We took the early morning express boat from Kapit to Belaga. It cost RM30 each. These express boats have reinforced hulls so that they can cross the Pelagus Rapids, a place where accidents do still occur. The rapids were quite exciting, with whirlpools and scraping sounds on the boat's hull! We were subjected to videos of the German band the Scorpions during the course of the journey. This was a very interesting journey, the jungle beside the river was very dense and there was little evidence for logging (though we were sure it was going on, but out of our sight...). There were many longhouses beside the river, and our boat stopped at some of these. Some of these longhouses were accessed by traditional notched poles- a rather precarious form of staircase that must be particularly difficult when you have a lot to carry. The Rejang had narrowed considerably by the time we reached Belaga, and was quite sinuous with large overhanging trees.
Belaga has an extremely pleasant setting beside low forested hills that descend to the river. We stayed at the Belaga Hotel, which overlooked a square where fighting cocks lived (and made plenty of noise). During the afternoon we went for a walk along the river, past the kampung where most of Belaga's residents live. There were loads of interesting fruit trees by the kampung. We noticed tribal burial sites on the other side of the river that were decorated with carved wooden archway, which had been placed there by the local Kayan tribespeople. Mei-See got a load of seeds of some kind attached to her skirt. While we were sat picking the seeds out of her skirt, a helicopter landed right by us, collected the mail, and left. We went to reconfirm our flight from Belaga to Bintulu, at the Malaysia Airlines office that is inside a coffee shop. The guy had a little piece of paper with the list of four passengers on. He told us to meet him in the office the next day to go to the airstrip.
That evening we struggled to find a decent place to eat. Everything seemed to have closed by about 9pm apart from a couple of Chinese cafes that sold the usual boring noodles. Although Belaga occupies a very nice location in the Sarawak interior, there was not much going on and we did not have time to visit another longhouse. We met the local madman who wanted to take us to his house, though he was a little too strange to feel entirely confident in him. We were woken very early the next morning by all the cockerels, and then made our way to the Malaysia Airlines office for our flight.
Our flight to Bintulu was at 12 midday, so we met at the office at 10am. The guy took us to the jetty and we took a longboat downriver for about 20 minutes to the airstrip. We had to climb up a rickety stairway from the river, and then we had a short walk through the jungle that came out at a clearing with a hut. The hut was the terminal, check-in, control tower and departures lounge. The MAS office guy checked us in, weighed our baggage, weighed us and then went and operated the radios. We didn't have to wait very long before the Twin Otter plane landed. We had to load our own bags into the hold of the plane, and then got in with the other two passengers (the planes can hold up to 18 people). We had a chat with the pilots who said that we would enjoy the flight and get really nice views from the big windows.
We were soon in the air, and had some amazing views over the Rejang as the aircraft turned towards Bintulu. The flight took us over the forested hills of the Lumut Range. An alternative route from Belaga to Bintulu is by a bus along the logging roads; although slightly cheaper than the plane, it takes all night and is not nearly as much fun as the Twin Otter flight. We could see rivers and logging roads as we crossed the forests (the forest had not been extensively logged, however). The plane weaved amongst some big clouds, and we were shortly descending into Bintulu airport. The outskirts of Bintulu were not an especially attractive sight from the air. The flight took about 20 minutes. When we landed, they would not let us unload our luggage, instead we had to walk to the terminal and stand by an ancient baggage reclaim conveyor. A man carried the luggage from the plane and put it on the conveyor.