved for fighting days and can bring a lesser fighter to its death in minutes. Before the fight, the cocks are sometimes given small shots of tuak, rice wine, to keep them energized and slightly aggressive.

The cocks and chickens also play an important part in ceremonial issues. Chicken sacrifices are common and the occult powers of a white cockerel are highly respected, in common with many other cultures around the world.

In many ceremonies-for example, in the case of a sick or possessed person – a cock will be sacrificed, and the blood, valued for its purifying quality, sprinkled over a subject. In milder cases, the live chicken is simply waved over the subject or over the ceremony offering plates.

You can visit a few worthwhile stops along the way you travel from Sibu to Miri. The sleepy Melanau fishing village of Mukah is a pleasant layover and offers a relaxed respite from jungle life. The traditional wooden houses are stilted and visitors can watch the fascinating process of extracting sago from the thick trunks of the sago palm. An excursion out to sea with the fishermen is another possibility. The town is home to the enigmatic annual Kaul Festival where ancient Melanau rites appease the spirits of the sea and mark the new fishing season as well as give thanks to the fertility spirits. Several towns hold their own Kaul Festival as well as the official one held in the second week of April.

The burgeoning oil town of Bintulu has developed out of all recognition in the past couple of decades. The old wooden bazaar has given away to new shops and hotels, as well as a deep-water port, chemical factories and a massive liquid petroleum gas (LPG) plant to exploit offshore reserves of natural gas.

About 20km (12 miles) away from Bintulu is the Similajau National Park. Gazetted in 1976, the 7,067-hectare (17,500-acre) national park is less visited than those closer to Kuching or Miri, but its more difficult access makes it no less attractive. Opened to visitors only in 1991, the long narrow park covers a 32km by 1.5km area (20 miles by 1 mile) and is bordered by one of Sarawak’s most beautiful stretches of unspoiled beach, with jungle trails running into the forest. Small rivers and rapids on the Sebulong River also make for interesting exploration. Similajau is home to saltwater crocodiles, so watch your step when walking close to river inlets. Other, less spectacular inhabitants include gibbons, banded langurs, civet cats, procupines, wild boar and long-tailed macaques, as well as 185 species of birds, including hornbills. Green turtles come to lay their eggs on the quiet beaches between July and September.

Similanjau National Park Chalet

Numerous longhouses can be visited up the Kemana River that runs into Bintulu; some of these are accessible by road as well as by river. Further upriver are the Orang Ulu longhouses of the Kenyah and Penan peoples.

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.

Kapit has electricity 24 hours a day, shops (selling goods at considerably higher prices than back in Sibu), hotels equipped with luxuries like TV and air conditioning and fast food outlets selling fried chicken, pizza, ice cream and other doubtful big city delights. As a marked contrast, the daily morning market is filled with tribal women coming to town to sell their produce, before heading off to the local provision shops to buy longhouse necessities.

Only two and a half upriver from Sibu, the sprawling centre still retains the atmosphere of a frontier town, bearing marks of its origins when the Brookes established it as a trading post and fort town. Fort Sylvia, built in 1875 by Charles Brooke, was placed strategically to prevent the movement of the Orang Ulu downstream and the Ibans moving further ulu or upstream, to avert more full-scale wars. Constructed solidly of belian or ironwood, the fort has withstood generations of floods, which in some years reached halfway up the walls. Today the fort houses the Kapit Museum with excellent ethnographic displays on the main peoples of the area.

Fort Sylvia ( Open Tues-Sun 10am-12noon, 2pm-5pm; Mon & Public Holidays closed )

Kapit Museum ( Open Mon-Fri 9am-4pm, Sat-Sun 9am-12pm)

Kapit lies in the heart of Iban country, Sarawak’s largest indigenous population. Ibans were once the headhunters who gave Borneo its romantic and primitive reputation. Some understanding of their culture will help the visitor to see that they were not merely bloodthirsty in an anarchic way. To bring good fortune to the longhouse, and fame and a bride for themselves, young Iban warriors would (and some still do) set out from home to travel “the world”. Status would be acquired in the form of tattoos telling of their bravery, and the heads of a few enemies brought home to imbue the longhouse with protective spirits. Only warriors of equal strength were killed, and never children, women or the old and sick. Sadly, these traditions were much misunderstood by the 19th-century writers who revelled in writing lurid stories about the headhunters of the Iban tribes.

Longhouse’s Tips :
At the longhouses, visitors usually will be greeted with the traditional ‘miring’ (goodwill) ceremony and served with a few glasses of ‘tuak’ (local rice wine). Visitors may be treated to a meal probably rice with wild fern and other jungle vegetables plus some fishes, chicken or wild meat. Traditional dances like ‘ngajat’ may also be performed to entertain the visitors. Visitors are welcome to join in the dancing.

Below Kapit is Belaga - the last urban centre on the Rejang, after which it is longhouse communities all the way. Reaching Belaga means coursing through the Pelagus Rapids, marking the natural boundary between the Iban territory below and the Orang Ulu beyond. These rapids are the most treacherous navigable waterway in the state, and possibly in the whole of Borneo. The two and a half kilometre (1.5 miles) stretch is a series of whirlpools and waves as the river rapidly loses altitude. Many lives and boats have been lost in this maelstrom; riding the rapids atop an express boat (ready to jump off in case of trouble) provides high excitement. When the water is low - from May to August - only small longboats can struggle through, although some do try to negotiate the perils in a speedboat.

Just below the rapids is the upmarket Pelagus Resort, a designer longhouse-style resort, designed by Kuching luminary and architect, Edric Ong. The resort makes a comfortable base for excursions: to longhouses to see Iban women making high-quality pua kumbu or ceremonial blankets; to explore waterfalls and jungle trails; or to just laze by the pool, amid beautiful natural surroundings.

From Sibu, express boats, long and narrow, rather like wingless 747s, depart regularly. They head down-stream to Sarikei and Kuching, and upriver (ulu) to Kapit, and also past the treacherous Pelagus Rapids to Belaga. Tourists mingle with an assortment of other passengers : Chinese merchants taking their wares to distant longhouses; river and inland officials (usually Iban) going about their business; the odd longhouse dweller returning home after a visit to the big city, or schoolchildren who attend school in Sibu but return to their family longhouses for holidays.

Because of extensive logging, express boats now run to several of the major tributaries of the Rejang - a marvellous network that enables visitors to get around at little expense and with great ease - a situation much changed from the heady and hilarious days of Redmond O’Hanlon’s explorations in Into The Heart of Borneo. Other, much earlier travellers had to do it all the hard way, by hiring boats themselves. Although expressboat prices are fixed, hire of longboats is expensive (even for locals) and heavily dependent on the water level, weather, time of day, river currents and how willing the boatman is to hurry his journey to fit your schedule. For foreigners, prices will naturally be much higher and a spot of astute but friendly bargaining is in order. Unless you take a direct express to Kapit, the express boat stops along the way at the smaller settlements of Kanowit and Song, from where local express boats can be taken to visit longhouses up these rivers.

On the river, boats and longboats, and timber tugs work their way up or glide down-river on the Rejang. Sarawak’s longest river is also the natural highway for the timber industry, and you may see huge rafts stacked with logs floating downstream. Should one of these hazards become waterlogged, they present considerable danger to outboard motors; with that very danger in mind, the express boats have their undercarriage lined with steel and there is always a spare propellor shaft lashed to the roof.