As soon as we sat down someone came over with a tray of sandwiches and a fresh jug of honey lemon tea. Dad was quickly accosted and questioned by Man, who seemed to find him a fascinating anomaly and who I think found it hard to accept that I would speak without Dad's permission. This was a cultural thing, I found out later, on the island they come good manners are to always gibe way to your elders. I sat talking to a planter (who reminded me of Uncle Ian) , who was telling me how they wanted to meet westerners because they felt isolated and technologically behind but that, there weren't any drug dealers before and a lot of their youth was felling prey to it.
Borneo, Malaysia seems to be going through a very rapid and painful cultural change. The development everywhere has a feel of being rushed. We saw lots of start up communities on the way to the basin, but lots of people selling (or failing to sell) forest fruits in ramshackle huts on the street.
Even the shopping centres seem to describe a country trying to be western. There are entire floors with nothing but hair dressers on them; another with only womens' fashion shops.
Soon noodles and soup arrived on the table too and it was clear that we weren't leaving for a while. Facebook seems to be the main method of communication here and we were both asked, several times for our Facebook accounts. Dad, being and social networking luddite that he is, doesn't have one and searching Facebook for my name returns a large number of people. They insisted on something though son they have Dad's email and mine.
We ate the food and Dad was quizzed on everything and I was talking to a palm tree planter who was telling me about the problems on the island they are from.
They said that they were starting to suffer from the same problems that the richer nations have suffered from for a while. The foreign influences were bringing with them a desire for more commodities like computers, music systems, TVs and, of course, cocaine and the other recreational drugs.
He said that he wanted better technology so here could make more money so that he could send his children away to learn about the world outside the island, but that if technology were to arrive then the manual labourers who work in his plantation would loose their jobs.
After an hour and a half we had to make our excuses and leave, our breakfast would be long cold by now so we put our boots back on, topped up out water and went to meet our guide again. After a short wander we found him waiting for us at the entrance. There is a huge model of the basin there and he talked us through the different camps before we were going to go on the canopy walk. One of the other members of staff rushed over and spoke to him for minute in Malay and then has asked us if we'd like to join the school group. At first I though 'hell no', but he said it wasn't instead of anything else we were doing so I thought 'why not?'.
We went into an auditorium, I assumed that watch a 'made for schools' edutainment film about the Basin. Nope. We were told to sit at the front of the front-centre where the teachers had reserved seats for us, because we were the guests of honour at the award ceremony form the school. I was exhausted and sitting through an hour ceremony given in Malay was finishing me off.
After the school song was sung, which was quite jolly, and the state song, there were several talks from the students and the staff. Even though I didn't understand a word of it, it was jolly and everyone was smiling and laughing and calling the sports team's chant so it was hard not to smile and laugh too. There was a very foot tapping, clap your hands song that the students had written there accompanied by some of them playing acoustic guitar.
There were prizes for the students who answered some 'on the spot' questions. After those there were prizes for the student who has achieved various goals during heir holidays, some presented by the first of honour 'Mr. Allan'.
In think they must have thought that, in his accelerated years, Mr. Allan must be getting tired from all the standing up and sitting down again so I (as 'Mr. Allan's Son') got to present an awards as well.
Finally, both Dad and me got prizes of our own. We each got a pretty nifty, Maliau Basin multi-torch.
When the ceremony was over, it was time for a group photo with, Dad and me in the front row.
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