Fighting Cocks and Jungle Ferns

We took three boats to Gunung Mulu, the serene and beautiful national park deep in the forests of Sarawak, with ancient caves carved deep into Borneo limestone and jagged karst pinnacles towering over the whole.

One of the best things about travelling upriver in Sarawak is watching what folk buy and sell in the trading towns en route.

In Kapit, on the Batang Rejang, you can buy pretty much anything you’d care to think of. From badminton rackets to sofas, from hunting rifles to rubber rings. And sell, too. Upriver folk come down to Kapit in narrow longboats, almost daily, with goodies they have foraged from the forest and the rivers.

They’ll set up a tarp on the fringes of the market. Spread out their produce. And wait, patiently, sometimes three generations at a time, until the goods, or the customers, are all gone.

Like these fern shoots, lovingly sorted into the three different types which sprout, year-round, in the forest. (Cooked, they are crunchy and succulent, like young asparagus with notes of spinach: made into salads, as in the Philippines, or fried up with garlic, shrimp paste, chilli…)

Also: wild ginger, native tobacco, wild banana leaves and the smaller leaves they use for food wrapping, morning glory leaves, wild yams, lengths of bamboo, rattan berries, medicinal barks and roots, river clams, snails, fishes dried and fresh…

One block from Kapit market, in a pedestrian(ish) street aspirationally named “The Mall”, they sell baby chicks, plastic raincoats, wellington boots, schoolbags and cookware.

Oh, and fighting cocks.

The fighting cock salesman was doing good business that day. There were two funerals in progress in nearby Iban longhouses.

Fights to the death between cockerels armed with razor-sharp steel spurs are an essential part of a funeral among this tribe, the largest single ethnic group in Sarawak and the expansionist aggressor in the old head-hunting wars.

This cockerel, not yet fully grown, weighs over two kilos already and will weigh over three when he reaches fighting weight. In cockfighting terms, he’s a prize heavyweight. He has long legs and a long neck, vital for reach.

In Belaga, a town of 2500, yet still a district hub, fighting cocks are big business, too. The breeders keep their cocks tethered on a square of grass not too dissimilar to a village green, and razor off their coxcombs in preparation for their fights.

The squawk and crow of the strutting roosters, straining on their leashes, puffed up, squared up, continues until after nightfall and starts again before dawn.

This is part of the street display at a sort of minimart in Belaga. Besides cigarettes, crisps, tinned fish, dried fish, packet noodles and planta bread rolls, they sell the local stimulants, betel (and accessories), native tobacco and banana leaf rolling papers.

The scungy orange fruit is the fruit of the areca palm. You open it up, carve a chewable chunk out of the woody kernel, smear the green betel leaves with a white, ashy gunk that looks like soap, and bundle the whole lot up with filaments that look like dark saffron and turn your lips and gums a shocking carmine.

The taste is bitter but not unpleasant, tangy, with that alkaloid, nicotine edge. It’s got a surprising kick to it, in fact. Raises your pulse rate. Accelerates your thoughts. It’s surprising the old folk look so meditative on it.

The other thing they sell a lot of in Belaga, whether as reels or individual lengths, is plastic parcel tape.

One of its uses is to individuate the cardboard boxes which head up- and down-river on the roofs of the express boats. But it holds together fences, boardwalks, plankwalks and the crisscrossing network of logs and timber which work as jetties and booms in smaller communities.

Not to mention items which, in the safety-conscious west, might be held together with something more robust. Like, y’know, canisters of inflammable gas.

In Marudi, on the Baram River, in the shadow of one of James Brooke’s wooden forts, a gang of kids, a crane driver and a guy with a forklift loaded up a boat, holed with rust right down to its plimsoll line, with gas for the longhouses upriver.

The one on the boat, smoking (safety first, and all), is maybe fourteen or fifteen. The two securing the lifts to the pallets are three or four years younger.

They’re fascinating, these little towns. Alive with mercantile chaos from 6am. By 3 or 4, the cafes are out of food, the boat terminals shuttered.

After dark? There’s little but the fighting cocks. The odd snooker hall. Perhaps a “karaoke pub” or two. And conceivably the town prostitute, plying the oldest and harshest of trades in the tropical rain.

How To Get To Mulu National Park By Boat

If you have time, the boat trip upriver from Miri to Mulu National Park is well worth doing. There are three boats a day from the Kuala Baram jetty (45 minutes and 30-40RM in a taxi from Miri) to Marudi: at 8am, 11.30am and 3pm (20RM, 2 1/2 hours). Be aware they sometimes leave early.

From Marudi, one boat a day leaves for Long Terawan at noon, arriving around 5pm. The 8am boat from Miri connects directly.

From Long Terawan, a small longhouse community with no formal accommodation, you will need to charter a longboat. The journey to the park takes 1 1/2 hours when the river is high, more when it is low.

Prices are fixed by the park at 250RM for a charter for 1 to 4 people, or 45RM per person with 5 or more in a boat. The boatman will try and charge you more.