Another long day on the motorbike. I was getting desperate to find our next study village so we set off in a heavy rain to a set of villages with the oldest oil palm in the region. Again the trip consisted of navigating motorbikes through oil palm. Perhaps the most shocking moment was during our drive along the border of Gunung Palung National Park. To the right of the road was national park (which has been logged to hell, but at least it still contains trees) and to the left was a moonscape of land cleared and newly planted with oil palm –continuing about 7 kilometers from the park, as far as the eye could see in the rainy weather.
Again the actual surveying of villages was fairly un-extraordinary – we were able to find our next village/destination (Sungai Daka) before heading home at around 7 pm at night. The best part of the day was seeing a traditional Dayak structure for storing rice. The building is elevated about 5 meters off the ground, on long poles. Inside a family can store about 6 months of unhusked rice – the building is watertight, and little hats around each of the poles keep rodents out. For the first time I wonder where everyone else in Ketapang keeps rice (since this is the first rice-storing building that I’ve seen?).
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