Longhouse Trip

On Wednesday this week I set off with other 3 ladies in our Prado to explore a little of the Miri hinterland, first looking for the road to Marudi (a longer trip for another time) and also visit a longhouse. Margreet has visited this longhouse several times and found the community to be a very welcoming one. I was really keen to visit with someone who was known to the community. After lunch and with darkening skies we drove down a very torterous graded road with some quite bad wash outs. Since I am used, from Oman days, to always travelling in convoy I must confess to feeling a little exposed! The black clouds looming didn't do anything to reassure me either!

However the jouney wasn't too long - less than an hour from Miri and about 20 minutes off the blacktop. Margreet was surprised and delighted to see the village had got a new boardwalk built to make their walk from the road easier, complete with its own rain shelter.

This is the village itself, as we approached, and this is the inside of the longhouse. 35 families stay under this one roof. You can see the doors into each apartment running down the left hand side. As we walked in people came to meet us from away down the end of this very long house!!!

The ladies that met us were really friendly and accepted our visiting gifts. We were invited to have a look around outside and were encourged to go and see the school. A young teenage lad whose English was really good came along to answering any of our questions.

This is the back of the longhouse and this is a classroom. We were encourged to go in and speak to the teachers and pupils. This is the English class.

And you can see even from the messages hanging over the classroom doors we were welcome!

But then the real fun began. First we were invited for juice and to share the cakes we had brought, but then we were invited to move again to see the majors house - the middle apartment - nicely furnished. Reminded me of Shapinsay homes when I was a girl, except that there was a very large colour TV in evidence! And then the tuak came out! Rice wine, at least this batch stored in Glenfiddich bottles!


Since I was driving and by this time the rain was torrential I thought it politic that we leave although they were keen that we stay. We had to sign the visitors book and shake everyones hand. You could see from the book they don't have many visitors - there had been no-one for months and so our stop was something of note, or so we were made to feel. A lovely village and a lovely people.