Our primary goal on Borneo was to visit a longhouse, the traditional dwelling place of the native peoples of Borneo. Or at least the peoples that lived inland along the rivers. A longhouse is like a single floor apartment building on stilts. Each family gets a room and the whole house shares a long, wide front porch.

On Saturday morning we caught an upriver boat from Sibu to a town called Song. This boat was long and skinny like the one from Kuching but a little smaller. It looks sort of like an alligator. We accidentally rode in first class for a few ringgits more ($38 instead of $31 each). First class was only about 20 percent full.

Just up the Rajang from Sibu we passed a ship junk yard. One giant ocean going freighter was beached in shallow water and lists about 10 degrees. Other wrecks floated at anchor or were cabled to shore. Some were stripped almost to the water line.

Lots of lumber debris floated in the murky light brown water. I wondered how the driver missed the big logs. It turns out he didn't. We heard lots of metallic thumps as pieces hit the hull.

It was hazy outside. A couple hundred miles away in Miri they closed the kindergartens because of the thick pollution. In Sibu it wasn't so bad but the sky never quite reached blue even when it wasn't overcast.

Both banks got higher and higher and were covered with thick green vegetation. Occasionally we would see a wooden house on stilts. Some were longhouses, some small single-family houses. Rickety wooden docks came down to the water at ridiculous angles, like 45 degrees. I couldn't imagine how people could walk up and down these things. Eventually I would attempt one myself.

For every standing rickety dock we could see the remains of a collapsed dock.

Song has a tall concrete pier with stairs that lead down into the water. We debarked without trouble and started wandering around the little town looking for a hotel. We were planning to spend a few days in town. trying to get invited to a longhouse. We didn't want to just show up at some longhouse and ask them to put us up, especially since we don't speak much Malay (Malay is closely related to Bahasa Indonesia, which we had been practicing for two months. Almost all the words are the same, except, unfortunately, the most basic ones).

We were only five minutes from the dock when a guy walked up to us speaking excellent English. His name is Richard Khoo and I'd seen his name in our Rough Guide book--he was a recommended guide--so I trusted him. He showed us a hotel, talked to the management for us, invited himself into our room and offered his services as a longhouse guide.

We couldn't afford him. He charges about 600 ringgits for 2 people/2 nights. We told him that right away but he wasn't fazed. Instead of being our guide, he offered to write us letters of introduction in Iban.

We told him we wanted to visit Nanga Bangkit, which we had read about. He suggested another. We decided to spend two nights in each house. Richard said in addition to the introduction letters, he would arrange our boat transportation and help us shop for groceries. He said the boat would leave the next morning at 10 o'clock.

So we had been in Song for less than half an hour, and our longhouse trips were arranged.

Later Richard helped us buy two large bags of groceries with cans of beans, corn, peas, and corned beef, instant noodles, candies, crackers, sugar, tea, and cigarettes. Joan didn't want to buy cigarettes but Richard insisted it was a good idea. I said I didn't mind. This took about 15 minutes. Then we had dinner with Richard. He's already eaten so we bought him a cup of coffee. We found out he is Catholic.

Things were kind of crazy down at the dock on Sunday morning. It looked like the Hendersons getting ready for a three-day canoe trip. Five or six really long longboats were tied to the bottom of the stairway that led into the water. Some were half full of stuff already. We loaded our bags and the box of groceries into the one Richard indicated for us.

Our longboat looked like 50-foot canoe with an outboard engine. It had a low canopy over two-thirds its length. It was about three-and-a-half feet wide. Joan and I climbed across a couple other boats then squeezed in between the canopy and the sides. It was difficult.

They kept loading on more stuff (mostly concealed in cardboard boxes) until it seemed like we'd sink. We saw a stack of egg trays, probably a couple hundred eggs, sitting precariously on the bow. (Joan: I thought they were just parking the cargo on our boat before offloading it to other boats. No such luck.) Then about six or eight more people climbed on, sitting on top of boxes. Some guys wedged a hole in the stuff to make a place to sit. After about half an hour we started.

Our seat was just a small bench a few inches above the bottom of the boat. Joan sat across from me and our knees were practically in each other's chests. (JOAN: Since several women nearby were wearing Muslim head scarves, I tried very hard not to have Eric's legs between mine; but the boat ride lasted for three hours and we both shifted around a lot, so I'm sure we somehow offended them). The whole boat was only three and a half feet wide. The roof was tin over a curved wooded frame.

Song lies at the confluence of Sungei Katibas (sungei means river) and the Sungei Rajang. We quickly turned the bend and entered the Katibas which is much narrower than the Rajang. It reminded me of a wide Pennsylvania creek.

After having watched Passenger 57 in the express boat from Kuching to Sibu, the trip up the Katibas in our crammed canoe was a welcome change. It was more like what I thought a Borneo river trip would be.

I really liked the Katibas. It had some long, flat stone beaches on the inside of the wide bends. The beaches were chock full of perfect skipping stones. Occasionally the river had cut into a cliff face showing that the underlying rock had been thrust vertically. Trees overhung the river everywhere, although this was not an old growth forest.

Occasionally we could see a little distance to the rugged hills around the river. (Most hills were covered with trees, other hills had been clear cut more recently, nothing was old growth). But I didn't really get an idea of how rugged the terrain was for a couple days.

We maneuvered through many Class 1 size rapids. They increased in size as we went up stream. The last couple were Class 2 rapids that would make me a little nervous in my canoe.

The driver of our boat impressed me. The boat's length made it plenty sea worthy for the rapids but maneuvering something so long and so heavy through the sharp curves and against a strong current has got to be difficult. He avoided a lot of rocks in narrow curvy places. After we got through a difficult section I looked back and thought, "How the hell did he get this huge thing through there?" It reminded me of watching a huge hook and ladder fire truck disappear in the alleys of Annapolis, Maryland.

We sat next to a couple of young women who taught at the school next to the longhouse we were going to. They spoke English fairly well. One of them was working on a her crochet blanket. They shared some chocolate sugar wafer cookies with us.

Two or three rapids before Nanga Bangkit, our destination, two smaller long boats joined us. They were about 25 feet long and about two feet wide. Both were empty except the driver. In a quiet pool, they pulled up along side and took a bunch of the boxes and about 10 or 15 passengers. We figured our boat must have had 30 or 40 people on it. (Joan: we later learned that Nanga Bangkit had sent these boats to help us out, because they knew we were overloaded. How, I don't know, since N. Bangkit doesn't have phones).

When we got off the boat at Nanga Bangkit Longhouse, which sits high on the bank near the confluence of Sungei Katibas and Sungei Bangkit. I hoped someone would cling to us and tell us what to do. Our teacher friends got out across the river at the school. So after we got all our stuff we stood around looking like idiots, hoping someone would take care of us. No one seemed interested so we started walking up the stairs, letter to the Tuai (headman) in hand. (Joan: our friends o the boat had told us the letter was unnecessary, so we were reasonably confident we'd be accepted as visitors).

A young man I recognized from our boat tried to escape past us without making eye contact but we spoke to him and he stopped, a little reluctantly. We showed him the letter and asked to see the Tuai. He said follow me and walked off ahead. We followed.

Next: Our first taste of tuak (rice wine).

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