Annah Rais Longhouse...

Annah Rais Longhouse is a Bidayuh settlement and it's a longhouse nearest to town. An hour's drive to be exact. Other longhouses will take at least 4 - 5 hours to reach. Like what I used to watch on the idiot box, whenever you reach the longhouse, they'll prepare you their rice wine or something called 'tuak' as a sign that you're welcome in their place. Not to drink shows disrespect to the culture. I'm sorry... I couldn't drink such awful thing. It's good enough that I didn't spit it out. My lifestyle should be respected as well where I neither drink wine or any alcoholic drinks. Thank you for not kicking me out of the longhouse. It's really a nice place. You're able to see how they live. As this longhouse is so near to the town, they have a better living condition. They even have Astro when I don't have it at home. As you can see, the flooring is not made of wooden planks but very strong bamboo. The longhouse is not that long as it's in 'L' shape. The one where I'm standing has 30 doors, equivalent to 30 families staying in one row. There are partitions to separate the houses. When we were there, it was a schooling and working days so most of the occupants were not at home. There's a homestay programme in the place. If I didn't hear wrongly, you'll have to sleep in the headhouse. Those are real human skulls. The tour guide told us some horror stories regarding the skulls. If you have a very strong spiritual antennae, the moment you step into the headhouse, you'll feel the rather strong spirit of oppression. It's so strong it will strangle you to death. I don't know how the people can live with such strong spirit around. It's just not normal to me. The interior of the house is not much of a difference compared to our wooden village house. They are used to sit on the floor so there's no such luxury as sofa set. The stairs to the upper bunk where they store water and keep their stuff is a little unusual though. I've never seen such steps with hardly any room to put the foot on. Going up is not a big deal but coming down is a dread. You can't even hurry unless you decide to slide down and hurt your ass along the way.While our tour guide went to get his car around, we were suppose to walk until the end of the longhouse. We didn't make it that fast coz' we met this cool grandmother halfway. She's making the Bidayuh headwear using beads. We stopped by and chit chatted with her for awhile until the tour guide came looking for us. If he has come later, we would end up having a late lunch with this granny. She's so cool that she wouldn't having her photo taken.I've stitched once with beads. It's not easy to stitch with beads. The holes are so tiny that you'll probably see stars after a few hours. The headwear costs around RM300 and usually foreigners will buy them to be kept in the display cabinet. We finally made it to the end of the longhouse. Saw a man building his own house and requested that he posed for the camera which he did. They're a friendly lot of people. It is such a great experience going to the longhouse. Love it there and love it more going there with Juju... so much fun that we have together. Always there's nothing much to see in a place except for the different building structures, the beautiful people and the colourful culture. To make the place interesting, you'll have to be creative.