It Rains in a Rainforest–Even When the Music Plays

The Rainforest Music festival is held in the shadow of a great mountain called Santobong, which means coffee in Iban. There were thousands of people there, and they were all wet and muddy, since from before the first note rain poured down. This is the rainforest after all. Sony and I staked out a prime seat, close enough for her to get the video shots she wanted, and then after I had found some cardboard to sit on, the rain was too much and we joined many of the faithful and retreated to a wooden ceilinged area for shelter.

There I watched a young woman in front of me endlessly type and receive text messages from her slick little Nokia phone. She had a painted face and every time she put that baby back into her pocket, she’d quickly retrieve it and start another text. The people in front of us were of mixed ages, but mostly looked like a more sober version of the Grateful Dead faithful. One guy wore a Dead Kennedys T-shirt, another had ghastly tattoos all over his back and his legs.

The music begain pretty weakly with a band from Trinidad playing songs that were way too slow to really get anyone interested. The rain came down in steady sheets, and the ground became a sea of pretty deep mud. People walked through it carrying their shoes, and many danced excitedly when a band called Akasha that featured a sitar and a twangy Indian style drum rocked the place out. He played a Jimi Hendrix riff with that big sitar and it got the wet crowd pretty stoked.

I got tired of standing in the covered area, so I bought a few beers and Sony and I sat down for a while on those cardboard boxes I had found. They would come in even more handy later when the rain let up, and I sat on them instead of the wet ground. Some people eyed me with envy, and squatted awkwardly. One women swigged from a quart of Jack Daniels, making me ill just thinking about it.

Toward the end of the night, as the aroma of clove cigarettes wafted through the soaking wet crowd, and the rain began a more steady patter, a band from Portugal started singing ‘heyooo, heyooo, and the crowd sang back in response. It was at this time that I started singing, ‘heyooo, i wanna go, heyooo, get me to the van.’ But when I finally began the long walk back, I found that there was a parallel universe: A ton of people were relaxing under tents watching big screens and staying dry, and enjoying it more than the wet rats out in front of the stages. D’oh!

Well, we return to this same scene tomorrow night, and I know just where I’ll stay. Let’s just say no drowned rats regardless of the forecast. I’ll try out some of the charcoal cooked chicken satays and other foods that I didn’t see until I was walking back to the van. We passed the Presidential Rolls Royce on the way out, being buffed up by an aide. A fleet of white BMWs and motorcycles stood by, waiting to whisk the VIP to wherever he would be staying here in Sarawak during this visit.