by Vanya Vetto
I was really liking where this conversation was going. I really was.
Freddy was right on one account, know they enemy intimately.
‘And somehow, anyhow, go around them,’ he says, 'it’s all we have. The Chinese are good at going around problems. So if we can’t confront them head on we’ll side skirt them.’
A middle finger to tyranny, now that was a good coffee thought.
Then a Thai ladyboy, big tits with nipples that said suck me, walked by. She even had a high forehead to match her very protruding hooters.
The Malays sitting next to me went into a giggle fit.
Harmony, that's all we want around here.
They wanted to double charge me at the James Brooke Gallery.
The cashier was reasonable against my claims that two-tier pricing was disastrous for tourism.
First I told her I was living with my wife here and secondly doing my Ph.D. on James Brooke, the White Raja of Sarawak.
'But please don't tell anyone about this,' she said. It was done on the hush. I even have a stub that says 'local' on it.
Trust me it was a sweet victory.
I told a family of Malaysian Siamese about it. The mother in law said what I did was totally wrong.
'You are a rich farang and can afford to fly here.'
I didn't bother asking her how she got here. She was from Alor Setar in Kedah on the mainland.
What's rude is being charged double the price of locals who by all accounts are probably more cashed up than me.
That was lost on her.
I left it to the spirit of Kuching to right a wrong. They are very reasonable people here.
I told the cashier that James Brooke would be turning in his grave if he knew that you charged more for foreign tourists than the locals.
I added that my grandfather and father both fought for Malaysian independence.
'They are both resting at the war memorial next to the Sawarak Club.'
The cashier was sympathetic.
The Malaysian Siamese was shocked.
She can remain that way. Luckily in Malaysia reason comes before xenophobia.
Sunstroke was threatening to lay me down flat, dead flat.
I know best.
I figured out a shortcut from the Brooke Gallery to the next bridge a couple of hundred yards away. This bridge isn't even updated on google maps, it's that new.
The walk following the roads is about 30 minutes, says the cashier.
I'll cut that to five minutes, says I, full of certainty.
Sure enough, I get lost. I'm cutting through private property. That must be an orchard garden, I'm getting close.
No I'm not.
My bottle of waters spills in my bag. There goes my water supply.
The roads lead all over the place but I can't see the parliament building that's next to the bridge.
It's a maze. I hail down a motorbike. I'm on Astana road, so I'm getting close. But I'm really feeling hot, I'm overheating and the sun is coming down strong. There are a few clouds but too early to cover the sun. I use my bag to protect myself from the sun. But no good.
Then Herman, a Malay, pulls up and says jump on. He takes me down to the bridge. He doesn't want any cash. He's saved my life.
I'm on wobbly feet now. On the tourist street, I rehydrate along the way.
That was a close call. Sunstroke in the tropics can be deadly.
After a good session of Mad Dogs and Englishman in the midday sun, I hit a Seven Eleven to rehydrate.
An enterprising local set up his sex stall, selling mostly 'Made in China' viagra and forest oil that stops you from orgasming early, he was even using the Seven Eleven seat.
The question is where are the whores to practice the merchandise on?
The guy who was grinding his teeth outside another Seven Eleven was inside this one charging his phone.
Hi, I said. He's got bad skin, scabby and scaly. But I'm above judging someone on their bad skin.
He didn't even reply. But nor was he pissed off that I spoke to him.
I had sent him up in another post and was just hoping he hadn't chanced upon it.
He wasn't offended, if indeed he had read my shit, and even started a long discourse on the virtues and pitfalls of Chinese made Viagra.
He took the stuff for the last three months to help cure him of his skin condition. He says the blood thins and reaches parts that are usually clogged up. He says his skin is much better. He's not the only one I've seen with blotches all over his skin. There's either been an outbreak of smallpox or some hard partying on the gear.
He rounds up the warnings on Chinese manufactured Viagra.
'A guy from Sabah died from a stroke.'
Poor bloke.
'While he was fucking a hooker.'
It was a glorious death, he said, but could have been avoided 'if he took moderate dosage.'
I asked him about his planned trip the Philipines.
'How did you know?'
Yep, he was fried.
Things are getting weirder by the minute.
Sarawak didn't become part of Malaysia until 1963, reluctantly six years after Malaysia achieved Independence status.
It doesn't want to be part of a federation. There's resistance.
Everyone speaks English, then add Malay, or Chinese, or even local Iban or a slew of Chinese dialects. It's a fifty fifty break down, but English must be used. It's almost like showing off. 'Isn't that amazing' then more of the local language, and then, sneakily interjected, ' I just can't wait.'
I thought they were doing it for my sake. Aren't us travelers vain and glorious bastards?
I don't think we can work together, I told the sales lady. The clothes were too small.
It got a laugh out of them. They understood me.
I have a complaint to make, I told Georgina at Pizza Hut.
She looked at me gravely.
'Your food was too delicious.'
I had warned them that I"m one of these types of tourists who love nothing better than getting on their website and giving feedback.
Then the two ladies waiting for their pizza went into a giggle fit.
They actually thought it was funny.
I actually thought it was funny.
But the lady at another shirt shop didn't think it was funny when I applied for a job there when the advertisement outside clearly stated they wanted a female sales lady.
What it really wanted was a young white skinned Iban with big tits. But you have to read into these kind of adds.
Alex was talking into a microphone.
'Cheap and great quality clothes,' he repeated over and over.
Hello, I said, as I stopped at a garish clothes shop that stocked mostly sticky polyester merchandise, which wouldn't even qualify as thirds at a Chinese rag trade.
He had three hot staff working for him, young, white and the type that makes you dip into your wallet even if you don't want to.
Alex and I went outside for a smoke.
For the next ten minutes he showed me pictures of himself, him in Boracay, him in Crabie, him in Jakarta, him in the jungle, him having a picnic with his friend.
But before he showed me that last picture, he showed me pictures of five jeeps, three Harleys, a Jaguar (or was it two Porsches?), and trail bikes. He even pointed out the one parked outside his shop.
'That's mine.'
He said his friend in the picture was into import-export.
I said surely you can't make that much dough selling clothes. Given, he had three shops.
'I move cargo too.'
So did his friend.
He's now investing in legitimate businesses like real estate and hotels.
I didn't want to know much more.
Back off, I said.
'Please don't tell me how you really make your money.'
I know it sounded lame but it worked.
The conversation got around to Iban, the local natives of Borneo, known f
or their Christian beliefs, white skin, and big boobs.
'Get an invite to a longhouse,' he says. 'Then buy a week's worth of pork and chicken. Then eat with them. Then fuck their woman folk. It would be cheaper than staying in town and paying for a whore.'
Great advice.
But I've got to wait till June, he says, 'when they go back to their villages.'
I was minding my own business drinking a coffee when a Chinese with dyed black hair that screamed 'I'M A DIRTY OLD MAN' asked me if I'd like to play with women.
A tribe of sexy dark-skinned Dyak had just exited the duck shop.
Come over here Michael, I said.
He goes by the name of Michael West.
'Only when I'm on the prowl.'
I was only on my first coffee after an arvo siesta, but I could tell he was a kindred spirit with a few more interesting stories than race dialectics which was becoming quite a boring and dangerous topic for me.
He shows me a photo of him with a whore in Pontianak in Indonesia, 'an eight-hour bus ride from Kuching,' he informs.
Or a forty minute plane ride, I winked.
'Cheap, very cheap. I've been there ten times.'
He shows me more photos of his trophy fucks on his phone. In every picture, he's wearing a ten-gallon Texan cowboy hat.
If ever there was a cowboy of Borneo, Michael Lu is him.
'I only use my whoring name when I'm the prowl.'
Michael West is his handle on We Chat where he sources the latest young Chinese arrivals.
He's down from Sibu, about 100 kilometers upriver where the longhouses and hot Iban chicks become thicker.
He says they don't charge you to enter longhouses like they do here at the cultural village that's on the outskirts of Kuching.
'And you might get an offer from a hot Iban chick,' he says.
Free?
'No, a price needs to be negotiated.'
He says they like big foreigners like me.
I can tell he's looking for a whoring partner.
'And cigarettes are cheaper,' he adds, 'so is food and hotel prices.'
He's hot on prices. I'm hot on cheap prices too. We really do have a lot in common.
But the Chinese whores are not cheap, he says and shows me a picture of a young thing from Guiyang in Central China, who works at a KTV Karaoke joint, saying she charges him 240 Ringgit.
'And she won't lower her prices.'
She's back in China now but will return in a few days, says Michael. Air Asia fly directly to Shenzhen daily.
'Every Whore Can Fly.'
Michael chuckles.
'So there's no shortage of Chinese whores,' I add.
Michael just adored that thought.
Someones making good cash, I say 'and it's not us.'
He's heading back on the hydrofoil tomorrow.
He hands me a packet of Greek cigarettes and says I'm welcome to come with him.
He points at the Long House Hotel down the road.
'100 Ringgit a shot,' he says.
I was drinking a coffee there the other day. My instincts are serving me well.
While these positive stories of ethnic harmony keep flowing, I’ll do my best to report them.
It’s the very least I can do.
I asked Michael if knew John West?
He scratched his head.
He's a fisherman and a popular seafood label in Australia supermarkets.
Michael was sold, so much that enquired where he could buy the outfit.
I said you can buy anything online and I'll catch you later Chunky.
He was sold on his new nickname too.
John West, the Chunky fisherman.
I could just imagine that being a hit in the longhouses.
Our cross-cultural exchange was over for now. Ideas were shared and the only currency that changed hands was information.
So next time you see a Chinaman wearing a sou'wester Fisherman's hat in a cathouse in a longhouse in the jungles of Borneo...
....Say hello, he won't bite.
Into The Heart of Borneo by Redmond O'Hanlon starts out his epic journey of bird watching and general bumbling with a visit from his professor in a thin-walled Chinese hotel room in Kuching. If he was hallucinating, it must have been a mild one.
Eurocentrism has no place in Borneo where every experience is new and visceral.
My version was quaintly real when a local jumped through my ceiling.
‘Oh sorry, wrong room,' he said.
He said he had lost his key and Mohammed, the hotel staff who looked a lot like Lurch, the Malay version, directed the drunk back to his room and placed the ladder in front of his door so he could do the monkey act all over again.
He actually had left his key in the room.
'Sorry, wrong room mister,' apologized Lurch. They are a pretty polite bunch Borneo way.
Michael West appeared from the room next to mine.
‘I’ll go back tomorrow,’ he said.
He was checking out the whores at the Long House Hotel.
‘They have Mitayu also.’
They are the local Dyaks, so much for the locals not selling themselves.
It only takes a bit of snooping around.
Michael is devoted to it.
He pulls out a sachet from his pocket.
‘I better take it now.’
I read the instructions, not idea for pregnant women and people with high blood pressure.
It’s a coffee beverage to give you a lift in other ways.
‘Only 7 Ringgit,’ he says.
He leaves me and returns to his room to take his ‘hard-on’ medicine.
He’s back in five minutes.
‘I found a room for 40 Ringgit.’
He’s waiting for a friend so decided to postpone his trip back to Sibu today.
I’m not playing guess his occupation but he’s a prime candidate for pimping the local massage parlours of his hometown.
Hey, I’m the last person to past judgment.
I’ve really got to get out of my hotel and do the rounds.
Did I tell you that Michael introduced himself as John West and was wearing a yellow fisherman’s hat?
Of course, I didn’t. I’m prone to making things up.
Michael West was real. He wasn’t a hallucination. You just can’t make up characters like that, even if you wanted too.
They’d go puff up in smoke like O'Hanlon's spectre of his Oxford professor.
I kid you not, Michael West is a writer of erotic tales.
I didn’t find this out until after I went with him checking out that cheap room around the corner.
The room was tiny and the television was stolen from it. Michael was going to rent it for 40 Ringgit.
‘Dirty,’ he says to the receptionist in Chinese.
‘Looks like someone was fucked senseless during menstruation,’ I said.
The sheetless mattress had dried blood stains on it.
Michael played with the flimsy door handle.
‘No television and suspect security,’ he says, ‘so drop the price from 40 Ringgit to 35.’
'I'll have to ask my boss,' says the receptionist, who was Chinese too, in his early fifties.
Michael is the King of bargains, I say.
We walk out of the hotel. The first-floor corridor is about 5 foot 11 inches. I instinctively stoop my head. It's a curious sensation being so close to the ceiling.
'Looks like a corridor for dwarfs,' I say.
'More like hot Indonesian hookers,' says Michael who meets me at The Longhouse Hotel five minutes later.
'Dirty hotel,' he says. I gather he didn't get the discount.
'But I sold the receptionist two books.'
He pulls out the cheaply printed books that he had done in Sibu.
It was series, The Period Stories, 1-7, and he handed me one.
Inside it was erotic cartoons and pictures of the author with trophy shots of the women he has fucked.
/> 'The receptionist really jealous,' he says as he takes out his tea bag from his cup,'only cost ten cents.'
I had already paid for his drink and handed over 5 Ringgit for his book.
'Usually sell for 12 Ringgit,' he says and shows me the price printed on the book.
He says most people only dream of what he does.
And they obviously want to read about his exploits too.
He makes his living roaming the tea houses selling his books.
And I can't read Chinese so 5 Ringgit was the agreed price.
Michael likes the chubby Indonesian who runs the drink counter.
He's got his sights on her.
He didn't check into my hotel, the rooms for full.
'Many government officials in town' says the bubbly Iban receptionist from my hotel.
She tells me Michael has checked into The Long House Hotel.
I'll know where to find him.
He should be a happy man.
There's bound to be material for book eight. I'm just hoping that I don't appear in it.
Thomas was his name and he was half Chinese and Dyak.
His wife sold beads down at the riverside.
I told him about my trip over the river to the James Brooke Fort.
As the crow flies it was only 300 meters to the new bridge from the Fort. It changes colors in the evening. Next to it is the parliament house that looks like a king's crown. At night, it glows a regal gold, reflecting itself off the inky blackness of the Sarawak.
The suspense bridge sways. Modelled on a bamboo footbridge, it's three hundred meters of coiling concrete, pylons, platforms and concrete bases. It's a weird earthquake simulated sensation having tonnes of concrete underneath your feet swaying. It's riding the rapids above the river.
I'll make it to the new bridge, no sweat, I think.
While walking up to the Fort, I passed a dilapidated building on the left and roaming jungle on the right. The sign to the James Brooke Fort was on the ground. I guess I took the wrong turn. The Malay guy was friendly enough so I didn't see any reason to leg it back to the pier.
The area was isolated. I even filmed it, waiting to be mugged. The perils, I thought, just to see a lousy fort.