Post-HFH...Carl, here I come!

The long house experience was also pretty cool, though the transportation required to get us there was not so cool. "It's all about expectations!" We heard that many times in school in our MO classes, and I firmly believe it anyway. We thought the transportation was going to be a 4-5-hour bus ride; instead it was a 3 hour bus ride that was made into a 6 hour bus ride because we had a guide who decided/was instructed to stop a number of times on the way to see (what in my and most of the group's opinion were) trivial/annoying tourist sites. Then despite voicing an interest in getting to the Hilton resort more quickly, we continued with the stops and then missed the 3pm boat and had to wait for the 4pm boat to get across the lake to the resort. Mutiny. I had a brief go at some mediation between cranky co-workers and the leaders, with mild success; everyone was also better after a swim and an excellent buffet dinner.

The long house itself was pretty interesting. To some extent it replicated some of the other hill tribe tours we've done (akin to a human zoo). However, this group had a chief who seemed like the real deal. When long house tribe chiefs first become chief, they tour around to the various villages under their purview and at each point hear a different part of lore from the village elders and with that exchange receive a tattoo. By the end of the tour their entire upper body is covered, as was the current 73-year-old chief's. He seemed like a pretty extraordinary guy, though my attempts at communicating with him through our guide (who was still annoyed with us from our "pushiness" the previous day) were rebuffed. (Every time I would ask the guide to ask the chief something, the guide would answer for him, regardless of how much I clarified that I understood the precedent but was interested in hearing this chief's exact words (and watching his reactions, etc.)). I was mostly interested in hearing how he has seen his leadership responsibilities change over the course of the decades as his tribe went from head hunting (yup, like some of the Indonesian tribes, these practiced raids of their neighbors and staked the skulls of their enemies at the village entrance) to tour hosting (every day welcoming another group of farangs (foreigners, usually white people). He seemed genuinely pleased to have us there and excited to show us their ways. Most of the women seemed very angry all the time, though the guide insisted that they were happy, despite their dark faces.

The Hilton was also a nice break. We swam, lounged, played pool, played mafia and generally relaxed. I also discovered a minor travel crisis in which my flights from Kuching to KL and then to Bangkok were booked with 5 minutes of layover time. Oops. So I asked Kris and Seth whether I could jump on with the Canadians for the early shuttle to the airport. Instead, the whole group rallied to leave the resort early - I think it fit others' schedules, but no doubt it was also to make my life easier, and I greatly appreciated that. In the end, I was able to go on an earlier flight (purchased an entirely new ticket; nice, Air Asia), made my connection to Bangkok, and one hour after landing was checked into the ridiculously nice Novotel, where I spent only 10 hours (don't figure out the hourly rate), but got very clean and had an excellent night sleep.

Then, on to Krabi and my long lost boyfriend!

written by  GoBlue on July 21, 2007 from Bangkok, Thailand
from the travel blog: Joc's Journeys
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