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Hi everyone,
Well this is it...our last day
We're currently in a beautiful little city called Kuching. We said goodbye to our group yesterday evening after a bit of a rave in a local bar/club. We were both a bit choked because we've made some wonderful friends but we're definately gonna stay in touch with them all.
Our last adventure on our trip was a 2 night stay in a longhouse with the Iban tribe - the original Headhunter tribe - they used to kill people with blowpipes and chop off their heads, it was a sign of masculinity and the more heads you had the more chance you would marry! It was certainly an experience to say the least...it was basically a long smelly wooden shack. There were about 8 families living there. Each family had their own room in the house and they would spend their days sitting out on the corridor weaving or carving. There were lots of cute kids running around and one little old guy who was 93 and still very active, he was amazing. The women didn't wear any underwear, just a sarong (!!), and we couldn't work out where they would all go to toilet as they never used the squat that we had to use...it was a bit of a mystery but we concluded that the river might have been the most likely option. We slept on the corridor floor with the chickens, mangey dogs and cats, mossies and cockcroaches and would be woken at 3am every morning to the sound of 'cock-a-doodle-doooo' until sunrise at 6.30am, by which time the Iban people had woken up and turned on the radio full blast (despite the very basic living conditions they still had a huge satellite dish outside, a TV and a stereo that churned out lots of hip hop!!).
We made friends with an old guy called Edward who spent his days and nights carving beautiful statues. Whilst we were there he was making a statue of a headhunter, it was amazing to watch him at work. He managed to finish it on the last day we were there so we told him we'd like to buy it...he was thrilled! We named the statue Woody, we've just gotta get him through customs now, apparently immigration don't like you bringing wooden items into the country...fingers crossed Woody will make it!
There wasn't an awful lot to do there, they have a very relaxed pace of life. We spent most of our time playing card games and trying to catch up on our sleep, but we weren't very successful at the latter. We had a bit of a party on the first night involving 30 bottles of rice wine, but fortunately we only had a little sample, but even that was enough to make us feel slightly dizzy - we're such lightweights, and we did go for a walk (trek!!!) to a waterfall where I nearly fell off a cliff...but thats another story!
Anyway, despite the hygiene issues, the smell and hard wooden floors we had to sleep on it was and amazing experience and the food was delicious. All the Iban people were very friendly and welcoming and did look after us during our stay - we've never eaten so many cakes, fruit and bowls of rice and noodles.
Well thats it!!! Awwwww, we don't wanna leave!!!! We're gonna miss this beautiful place, the lush hot sunny weather and the wonderfully friendly Malaysian people. Its been such an amazing adventure, but it'll also be good to see you all again. We've got so much more to tell you all, more than we had time to write on here and we've got some fab photos. We're still got some photos and videos that we're gonna upload when we get home so keep checking back. Thanks for all your messages, they've been a real comfort to us when ever we felt a bit home sick.
See you all soon, lots of love, T and M, the Borneo Babes xxxxx
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