Travel luxury in the jungles of Borneo

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Written by Linda Hohnholz

If your idea of “roughing it” is a luxury hotel room in the middle of the jungle, then the Batangi Ai Longhouse Hotel, managed by Hilton, is for you.

If your idea of “roughing it” is a luxury hotel room in the middle of the jungle, then the Batangi Ai Longhouse Hotel, managed by Hilton, is for you.

Located on an island in Batang Ai Lake, in the province of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, you’ll have the feeling of being just about as far from “civilization” as you can get. But you’ll sleep with no concerns (and no mosquitoes) in a comfortable room that’s like a Hilton in any major city.

The Batang Ai is reached by a 4-hour drive from the Sarawak gateway city of Kuching, and then a 20-minute boat ride to the resort. There is once-daily shuttle service (for a fee) between Kuching and the resort.

The hotel’s decor tries to re-create the experience of an actual tribal longhouse, but there’s no disguising that this is not what the hardy explorers of the past had to undergo. The resort offers standard activities such as a pool, spa, tennis court, fishing, and billiards, but the big attraction is getting up close and personal with the Borneo rainforest. There are nature walks that are offered close to the hotel, but if you’ve come that far what you’d really want to do is take a longhouse tour to a village of the Iban tribe, headhunters till the middle of the last century, but now happy to welcome tourists.

To get to the village you have to canoe down a river with some smaller rapids. The longhouse tours themselves can be “hard” or “soft,” adventure, depending on if you want to stay overnight in a longhouse (a multifamily dwelling), or just get an orientation from a local chief on how to use a blowgun, and cutting a tree for rubber sap with a machete. In either option, you get to learn about the Iban culture, see tribal singing and dancing, and share a meal with a family. Plus the opportunity, of course, to purchase handicrafts. At the end of the day, I opted to return to the Hilton for a comfortable night’s sleep, sans mosquitoes and other creepy, crawly critters.

Following the adventure, I returned to the bustling city of Kuching for a flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Before I left, however, I went to the Sarawak Cultural Village, just outside the city, which has reproductions of tribal longhouses and a show of traditional dance. Nice, but I had the satisfaction of knowing I saw the real thing.

The author, Mike Quane, has been writing about destination travel for over twenty-five years. His outlets have included The New York Daily News, Newsday, Endless Vacation Magazine, Parents Magazine, Grit, The Portland Press Herald, Telegraph Publications, www.eturbonews.com, Traveling Magazine of Hong Kong, the in-flight magazines of Singapore and Korean airlines, and many more. He wrote a weekly travel column for This Week Publications for fifteen years, and a monthly column for LongIsland.com for over a decade. He is also a senior contributor to TripAdvisor.com. His favorite subjects have included the Philippines, Ireland, Tahiti, Croatia, Australia, Malaysia, Bangkok, Maine and Virginia. He has been a frequent delegate to the ASEAN Tourism Forum and is a member of The New York Press Club. www.michaelquane.contently.com

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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