He stared blankly through his swirling Nescafe. ”It’s magical,” he mumbled. Chris tried again to describe the adventure we were about to embark on, but words never formulated.

Let’s backtrack, shall we?

We left Mt. Kinabalu and headed for the metropolis of Kota Kinabalu, the capitol of  Sabah and the largest city in Borneo where we had a few glorious days to bask in movies, A/C, and the new HyperMall. Boredom set in so Helen and I decided to go to Sarawak, the easternmost state in Malaysian Borneo. The jungley creatures at Uncle Tan’s hadn’t eaten us completely and there were a few bits of exposed flesh that would be of some nutritional value to the creepy crawlies on the other side of the island. We just wanted to be fair to all.

It’s ironic that after almost a year and a half in Malaysia, the last town we go to ends up being my favorite. Kuching is a charming place that hasn’t lost its identity to Western influences, yet it does have the some of the Western perks (Coffee Bean, cinema, good veg. restaurants) that we crave in a city, but it also has a lot of old world charm that is missing in Kota Kinabalu as well as most of penninsualr Malaysia. The night we arrived was the annual Full Moon celebration. Then we spent a few days just bopping around. The last picture is an alley behind a restaurant that we obviously didn't frequent.

After 2 days in Kuching, Helen and I decided we really needed to get off the tourist track. There is a tribe of tattooed people called the Iban who we really wanted to visit. There were tours offered on every corner, but they all looked like the type that called ahead telling the villagers to put on their outfits because the tourist money was on its way… very Epcot Center, I know. So where do you go to ask about staying with authentic tattooed tribes people? You go to a tattoo parlour, of course. Stumbling into Headhunter Tattoo we met Ernesto who gave us Chris’ number and that’s how it all started. Chris warned us it would take a 14 hour slog to get there – great! He said it was remote and the guy who would be taking us barely spoke English– fantastic! He said not to expect much – we were SOLD!

We sped away from Kuching in a minivan at 5am. We were the only Westerners on the vehicle – good so far. After a 6 hour ride we stopped to meet our guides at a town called Batong. From there, Tombi, Donny, Helen, me and a few other locals rode in the back of a 4-wheel drive truck over a road that must have been the local motocross track as well. After a few hours we arrived at a small longhouse that was the main port to go upriver. Then the four of us (plus a motorbike) piled into a very leaky longboat and Tombi guided us a few hours to another 23 door longhouse ( the term "door" is a reference to how many residences are in a longhouse). On the way we made a short stop to visit Donny's daughter in school. Once we made it to the end of the boat ride we downed a quick cup of coffee and raced the sun, hiking to get to a longhouse that balanced on the top of a very remote hill. We arrived just after dark. It was by far the funnest one way journey that I've ever been on. And that was only the start!

Perdue was our home for the next 4 nights, and unbeknownst to us, we were staying in the house of the village chief. Upon our arrival, all I wanted to do was sleep, but in a preview of things to come, we were met with copious amounts of food that was laid out on the kitchen floor. We sat and ate. And ate. And then we ate some more. When that meal was finished more people showed up with more food, then more people with more food. We were warned about Iban hospitality, a custom that revolves around elephantine quantities of refreshment. When we were absolutely stuffed beyond recognition, the Chief brought us to the community area to meet the rest of the longhouse. Well after midnight the chief's lovely wife layed out mattresses side by side and we all slept in the same room.

“Peterhelen, Peterhelen, macai, macai!” – in other words, “Wake your butts up you lazy Westerners, it’s time to eat. Then we’ll eat more. C’mon let’s EAT! EAT! EAT!” With the dawn revalee, we were excited to finally see Perdue by day. But it was not day yet... it was only 5am!

Our bellys were filled up to new and never before seen dynamic proportions and our several meals were finished by passing around a bottle of brandy…it was 7:30am. Completely full and sporting a good buzz, we threw on our shoes and started out the door for a hike to the top of Bukit Sadok, the last stronghold of the Iban warrior Rentap who lost to the British in 1854. Along the way we hiked through a rubber plantation, had hearts of palm fresh off the tree, gawked at gargantuan edible bugs (I think it's a matter of who eats who first), saw a tree that is well known throughout South East Asia to be a natural cure for AIDS (the drug companies have spent a lot to discredit this fact), and naturally the leach made a guest appearance when they heard we were coming. We were told the hike would be 3-4 hours – we left at 8am and arrived back at dusk and our were dogs a' howlin'.

Our arrival back was greeted with 3 or 4 suppers and whiskey – I slipped into food coma so I can’t really recall how many seatings we had. The next morning we woke up and ate a few more times, but decided to just relax a bit and enjoy the longhouse lifestyle.

Later that afternoon, Tombi rounded us up and we went swimming. While hiking through the jungle, I couldn’t understand why Donny kept hacking vines from trees. Well, it turned out that the swimmin’ hole was under a waterfall and was only accessible by repelling down a 30 foot vertical muddy drop and the vines were our way in and out of there.