After breakfast we took an hour long drive to the Mari Mari Cultural Village where we visited the traditional houses of the different tribes of Borneo. My first question was "Where do they keep their clothes!?" The biggest tribe is the Dusun tribe. The houses were made of different materials depending on which tribe the house belonged to, but there was bamboo, bark, banana leaves, pandan leaves, all sorts! They were really sturdy though was suprising. An interesting thing in all of the long houses, apart from the headhunters, was that they had a raised room for the women for protection.. My favourite longhouse belonged to the Bajau tribe - which happened to be the tribe that Max was from. It had bright coloured decor everywhere unlike the other longhouses. Max gave me a history on all of the different tribes and explained that they came about when different groups from surrounding countries discovered certain parts of Borneo. The Bajau tribe were from the Philippines and are Water Gypsies and believe in the spirit of the water. When a new baby is born into the Bajau tribe they dip the baby in the sea as a blessing.
In each longhouse I got to try something new. In the Dusun house I tried the wine they had made from rice.
I saw bamboo cooking at a stand outside the house. They had lots of local ingredients and let me make my own recipe that they would cook for me to eat later. You basically have a bamboo leaf which you put your recipe on, you then roll the leaf and put it inside a hollow bamboo. The bamboo is then barbecued.
In the Rungus house I saw a boy make a fire using a piece of wood, bamboo and the shavings of a bark tree.
In the Lundayeh house I saw how they made clothing out of tree bark - they even made me a bracelet. This tribe is supposed to be very strong and have a crocodile figure outside their houses to warn the Muruts (aka headhunters) that one of their tribe lived there. This is because apparently when the Muruts first came to Borneo they didn't have a tradition so they created one. The tradition was that when a man and woman get married, to seal and authenticate the marriage the man must take someones head. This meant that they would attack other tribes to get heads. The headhunter would then hang the head in their house. Because the Lundayeh tribe were known to be strong the crocodile symbol basically meant stay away because we will fuck you up bruv! Lol!! Where the headhunters attacked the Lundayeh tribe unsuccessfully, the Lundayeh tribe would take the head of the headhunter and hang it on their wall as a sign of strength.
Because of the wars that came and the amount of people that were killed as a result of the "headhunters" tradition, an agreement was made that they would instead just drink a lot of alcohol to authenticate a marriage.
Anyway, after this house I saw the Headhunters house. Upon arrival at the door a man of about 23 walked up to me in the traditional clothing with a very solemn face. He put his hand on my shoulder whilst staring into my eyes intently and spoke to me in Malay - Max translated. He told me to put my hand on his shoulder. He then asked if i was alone. I said yes. He asked if i was aware of the local customs and said that he hoped I would respect them. He then asked if I would like to be blessed and turned me around where an old lady said something and waved something over my feet. I then walked towards the stairs to the entrance where another boy stood with a dart blower (not sure of the actual name!) - a long wooden tube that you blow poisonous darts through to hunt animals. He demonstrated how it was done by using a handing coconut as his target - he got the coconut first time. He then handed the dart blower to me, I aimed, blew and poo, I missed by like an inch. He signalled for me to try again and this time POW! I got it!!! I walked up the stairs dusting my shoulders off like yeahhhhh!!!
Inside the headhunters house we watched the tribe play a traditional game which consists of a wooden platform in the house being lowered and turned into a trampoline type thing. Two of the tribe made the platform bounce while the third member had to jump to reach a target that was attached to the ceiling. Inside the house they was a boy giving henna tattoos - of course I got one!
After the headhunters house we went into an open area where all the different tribes performed a traditional bamboo dance - I have never seen someone's feet move so fast!
This is where things got a bit scary for me. We went to lunch at the village and whilst I was washing my hands a man washed his hands next to me and in broken English said, "that man you are with, be careful". I asked him if he knew him and he walked behind the toilets, it looked like he was trying to avoid Max seeing him talk to me. Then another man who was also washing his hands said, "yes we all know about him. He said he is a tour guide or something yeah?" I said "Yes". He replied "he is not malaysian, he is not local people and not legal".
At lunch i was so anxious, Max told me to sit next to him but I just kept looking around at everyone seeing if anyone else was looking at me cautiously. I felt really special having Max showing me around like some kind of body guard and literally sticking to me by the hip but now I felt like he stuck so close to avoid other people talking to me and warning me about him. My mind was going crazy and whereas usually I would sit and talk with Max whenever we had the chance, now I was silent with loud alarm bells going off in my head!
After Max had finished eating he walked into the souvenir shop, I walked behind him looking nervously into the eyes of the second man that had spoken to me. As I walked passed him he slipped me a piece of paper saying "If you want an explantation call me" followed by his name and number. I slipped the note into my bag and walked into the shop where Max was facing towards me. I couldn't work out if he had seen the exchange so all i could think of was where I was going to hide this paper. It wasn't safe in my bag and Max always went in my bag to get my camera to take photos while I was driving. I trusted him to do so. I slipped the note into my bikini top under my dress.
We walked to the car and drove towards the next stop - the waterfall. Although i had been given these warnings i felt that so far Max had been good to me and the fact that he was not local did not come as a surprise as he had told me previously he was from the Philipines. The fact that he might not work for a tour company concerned me but again, although I had perhaps got myself into a bit of a predicament, I just thought of how he showed me these amazing places and went above and beyond the whole time, introducing me to amazing food, picking me aloe Vera for my sunburn and he was just literally a great travel companion. He had many opportunuties to do something bad like rob all my money, my passport or even kidnap me but he hadn't so I figured there was nothing I could do at this moment so I would wait until our tours were over and then end our journey together.
The next stop was the waterfall. We had to trek for 30minutes into the jungle to find the waterfall. Max led the way with me following anxiously behind. At one point I stopped to take a photo and dropped the car key! We were on a ledge and the key fell down to ledge which was so steep and covered in brambles and trees. Max had to climb down and find the key!!
We finally arrived at the waterfall - it was definitely worth the trek. We got into the water and although it was cold it felt amazing after the long hot trek. I was standing under the waterfall squealing in excitement and Max came towards me with his arms out for a hug. I said "No!" and moved away from him. He then walked away to the other side of the water again sulking like a child. I walked away and sat further down the stream refusing to take him emotions on board. I had been clear throughout that I am not looking for anything more than a friend, it was not my fault!
Anyway, after maybe an hour of sitting at opposite ends of the waterfall I decided that I wanted to go and started getting dressed. Max saw that I was ready to go and proceeded towards the way we came from. On the way to the waterfall Max kept an arm reach distance from me and kept checking that I was ok. The journey back he stormed ahead and I could barely see him. He would stop maybe every 5 minutes until he could catch a glimpse of me and then marched ahead again. Even if before this moment I had an inkling of intention to do anymore tours with him, they were now gone!
We got to the car and he did not say a single word to me. He gave me evil stares. I wouldn't have minded but I looked down at my hand and I had a leech stuck inbetween my fingers!!!! "Max, Max...is this a leech?" He looked at me from over the car and cut his eye at me. I continued "Max, Max...what do I do?!" I poured water over it but nothing happened, it would not budge. Anyone that knows me knows that I hate insects so was seriously having to stop myself from running around in circles, shaking my hand and screaming. He finally walked over to me and without saying a word ripped the leech from my hand. My finger bled and kept bleeding.
I started driving and Max closed his eyes and wouldn't say a word to me. I didn't know where I was going as he directed me everywhere. I just said to him "look I know you don't like me but seriously you need to direct me, the sooner you get us back, the sooner you can leave me". He simply said "I hate you" and closed his eyes. "I don't care if you hate me, if you don't direct me we are not getting home. Wow, you hate me you know!" He then started laughing and grabbed my hand and kissed it.
Anyway, we were driving towards to beach I explained to him that we would not be doing anymore tours and that this was it because he crossed the line. He kept apologising and grabbing my hand and I just said "no!" and pulled my hand away. He went flip mode on me!
"Who do you think you are!? This is why you are single. This is why your boyfriend left you! You will always be alone. I don't know why I helped you. Lots of other people calling me for tour and I say no because of you. Why did I help you?"
I simply replied, because I paid you, I paid you for your time".
I dropped him off and then he went from angry to sad begging me to talk to him and telling me how much he liked me. I just said "Bye Max, thankyou so much for everything you have showed me and for being so kind and going above and beyond but this is it. Goodbye"
That night I went back to my hotel, got ready and was going to try and find a tour company that I could book something with for my last day. It was dark and I was crossing the road when I heard a noise. I looked behind me and guess who was behind me...Max. He said he had been having a drink and saw me but I was seriously freaked out. He asked where I was going and hoped that me saying i was going to my hotel would make him leave me alone but no, he asked if he could have a lift. I definitely need lessons in saying no because I reluctantly said yes. In the car he asked if I wanted to go for dinner. I lied and said I had eaten already - truth is I was absolutely starving. I got back to the hotel and despite my stomach rumbling I refused to leave my room in case I bumped into him again. That night I ate vege crackers (like Jacobs cream crackers) and chocolate peanuts!!!
Beware the note writer.
ReplyDelete