Some sites....

Pineapples on peat. (Grow well and well delicious.)

Fishing on peat. (She was pulling out some corkers.)

Person on peat. (Poor man was confused by the very slow growth and death of some of his plants on the subsided peat. But no alternative land for him.)

A very big tree in Lambir Hills National Park.

The stoical Priestesses swinging at Bidayu Gawai celebrations.

Sarawak does spectcular sunsets, and clouds in general.

My sandwiches. (And a few trapped flies, and ants.)

A ridiculously sugary coffee-based drink ("Kopi special") that I thought I needed at 4am, after 6 hours of beer.

Some of the dudes. Khoon, Mr Groom, to my left. All quite drunken.

Back to the Bubble.

And so my trip to the swamps of Sarawak is over. It was a bit of a shock (although I shouldn't have expected otherwise) to arrive back to rain and a 15oC drop in temperature! It's quite nice not being sweaty the whole time though.

Post catching-up-on sleep (not one of my fortes), I'll sit down and think about what I've learnt and how I might make a coherent story out of it, who the main characters will be, what illustrations I'll do, etc. I need to do some retrospective methodology fitting too! Although I didn't manage quite as many interviews as I'd hope, I've certainly been so fortunate with the ones I did manage, and learnt so much more from them than I was expecting. I hope I do my interviewees, my protagonist - peat, and the orangutans, justice in the write-up.

And now for a few last pre-trip-ending anecdotes....

On my way back west, I spent one day in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It was hectic. I flew in from Sarawak around 9pm, and got on a bus, where an inconspicuous Chinese business man saw I was struggling to do some reading by the light of my mobile phone and so lent me a little torch light, that he later said I should have - it was on-par with a torch that you would get in a cracker, but super bright and I was a bit overcome by his act of perceptiveness/kindness/communication with a dishevelled white girl. Perhaps off my guard from this act of generosity, I then got completely ripped off by a taxi driver, who was going to charge me about 6 times too much to drop me at my guesthouse. I was a fool, if ever I was a fool! I only ended up only paying 4 times too much (he gave pity because I was a student, apparently), but got quite upset with him. I don't think his Mummy would have been proud at that moment. Then I had to walk down a dodgy street to get to my accomodation, as he said there was too much traffic to take me right to it. Anyway, an important lesson for me - read advice, take note of it, and don't be so gullable! The following day, now very much on my guard, I had a bizarre experience with a Chinese taxi driver. He was very interested in what I was up to, my movements, and then told me to pay what I felt was right for the ride, before giving me a hug. I was a little creeped out, to say the least. I've recycled his business card. I think there is still much I have to learn about dealing with taxi drivers.

Other than being anxious in taxis, I did two interviews whilst in that big city of oil. One with a very interesting lady from the Global Environment Centre, who's about to start a PhD basically doing what I'm doing, but without the pollen part and with three years of interviews instead of three weeks. The other was with Khoon's boss (oh, the power of contacts!) at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board headquarters. He wasn't full of propaganda, as I had anticipated (whilst remaining objective as an interviewer, ofcourse), and surprised me with his opinions. We had a long chat about his experience in Bangor, Wales, for his Masters! Apparently there's a community of Malaysians there. The MPOB kingdom lies in a relatively new part of the vast city: Putrajaya. I was awestruck driving through - if looked like a computer-simulated Hollywood set, with enormous elaborate buildings, that I can only imagine are half-full at most, and consume a forest a day's equivalent in air-conditioning energy....there was an oil palm haze about the place. Quite a spectacle. Street vendors are not allowed within several miles of it. The same applies to rats and I presume, any form of creepy crawly, especially Daddy Long Legses. Malaysia is an incredible place.

And peat swamp forest is an amazing important part of it. Please spread the word.

Belated Bingo.

I found a massive new area of rapidly deforesting peat swamp today, full of exciting little agricultural plots, oil palm plantations, swiftlet houses, coconut groves and a mixture of peoples. Shame I'm leaving tomorrow.

I also had an interview with a Lecturer and some of his students at Bintulu University. I turned up, Sarawakian hand-shake, then got led into his full class of Masters students, and had to stand at the front whilst they giggled at my Englishness. I was somewhat embarrassed....especially when the Lecturer, an imported Dr of Forestry from Indonesia (I thought no-one liked Indonesians here), asked if any of the students had any questions other than if I was married. Perhaps a bit inappropriate?! They then fed me breakfast, which helped me to forgive him. I think Sarawak could do with a few more Peat Professors (if such a thing exists). I wasn't enormously inspired.

Tonight I ate salad and tofu whilst the boys ate a dinner consisting solely of barbequed meat and beer (no salad, no carbs) for the second night in a row. I long to feed them vegetables.

After three pretty hectic, pretty days, wedding fever is mellowing (although I'm feeling a bit fever-ish now - self-induced). The wedding itself was last night and wonderful! An evening of merriment under palm trees at the edge of the South China Sea. The ceremony was very informal (the whole Sarawakian formal-informal thing is something I've still not quite got to grips with), with the Best Man doing a forward roll into his position and everyone else dancing in - a nice change from the norm! - and there was beer on-tap for about 2 hours beforehand. There doesn't seem to be an inappropriate time for beer consumption out here. I was mostly on the tuak (local rice wine), which is maybe the reason for the dodgy head I seem to have today! And, to name but a few happenings, there was some karaoke, Khoon's adopted cousin from the Kelabit Highlands doing a traditional dance, finishing with a blow-pipe and balloons party-trick (someone kindly pulled me out of his line of fire), noodles, white roses, jack fruit, some very emotional moments initiated by the beautiful Japanese Bride (Yukari), and much bare-foot dancing. A merry time seemed to be had by all. A great mix of cultures and people on one warm beach.

The last few days has been pretty hectically fun too. I was bathing in a waterfall in Lambir Hills National Park by 10am on Thursday with a bunch of the international buddies of Khoon and Yukari. After an hour's climb to get to it, and literally pouring sweat for most of the way (I'm finding it difficult to only 'glow' here), it was so amazingly refreshing. A magical oasis in the jungle. And I avoided the leeches yet again - they really have something against me, as I've never got one despite my different times in the sweaty tropics. I guess I shouldn't feel unwanted and just be grateful. Khoon pulled a couple from between his toes, but then he was only wearing flip-flops (show-off), and I had my beautiful polker-dot leech socks on. Sorry not to have a photo.

Post de-sweating, I had another attempt at cookies with Mrs Khoon. Less sugar and a more thorough cooking this time. They got the thumbs up....but prolonged baking meant I arrived late for an interview with another plantation company. The two ladies (first time I've had an interview with women, especially in their high-up positions) were so welcoming, despite me keeping them on late, and had a lot of interesting things to say about planting oil palm on peat. Contrary to previous interviews, they were preaching about its merits. Very interesting indeed. There goes that conclusion.

That was my last interview of the week, as Friday was a write-off, with an 8am wake-up call for me to go and make sandwiches (after going to bed at 3:30ish). I don't think they would have passed Minstead Cricket Match quality control, but I managed to over-cater, massively, so there's no change there. They were for the tennis tournament on Friday afternoon: an informal many-aside match. I hit the ball atleast 5 times in an hour and a half, which I was pretty proud about, and somehow won a trophy for it. I think it was a sympathy award though, since there were so many of my sandwiches and cookies left. I ate as many as I could to reduce the numbers and demonstrate that they were edible. Atleast I can be proud returning to the UK having won a trophy for my great nation in an international competition. Then, completely exhausted/almost hallucinatory (a word?), I was planning on an early night....so foolishly called up my buddy Kelvin, to see if he had plans for a mellow drink....and ended up staying out until 4am. I should've known better - he's not a light drinker, and since he has the car, one is encouraged to also not be a light drinker. And for some reason it was my birthday, so I was obligued to enjoy the flaming Sambuca they got me. Atleast it wasn't more beer, I guess.

I did manage to get up and run in the morning, in the hope I might sweat out some of the night's over-enjoyment. And, since it's so much cheaper here and I'm sort-of on 'holiday' (this weekend anyway), I treated myself to a massage. It was incredible. Communication with the lady doing it was a challenge (she was a beautiful Thai), but she managed to convey her enthusiasm for my running, having seen me out in the mornings. One of three pieces of evidence to make me think I might be the only person who runs in this town. The second piece of evidence is that I've seen the other runner running around a lot, almost once a day it feels like, and one morning, at ridiculous o'clock (the hour preceeding melting o'clock), we bumped into each other out....err....running, and stopped for a bit of runners' chit chat. We both admitted to seeing each other running about. It's funny how runners seem to be always running - there's a guy in Oxford who seems to always be running when I see him at various different times of the day, but then I'm always running too, and I don't run all the time....so perhaps the only logical conclusion is that running is magic. The third piece of evidence is that I've not seen anyone else running.

No running tomorrow though - I'm in a new location, Bintulu (a cowboy town south along the coast from Miri), and have a couple of interviews tomorrow, so bed time for bozoes. A few more days to gather peat-related anecdotes and enjoy this bewildering wonderland and its fine people.

Fantastic wedding adventure - tick. I'm a very fortunate (if a little knackered) peat swamp conservator.

Afternoon tea

Today, over afternoon (sweet)tea, and sago biscuits (almost as good as scones), in the longhouse, I debated the future with two Iban men. Here are a few of the more memorable snippets from our long, cross-legged, slightly fly-bothered converse:
- the fruit in Sarawak is coming to an end because of climate change and the disappearance of flying foxes, which act(ed) as pollinators,
- "the next generation just care less",
- "money is a disease".

It wasn't the first time i've heard these things said on this trip. And they're pretty obvious facts out here. But probably also everywhere to some extent and under the same 'opportunities'. But as Sam-The-Great of Endiba says: "it'll all be alright in the end; if it's not alright, it's not the end". I presume this holds across different spatial and temporal scales? I guess we'll see. Challenging challenges for our generation.

Oh, and "start at school": education, education, education.

Cookies.

After locating a plug-in oven and sweeping two supermarkets, I had a trial run tonight at making cookies for Khoon's wedding. That's one of my official roles - making the cookies. My other role is dealing with the wedding cake. Khoon presumed the Minstead cricket-match catering and my sweet tooth/teeth make me eligible for these jobs. Anyway, Khoon's Mum and next door neighbour were eager to find out what a 'cookie', Western-style is, so they watched as I made. I went for the all-American stodge cookie - lots of butter, lots of sugar, a bit gooey in the middle, quite yum - and for once they turned out right (I think because I didn't stinge on the butter as I usually do, in my country). But oh, how wrong they were: too under-cooked, yet a bit too brown on the bottom (almost burnt, they feared, I think), far far too large, too sweet, basically too much. So I made them a tenth of the size in the subsequent batches, cooked them till they were biscuit-like in crunch, and said I'd reduce the sugar load for the real deal. It was a good experience for me in trying not to take things personally. Different people like different cookies....and that's OK. And back-seat drivers are also OK.

It also made me think that if I become disillusioned so much by trying to figure out peat swamp forest conservation, it might be quite interesting to research differences in baked biscuits around the world and how size, shape, ingredients, etc. reflect deeper cultural characteristics. As exemplified, the Chinese in Malaysia like them small, hard and mild. The Americans: big, gooey and sweet. Hmmm.

For now, back to the peat.

Hospitality nation.

In the last day, I've been fed in five different houses, six different times. The last house, the Aunt of my friend cooked for over 20 people at lunch and then cooked again for 7 of us this evening. It was delicious and plentiful, and apparently effortless. Her husband mentioned that he'd done the washing up (whilst the ladies went to the market to get more food!).

Last night, I went with my friend to a Bidayu village where there was a big Gawai celebration going on. Gawai means festival, and traditionally happens around the harvesting of rice to give thanks and set spirits on good tracks for the season to come. It's warped a bit, as most things have, and now involves a lot of drinking and eating, and apparently gambling, and children letting off hand-held fireworks and staying up long past their bedtime. I wish Minstead had Gawai when I was a youngin'. So, we went along to this village. I thought I'd only be force-fed beers, no dinner or just barbeque pork, but instead was invited into four different homes, given fours different yummy dinners (and there was cake! of all types of bright colours), and four different brews of sugar-cane tuak (alcohol). Mr Incredibly-hospitable #2 laid out infront of us (whilst two trained elders were putting together the final touches of the spiritual offering of the house) a 20 year old brew, a 10 year old one, and one he'd made this year. We (had to) tried all of them, ofcourse. It was delicious, especially in contrast to the beer or warm Guiness that was the alternative. The 20 year old dark brown thick sugary goop had my favour.

Once there were no more houses that could have invited us in, we wandered to the down-town/village area where it was at. It = the Gawai house and hundreds of jolly festive people milling around, some knowing where they were going, others not going. In the Gawai house, a group of Priestesses (sacred women chosen by the spirits) were swinging on a long swing chanting, awaiting their period of trance. These women, mostly late 50s and above, had been swinging and chanting for hours. I saw a few asleep on the floor behind (where amongst the bags there was one by Louis Vutton), so perhaps they took it in turns....but still, exhausting. And they're on display the whole time. The Priest gentlemen on the other side were meanwhile drinking Guinness and smoking cigarettes. Stating the obvious does this incredible culture a dis-service though. I was told to go up from the bar to have a look when the schedule read time for Calling the Spirits and the gongs started....but when I went up, all the sacred people were sat having a tea break. At least it wasn't a diet coke break. So I went back down and continued pretending to drink my bottle of warm Malaysian Guinness. Very kindly Mr Incredibly-Hospitable #2 went on a tuak-hunt for me, appearing from the Gawai house with a glass of the sweet stuff that I gratefully enjoyed. We were meant to stay until 4am to watch the Priestesses go into trance, but tiredness overcame us at about 3am and it was probably better to let the slightly drunk tired designated driver call it a night than stay out for the spectacle. Funnily(!?) enough we got stopped by the police on the way back. They asked where we'd come from: "the kampong" (village), "OK-lah", they replied, and sent us on our way. No breathilizing. Just a smile. Oh, Malaysia. So very different from my country.

Back to foods. Also very different from my country. No cereal in 5 days, but one can get used to noodles for breakfast, somehow. I'm enjoying some delicious vegetarian food, many with exciting little bits of camouflaged fish and chicken in. When in Rome....which is quite a welcome excuse for some omnivory actually. I was given two pineapples a few days ago from the pineapple-on-peat rural development project area where we interviewed one fellow. They were delicious. (As an aside, you can apparently do a test to tell whether palm oil has come from plantations established on peat. Apparently this allows the Europeans to differentiate. I wonder if the Europeans know about this.) These people are generous, as are most people when you are a guest, I suppose. And when you have white skin amongst a darker crowd. Not to be exploited. I was told I could pass as a Kelabit today, although would need to tone down the blonde and paleness quite a bit.

No neat boxes.

(For anyone who even thought to start reading - this is a bit of a confused mumble to help my head out.)

This is all a bit more complicated than I had naively thought initially. Umm. A few days ago, I had lunch with my lovely translator and her husband, who was putting up a somewhat aggressive, or just very passionate argument for oil palm plantations, for forest clearance, basically for development. (It was a good exercise for my assertiveness training.) Why shouldn't Sarawak/Malaysia/Southeast Asia develop? We did years ago, logging and clearing our forests, building roads and houses and laying down cables for our televisions. Sarawak apparently still has atleast 70% forest cover left (whatever 'forest' means). And people want development. They want to send their kids to good schools, and have a big car and a big television, and be able to travel to see their families (which are often quite spread out here, and quite large/ginormous). The State is really pushing development too. By 2020, it is both planning to have 1 million hectares gazetted under some form of State protection and have 1 million hectares of oil palm plantations. I wonder which it will achieve first. And people seem to love oil palm. I've been surprised by how much knowledge people have about it's growth requirements and behaviour as a crop and commodity. One guy yesterday was telling me about how beautiful oil palm was to look at from the air (most airports in Malaysia are visible as a grey strip within a neatly-patterned green palmed sea). He said it was nicer to look at than paddy, which you see when you fly into Thailand apparently (these Sarawakians aren't afraid of getting on a plane - something they share with the island-bound Brits).

So, it looks nice and the people like it and the State completely adores it, giving out young palms to farmers to 'help' them establish their plantation (whilst carefully managing their income so that the State big potatoes get a cut)....and apparently it's a beauty on peat.

I also had breakfast with a Chinese entrepreneur, who was one of the first developers to establish an oil palm plantation on peat. He's a cowboy in Sabah, the other Malaysian state on this here island. And he's a hard worker. He said, which is going in by thesis at all costs: "everything is bad about growing on peat". It's really expensive to sort out the drainage and build roads and buildings. He can't get insurance for the big diggers that he uses because they disappear into the peat too easily; the insurers won't insure something they can't see. Yet, oil palms are productive enough that they even pay for themselves and much more when they're grown in an acidic, mosquito-ridden, sinky swamp.

A partially-inebriated gentleman I talked to last night, when I was partially inebriated, said that the only peat swamp forests left in 10 years will be those gazetted as National Parks by the State. There are 22 National Parks in Sarawak, 2 cover peat swamp forests, and for sure in one of those two, there is still logging happening. The other has crocodiles.

People here probably know more about crocodiles than they do about peat. All credit to the crocodiles, but they aren't so good at storing carbon, and would probably eat an orangutan rather than provide a suitable habitat. But there is still a lot of forest left in this clammy place. Do Sarawakians need these peat swamps? They do for water supply in some places, and that seems to be an acknowledged argument for their conservation....but not everywhere. In other places they need more shops. There are so many shopping malls here in Kuching (selling different forms of unneccessary plastic poo). But people are allowed to buy plastic poo if they want, right.

I think I need to rethink my arguments....and possibly my life. I'll start with my arguments. I did see a beautiful bird at the edge of a plantation a few days ago. Sometimes I wish I was a birder.