KEY POINTS:
In the minutes before you realise how foolish you are being, you could imagine yourself as Martin Sheen going up-river to seek out the mad Marlon Brando: the prow of the longboat pushing through muddy water, humid jungle steaming its way down to the riverbanks, bowing branches and vines hanging so low you have to duck ...
Here and there are sudden and unexpected clearings, smoke from unknown fires exhaling through the jungle canopy, a fleeting glimpse of a wooden hut on stilts, a shadowy figure disappearing into an impenetrable barricade of trees.
This is central Sarawak, some six hours' drive on an increasingly deserted ribbon of road from the capital Kuching to the Lemanak River, near the border with Indonesian Borneo.
The drive - and my sweat-drenched 30-minute up-river journey later - is to a longhouse belonging to the Iban people.
Within the living memory of their elders, these people were headhunters - a practice most texts say ended in the 1930s. But Japanese soldiers fleeing Kuching at the end of WWII fell to arrows and poisoned blow-darts - then to the cutting blade of the people of this region.
Indeed, three blackened skulls hang in a basket from a roof beam in the Serubah longhouse, which holds 20-odd families and about 200 people. They share a common area, which disappears towards a distant point lost in the darkness inside.
I am the only visitor to this longhouse and my local guide, Richard (not his real name, presumably), tells me that today the Iban's young people have embraced Christianity.
Kitsch Jesus reproductions on the wall of some homes within the longhouse attest to this - but many of the older folk still observe traditional practices.
I am introduced to Unting, the shaman. He is a wiry, witty and wise-looking 87-year-old who cheerfully explains his many blue tattoos: the traditional hibiscus flowers and the facing hornbills on his upper chest because they are the symbols of Sarawak, the snake on his leg a reminder of three years in Sabah to the north.
He laughs and points to the thick markings beneath his chin and down his throat. They are for protection, he says with a warm smile, but were the most painful.
He shuffles off and returns with tattoo instruments - darning needles tied to the end of a stick which are tapped into the flesh.
He holds them in his horny, blue-veined hands with all the gentleness one might offer a rare feather.
Later, a handsome and lean octogenarian introduces himself. He is so revered that Richard, who speaks this dialect, refers to him only as Tuairumah, chief of the house. When Tuairumah shakes my hand, I can't help but notice the expensive-looking watch on his other wrist.
He tells me I am welcome in the place of his people and they are pleased to share what they have.
And that seems considerable. The land around the longhouse is productive: corn, bananas, cucumber, the ever-important betel nut still favoured by the old people, distinctive black Sarawak pepper seeds - dried in the heat of the afternoon sun on the long veranda - and rubber tapped from trees. A menacing cloud of blue-brown smoke rising across the river is evidence of an another important crop. And it signals a problem.
All through this region, people are felling and burning the jungle to plant fields of rice, a rotation crop which accounts for those sudden clearings on the journey up-river.
By nightfall, the sky has an insipid yellow glow above the jungle canopy and the women in the longhouse are engaged in an animated discussion.
It seems people from nearby longhouses are burning the jungle for a rice field, but haven't asked their permission. The consensus among the womenfolk is that the headman and others will need to have a council with their neighbours.
There is much gesturing - the headman's wife the most visibly agitated. She talks at her husband for many uninterrupted minutes, then leaves.
The old man looks weary as we drink fermented rice wine. Women and children disappear behind the rattan walls to their homes, the old men sit and sip. There is much nodding and head-shaking, but little is verbalised. I nod too.
This longhouse has another source of income beyond crops: an increasing stream of buses from Kuching bring tourists into this region.
Late in the day, while swimming with the children, I have seen groups of middle-aged, camera-laden visitors in the narrow boats ploughing up the swiftly flowing Lemanak to other longhouses on this stretch of river.
The children wave furiously, flash their grilles of perfect teeth and have their photographs taken by zoom lenses.
Maybe back home in Berlin or Boston, as they recall their trip up the dirty river, these visitors might wonder who that strange white face among the nut-brown children belongs to.
It isn't a comfortable journey up-river. The Lemanak is unforgiving: sudden eddies appear, there are patches of ominous calm, huge tree stumps rear up at odd angles, and unpredictable depths and shallows are signalled by stretches of churning water.
As we sit on the veranda in the strength-sapping humidity, Richard tells me of the four tourists in a longboat which capsized: the two women managed to hold on to low vines until they were rescued, but the two men had raincoats over their life-jackets and were dragged down the river.
Their bodies were found three days later and the Iban wouldn't use this important section of their river until a shaman could release the troubled spirits.
These ancient practices appear to remain uncompromised by tourism.
However, the desultory performance of the hornbill dance for my benefit by the headman, another old fellow, and two women - all in traditional costume and accompanied by a small orchestra of women playing tuned gongs - suggests that culture and commerce now co-exist uneasily.
I am more comfortable when Tuairumah sits and drinks rice wine afterwards, none of us saying much.
By saying less I learn more: the mats covered in cultural takeaways - masks, carvings and the like - which are neatly displayed on old newspapers on the longhouse floor aren't made by these people. They come from Indonesian artisans across the border.
And the Iban today, despite their seemingly remote location, have cellphone coverage - although it's limited. In Tuairumah's living room, the large lounge suite is still wrapped in plastic and he owns an impressively large television.
Late at night, Unting tells me the Iban like visitors.
In accordance with tribal tradition, guests are encouraged to bring gifts for the longhouse and, on the way here, I have been guided by Richard as to what is appropriate.
We pull in at a small marketplace-cum-lunchstop and he buys a large plastic bag containing 40 packets of instant noodles and sealed bags of lollies for the children.
I wonder aloud about his choice, but he is insistent and says the children will be delighted.
I say I don't doubt it, but he is confused by my discomfort at these gifts, which is founded in the inevitable consequences of lollies and instant noodles - which I later suspect are traded back to the shop unopened. Perhaps this is a trading convenience and social gesture in which everyone wins?
The children seem like kids anywhere: the boys and I flounder in the river using balloons and an inner tube as cheap flotation devices, other kids take hours of pleasure in handmade kites and run the length of the veranda hauling them into the ash-filled air.
It is still officially the dry season, but a deafening seven-hour downpour which kicks off at 3am gives the lie to that.
It is hard to imagine what it might be like here in the jungle during monsoon season, when such torrential rain will fall for days, if not weeks, and the Lemanak will rise 3m or 4m.
Even on this saturating morning which washes the sky clean, the river climbs measurably up the banks and the incessant warm rain turns rivulets into torrents. Everyone stays indoors, except for an old man who shows me how to use a blowpipe.
Later, I sit in a doorway watching the fighting cocks huddle in the corner of their pens as a longboat of tourists wrapped up against the downpour bounces past, slapping against the roiling, muddy waters of the Lemanak.
Tomorrow, Richard says, a tour group of about 20 English tourists - carrying noodles and lollies, I suppose - is coming here from the new Hilton Batang Ai Longhouse Resort.
He says the resort is just 30 minutes away from the the shabby village of Sebeliau, where we boarded the longboat to come up-river, in what was once a remote and dangerous corner of Sarawak.
As we watch the river rise, I can't help but think: The horror! The horror!
Apocalypse soon.
* Graham Reid travelled to Sarawak courtesy of House of Travel and Tourism Malaysia.
GETTING THERE
A two-day/one-night Lemanak River Safari from Kuching is available through House of Travel from $179 per person (based on a minimum of two people travelling) which includes transport to and from the river and the longboat journey. The best time to travel is May-August, which is the dry season.
LONGHOUSE STAYS
There are a number of options for longhouse stays in Sarawak which can be added on to any visit to Kuching, the capital. A number of airlines fly to Kuching from Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Kota Kinabalu in Sabah.
The upriver trip is ideal for those interested in culture and local fauna and flora. Travellers should take comfortable clothing and sturdy footwear, a light pack and possibly wet weather gear.
MORE INFORMATION
Contact House of Travel on 0800 838747, or visit www.houseoftravel.co.nz.
