| The Hilton Batang Ai Longhouse Resort is a unique experiment: a luxury longhouse resort which allows guests to enjoy jungle adventure by day and upmarket comforts by night. Altough this place is out in the middle of nowhere, the rooms are all air-con and have IDD phone, and the hotel has a swimming pool, bar, restaurant with cultural performances and seminar facilities.
Sarawak: Batang Ai Reservoir and Hilton Batang Ai Longhouse Resort with Pool
Inner verandah (above) and room (below)
The "Hall"
Winston Marshall, resident naturalist 
Winston Marshall on suspension bridge (above) and tropical rainforest with suspension bridge (below)
Winston Marshall performing his daily ritual on the tomb of an Iban chief
Iban Longhouses: boat crossing on a jungle river
Longtail boat on a river in Sarawak preparing for departure (left) and during a trip (right)
Iban Longhouses: kids playing in the jungle river
Iban Longhouses on the shores of a jungle river (left) and of Batang Ai Reservoir (right)
The Longhouse:
A traditional longhouse is built of axe-hewn timber, tied with creeper fibre, roofed with leaf thatch. It is nearly always built by the bank of a navigable river, and the visitor approaches it from the boat jetty. He climbs up a notched log that serves as a staircase and finds himself on the open verandah face to face with a scene of community and domestic activity.
Several doorways lead from the outer to the inner verandah under the roof. This is the village street of the longhouse; the individual family rooms or "doors" front the common walkway. A casual visitor is invited to sit down on a mat here for a chat with the longhouse elder; family members enter through their relatives' doors and make themselves at home.
The Iban race, once known as "Sea Dayaks", built their longhouses to last fifteen to twenty years, or, until the farm land in the surrounding area was exhausted. Then they packed up their goods and chattels and moved inland, upriver, along the coast, wherever fresh farm lands looked promising. About one-third of all Sarawakians are Iban; while some of them live in towns or individual houses, a large number still prefer longhouses. |
Iban Longhouse: entrance with pigs
Iban Longhouses: outer verandah with toilet (left) and inner verandah, shared with animals (right)
Iban Longhouse: inner verandah
Iban Longhouse: Family 1
Iban Longhouse: Family 2
Iban Longhouse People
Iban Longhouse: mother with son
Tropical Rainforest on the shores of Batang Ai Reservoir, Sarawak
Pepper plantation
Banana plant
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