Rainforests in Borneo

After our time in Cambodia, we flew to a big tropic island on the equator called Borneo. The island is split between Malaysia, Indonesia, and a tiny country called Brunei. We will be spending pretty much the rest of the trip here.

Our first stop was Kuching, Malaysia. Everyone loves cats here. There are big statues of cats in the city and even cats engraved on every sewer grate. I later found out the name Kuching literally translates to "Cat". We got out of cat city as quick as we could and headed to Bako National Park to check out a tropical rainforest.

Rainforests have been the theme of the last week and a half. The two days spent trekking around this national park was filled with incredible views. Its amazing how quickly the weather changes from raining to sunny and back. It rains so often that some parts of the trail are constantly covered in puddles and the only way to venture forward is to walk across fallen tree trunks or jump from protruding root to root. The soaking wet socks were a drag, but the rain and heat were forgivable since they give rise to to most insane biodiversity. Every inch of the land is covered with life. The entire forest is just a huge competition for space and sunlight. I've never seen so many plants growing on roots, on rocks, and even on other plants. Animals were tough to spot, but we did manage to see some boar and some monkeys. Proboscis monkeys were the most interesting. They're monkeys that look like gonzo from the Muppets and they only live on this island. They're really elusive though, I could only manage to catch one making a dash across a clearing on the beach. Wiki Proboscis monkey if you're curious about them.

 

Exploring the coastal rainforest was really cool, but on this trip our goal has always been to meet people who live their lives in ways that are very different from our own. We chose the island of Borneo as our destination solely because of its wealth of indigenous people. So we started trying to figure out how we could meet people whose lives are connected to the rainforest. We learned of two such tribes, the Penan and the Kelabit who are accessible and open to inviting foreigners into their villages.

I use the term accessible loosely. The only way to visit these people was to fly over the dense rainforest in a little 10 seater plane, so that's what we did. We flew into a village called Bario in the Kelabit Highlands. In Bario (not to be confused with Borneo, the name of the island all of this is on) we spent the night with a Kelabit family in longhouse suspended on stilts. In the longhouse each family has their own living space but they share this huge eating/recreation room. Basically everyone's house is connected and every house has a big front porch that connects to the next house, and the next, and the next for over 100 meters. They are huge and great for community bonding. We saw some cool stuff in the longhouse. We watched a Kelabit woman weaving a mat out of a rainforest plant with her bare hands. We were also lucky to be able to watch a bunch of the women practice a traditional dance that they planned to perform for some guests that were arriving in the village shortly.

The longhouse was a really cool place, great sense of community there. I imagined how cool it would be to live in a longhouse with all my family and friends living so close. But living so deep in the island of Borneo can be lonely for some. At one point our homestay "mom" talked about how lonely her village gets sometimes and that she used to cry every day from loneliness. Her kids have all grown up and moved into cities, as have those of other families in the village. There are only 7,000 Kelabit people left on the entire island. She teared up while she told us all this, it was pretty sad.

The next day we headed towards a smaller Kelabit village called Pa'Lungan, about 4 hours walk away. We wanted to hire a local Kelabit villager there to take us into the rainforest on a two day overnight trek. On our way to Pa'Lungan, the rain started pouring on us. It was pretty relentless and as we were passing through a tiny village a woman offered us her place to wait for the rain to stop. Her and her husband offered us tea and crackers and we told them about our goal. Turns out there was an english speaking villager a couple doors down who has taken foreigners on rainforest treks in the past. He introduced himself as Richard, and we spent the next two days by his side.

Richard was happy to share all kinds of indigenous knowledge with us. He told us about how much he loves living in the rainforest. When you're like Richard and your accustomed to its discomforts the rainforest is actually a great place to live. In his youth he spent a few years living in the city as a salesmen, and currently runs a farm with his family. But Richard loves living in the rainforest best of all. There is food everywhere, you don't have to grow or buy anything. He says its easy to find food when you know where to look for it. Once you get to know Richard, you realize how much living in the rainforest makes sense for him.

You can imagine the problem that arises then when logging and damming initiatives by the Malaysian government threaten the rainforests upon which many Kelabit and Penan base their lives. Its currently a huge social issue there.

Richard loves the rainforest, but its not my kind of place. When you think rainforest, you think colourful frogs, snakes, monkeys, birds, black leopards, tigers. But really you don't see any of those things. You only really find the things that want to find you, like leeches and insects. The coastal rainforest was different. Trekking and sleeping in the inland rainforest was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I've ever done. Crossed off the bucket list, but I have no desire to do that again (unless I had a tent, that might have made the difference).

Rural Cambodia

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, we met up with a buddhist monk named Sareth Brak. Sareth spearheads an organization that does community development work in a series of rural Cambodian villages within a couple hours drive of the city, one of which is his home village. Chris and I traveled with Sareth to his home village where we stayed with his family and helped him build a library at the elementary school. We worked every day with the younger local monks to lay cement on all the floors and build a garden outside.

Working with the monks was fantastic. They are energetic, playful, hilarious, kind-spirited people. Despite the obvious language barrier, we would always find ways to joke around with each other  mostly involving us making fun of each other's inability to pronounce the other's language. Every day was productive and fun at the same time. And to cap it off, we played football at the end of every work day. So much fun.

One thing that continues to amaze me is how at-home we can feel in a completely foreign environment. Like the hill tribes in Thailand, living in this remote village is very different than back home. We were surrounded by trees and plants that all look strange to us; we used tools that you cant really find back home and mixed all our cement on our own; every meal was much smaller than back home and with much less variety, involving combinations of rice, watermelon, eggs, beef or vegetables- for breakfast lunch and dinner; we showered with cold bucket water; we washed our clothes by scrubbing them by hand; we slept on a thin foam mattress on the floor. But these things are all trivial. Joking around with the monks felt like joking around with a group of buddies back home, playing soccer with the kids felt like playing soccer at the summer camp I work at, Sport Fitness School. These things made me feel so at home in a strange place. It feels so great when people from opposite sides of the earth whose cultures are so different can so seamlessly come together and feel connected to each other  Its the best, most feel-good thing.

But seamless is too strong a word. The fabric of our cross-cultural connection wasn't without its frays. One big thing that bothered me while in this village, something that's bothered me everywhere I go in southeast asia, is that I always feel this big elephant in the room that I'm a rich westerner. This is the kind of thing that happens: We'll be sitting at the table on a work break with the monks and some of the villagers. They tell me about their family, how many brothers and sisters they have. That whole thing. So I take out my iphone to show them pictures of my friends and family too. They find it interesting to see my family, to see snow, to see Canada. Its easier than trying to explain it. They're intrigued, we exchange some laughs. Then I notice one of the villagers starts to really find the iphone itself interesting. He asks me how much it costs and now I feel really uncomfortable. I can't dodge the question, he's curious about the price, the dollar value. When I answer the question, his face tells me exactly what he's thinking: 'holy shit, this guy can spend that much money on a pure luxury item? I've never even seen that much money, I maybe never will.' Then the thought that follows, the jab to the gut: 'Imagine what I could buy with that money?'. And the uppercut to the jaw: 'My family, my community could have so much more.' And then finally the hay-maker  the mortal combat Finish Him: 'why does this guy get that much money? Why does the world let him have all that and not me? I work hard too, does he work harder? No. So why does he get more?'

How would I answer those questions? The cat would rip out my tongue and cut it into pieces.

Truth is, I can't actually read minds. Maybe this guy didn't have all those thoughts. But the fact is that lots of people do and its totally justified. Its not fair, there's no two ways about it. I get more just because my heart took its first beat in a privileged nation, not cause I deserve it any more than anyone else. In that moment, I hate my iphone. I want to throw it away, I want to vow never to waste my money on luxuries. No smartphones, no car, no washing machine, no hot water showers, no cozy mattresses. But I'm not going to do this. These luxuries are standards in my culture. To throw them all away would be extreme. It would make me weird, isolated. I would be lonely. Does this mean I'm selfish? My wealth is my curse.

I sometimes did stupid things like purposely wear my dirtiest shirt because I was ashamed to wear a perfectly clean one around kids that had nothing but dirty clothes, dirt that the hand washing can't get rid of, clothes that I would never see anyone wear back home. I'm obviously insecure about it. I love my home but living here makes me feel ashamed of it at the same time.

So thats the good and the bad from Cambodia. We've flown out of Phnom Penh and just landed in Kuching, Malaysia. The entire city has no power at the moment. Interesting start.