Wednesday, 2 June 2010
We were able to have a lie in this morning as there are boats every half hour to Kapit, so we wandered to the Fortunate Cafe for a Kopi Susu and then headed to the boat terminal. We were given the choice of 1st class, business class or economy for our boat and we decided to splurge out and buy 1st class tickets. Let me just mention I had all sorts of ideas going through my head of what 1st class would be like and yes I was disappointed as usual. There are 12 seats in 1st class and when we got on board there was just us and another couple from Sibu.
However, just before departure a gaggle of Chinese arrived on boat with screaming kids and loud old people, it was deafening and we only had one window to look out, so I started to watch the onboard DVD which was awful (Arachnid) which stopped working so they put on an even worse Chinese movie, so I gave up and went to sleep. The group which joined us in the forward cabin included Chinese Grandma and Grandpa taking the grand-kiddies up the river. Grandma must have had some sort of problem, she could just not shut up; even when Grandpa and the kids nodded off to sleep, she kept talking (talking under wet cement would not have been a problem for this lady). To make matters worse, she had one of those voices which could penetrate a few feet of lead, and spoke at volume just a shade louder than a jumbo jet at take-off.
Scott stayed alert and took some pictures etc of the countryside as we sped past it for the 3 hour boat trip. There is still a huge amount of logging going on. In the Lonely Planet they suggest that by the year 2022 98% of jungle will have disappeared, my opinion is that it will probably be heaps sooner. You get the distinct impression that what you can’t see just behind the jungle framing the riverbanks is nothing.
The river is still huge and obviously gets some massive tides as highlighted in the stilted structures along the riverbank. There are lots of modern longhouses, some of them looking very new.
I suppose the fact that logging and palm oil makes the indigenous population wealthy has a lot to do with the modernisation.
Eventually we arrived at Kapit. Well we guessed that by the sudden flurry of activity and packing up and everyone trying to disembark at once. We had to push our way off the boat and climbed the steps up to the terminal.
Once there we asked and there are boats heading up to Belaga so that is where we head tomorrow. We checked into the New Rejang Inn which is clean and cheap and in the centre of town. Not that it is difficult as the town is tiny. We had a quick walk around and settled on a place to eat, which turned out to not do any food, so we had a kopi susu and an awful muffin that was so dry it was inedible. We decamped to the “restaurant” next door (we’re using the term very loosely) and got a plate of sub-standard mee goreng, not boding well on the food stakes here.
After the bad lunch we walked to Fort Sylvia which is meant to be an indigenous artist centre, but as today is a public holiday (isn’t every day so far been a public holiday?) it was closed, although there is a line marking how high the tide got in the floods of 1934 which were so huge it must have been devastating to the area. Anyway this town was an outpost for the Raja Brooke (of Kuching fame), but there isn’t much left, now it is yet another Chinese town, not even any local handicrafts to be seen of the Iban. We did a wander up towards the Chinese cemetery and past the Chinese temple which seems to be surrounded by some sort of lame ass sideshow alley (Scott thought it was like a Simpsons episode), so we did a bit more wandering, but things are closing down for the afternoon siesta, so we will join in (rude not too) and come out again later and see if things liven up, although we aren’t holding our breath. At the Besar Pasar (MainMarket) the chicken vendors were transferring some scrawny chickens from their day coop into their transport crates; as we were passing we watched as the man picked the last chicken from the coop, it was dead so he just unceremoniously threw it into a nearby dumpster. Tracy made comment, the dead chicken is probably in a better place than the other chickens which have more of their (unfortunate) lives ahead.
Scott rang a guy in Belaga to arrange for us to go out and visit some longhouses tomorrow, so now we aren’t sure if we are or aren’t going anywhere. There doesn’t seem a lot of Bahasa spoken here, mainly Hokkien and that is one language we know nothing about. So tomorrow will be a surprise.
As the afternoon drew on we noticed more and more business places were closing. We were starting to get worried if there were going to be any places open at dinner time. At sunset we headed down to the ferry terminal to try and get some photos over the river; the sunset was very ordinary tonight and lucky for us for as Scott was taking his only photo, the man was locking up the terminal and closing the shutters with us still on the inside. We did a quick scramble cum limbo under the closing roller shutter and back onto the street in search of dinner.
We had read about a night market in the LP but when we walked past the place earlier in the afternoon it was deserted. Reasoning it’s called a “night market” we went back and found a few of the stalls had set out tables and were cooking food. We ordered dinner from a couple of stalls; Tracy had a couple of roti and Scott had some satay and a laksa (it was very spicy hot, he is not looking forward to the morning). We did see five other westerners at the night market, the largest contingent of “foreigners” we have seen for a while.
After dinner we did another couple of laps around town (it only takes about 10 minutes per lap) and watched as whatever shops that were open, close for the night; even the bank cash-point was asleep. There aren’t even any bars or any other form of nightlife.
It might be because of the public holiday, or, it might be like this all the time (we don’t know), the centre of this town is filthy. Just about every other place we have visited in Malaysia has been quite clean of litter and rubbish; just about all day and night it has been possible to observe people sweeping the streets and picking up the rubbish, leaves etc. But not here in Kapit. The town square is a popular place to meet up with friends and sit in amongst the discarded cans, bottles, food scraps etc. We would like to give the benefit of the doubt to the celebratory period and hope that tomorrow the street sweepers will be back at work, but as a lot of the rubbish looks like it has been there for a long time, we aren’t holding our collective breaths.