This place was AWESOME! I am glad and so very grateful to the people of the Kampung for allowing us to stay and making us feel so welcome in their village. We stayed for 3 nights in one of the ‘units’ of the original longhouse, during a celebration called Gawai Dayak. Gawai Day is held on the 1st June (though the festival lasts a few days) every year across Sarawak and is both a religious and social event where many of the members of the kampung who now live elsewhere return home for the celebration. I think it is basically a harvest festival. A thanksgiving day for good crop.
The kampung itself is an amazing place. There are many things done the way I imagine they were done long ago, and yet the modern world has certainly made an impact. We watched a lady sorting pepper on a large mat, tossing it and picking bits out of it, I guessed, like her great-great-great-grandmother would have done. People were cooking out the back of the longhouse in fire pits. Chickens were plucked and cleaned just outside the back door. And yet the whole village had electricity. Some of the units had fridges and tvs. But, strangely, no hot water. The water comes from the hills. Cold? A saying regarding balls and brass monkeys comes to mind.
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