Bamboo veranda
A long shared walkway.
Peter Gronemann from Switzerland — CC BY 2.0 · Peter Gronemann from Switzerland — CC BY 2.0 · Peter Gronemann from Switzerland — CC BY 2.0 · Peter Gronemann from Switzerland — CC BY 2.0 · Peter Gronemann from Switzerland — CC BY 2.0
One of Sarawak's best-known and oldest traditional longhouses, home to Bidayuh people for more than a century and a half, in the Padawan hills about an hour and a half's drive south of Kuching, near the Indonesian border. A longhouse is a whole community under one long roof: a row of joined family homes linked by a broad shared veranda of bamboo slats raised on stilts, where residents gather and dry pepper and rice. More than eighty families live here today, with modern houses built by younger generations around it. You walk along the bamboo veranda, see the round communal house where the men once gathered and where relics of old warrior traditions were kept, and buy crafts from the residents. There is a token entry fee of about ten ringgit for an adult, and you can stay overnight with families in a homestay. Near the village are hot springs and a clear river. The easiest way to get there is on an organised tour from Kuching or by hire car. It is a lived-in home, so ask before photographing people and enter houses only when invited.
A long shared walkway.
A lived-in longhouse.
A night with families.
Padawan, about sixty kilometres south of Kuching
A traditional dwelling of Borneo's peoples that houses dozens of families under one long roof, each with its own home, joined by a shared veranda where the whole community gathers.