Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

When I first went up this river, I was sick with love.

The bad kind.

The fist around your heart kind.

I ran far but there was no escaping it.

It followed me upriver all the way.

That was ten long years ago.

A previous episode of a previous

series in a previous life.

Yet here I am again.

Heading up to that same longhouse in the jungle.

Last time I saw all this,

I think it's fair to say I was at a turning point in my life.

I promised some people I'd come back, and I am back.

My life has changed a lot.

How much have their lives changed?

Kuala Lumpur.

Happy to be here, but brimming with mixed emotions.

Surrounded by all the sights,

smells, and flavors I remember so well.

This is where a wandering soul such as myself

can dive right in and get some of that straight Chinese food

I've been missing.

First order of business, dinner.

Been on a plane for, like, I don't know, it was long.

Very long.

Saw, like, five Mark Wahlberg films.

I can't tell you how excited I am about the prospect

of getting some black pepper crab...

and some pork gladed noodles and a regional beverage.

Reasonably cold.

I don't even know what this is.

I love you, noodles.

Don't want to get all heavy and philosophical at this point,

but why I'm here, what my mission is,

what I expect to find,

basically me tracing my steps and all that.

We'll talk about that later. Right now, noodles.

Good.

This place is most excellent.

Ah, char kuey teow. Char kuey teow.

Char kuey teow, bitches.

Oh, look at the greasy, fatty, yes, come to daddy.

I'm a bad man.

This is, like, a random restaurant,

with like a purloined Minnie Mouse logo

and their food is unbelievably good.

Oh, yeah. Black pepper crab.

Right here. Reveal yourself to me.

Hot, hot, hot.

Ooh! Oh, yeah.

Wow.

All right. The frenzy's over.

Now to eat in a more relaxed phase.

Kuala Lumpur rises up out of steamy, equatorial jungle,

Malaysia's capital city.

A chaotic, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural

modern metropolis of Malay, Chinese and Indian.

- This is where you start out when fulfilling a decade-old - promise

To your ex-headhunter friends

to return for Gawai, the annual Iban rice harvest festival.

What's interesting the last time I was there was

the old guys with their tattoos and rings on their fingers.

Yeah, the old people,

a lot of them have passed on.

I hear no more skulls.

They made them put the skulls away.

The Iban once enjoyed a truly formidable reputation

as trackers, warriors,

and ritualistic takers of heads.

They were and continue to be wanderers.

Valuing a tradition where every tribesman

was set out from the longhouse of his birth

to travel, learn, to bring something back.

Each tattoo he gets over the course of his life

represents a different experience,

a different journey.

Basically the tattoos signify knowledge

and the wealth they brought back to the longhouse,

what you probably would want to get is a...

Something like this.

Ah, like that. Yeah.

Since last I saw you, you were, and you gave me this.

And it's still there. Still there.

Ten years ago at his shop, Borneo Ink,

Eddie David tattooed me with an Iban style ouroborous.

The symbol of a snake eating its own tail.

Life, death, the eternal ebb and flow.

I think I was going through a hippy phase.

Eddie does great work

and he's known for traditional tribal tattoos

but I'm looking forward to getting it done old school.

Hand tapped in the jungle.

So, I need your advice

because I'm going back to the same village

that I went to last time.

Just be careful of the...

Yes, they had it in every type of bottle.

This is clear sort of cloudy liquid with particles in it.

Sometimes they put weird stuff inside.

My dad used to tell me they take mosquito coil

and leave it inside the...

A mosquito what?

Coil.

Like the pesticide?

Yeah.

Just make it, like, stronger.

I would imagine so.

That's a natural staple,

Gawai, usually drinking, passing out, waking up, eating, drinking

passing out again then getting up and drinking some more.

Yeah.

You're going to have fun, man.

Wow. All right.

So I'm headed upriver again.

Yeah, sorry I can't be there.

I promised them, I said I'm going back.

About nine years late on your promise, but...

Nine years late.

That happens.

You know, promises come liberally.

It was David Moggie who first took me up to the longhouse.

On that previous trip we met at Aunty Aini's

on the outskirts of KL.

Everything moves exponentially.

Feels like some things remain exactly the same,

some things haven't changed at all.

This place is certainly one.

The charming and for lack of a better word fabulous Aini,

was an actor in the Malaysian film scene

who now runs a very successful kampong style restaurant

specializing in beloved village or country classics.

All of them prepared

with a staggering finesse and precision.

This is delicious, delicious food.

Welcome.

It's been so long. Oh, my God.

And you still look as handsome as ever.

All right.

Well, let's pick up right where we left off,

which started with this.

Help yourself.

Thank you.

You're going to have the roast beef and poached egg

and our favorite will be our chicken rendang.

So good to be back.

I love watching you guys eat.

Who taught you to cook?

Who was the good cook in your family?

When we were small,

my grandmother would say stuff like, I don't care who you are,

if you can't cook, you're nobody to me.

- Oh, wow. - Yeah.

There's no teaching Malay cooking here.

It comes from your grandma's kitchen, your mom's kitchen.

And you learn by smelling, by seeing...

It's how I teach my children to cook.

All these dishes, when you do them,

the aroma just floats around.

I know exactly when the chili paste

frying in the pan is ready or not.

It's from here.

Basically it's from here.

After a two-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur, I land in Borneo,

third largest island in the world.

Divided between Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia.

Kuching, capital of the Malaysian Sarawak.

It's a sleepy city with a colorful 19th century

boys' adventure story history.

Pirates, headhunters, opportunists.

The former domain of Sir James Brooke,

an Englishman who came to be known as the White Raja.

For a century, generations of the Brook family

ruled Sarawak as an independent kingdom.

They created their own army, the Sarawak Rangers

who also acted as the Raja's personal guard.

Tomorrow I follow the pavement as far as it goes,

then it's boats the rest of the way.

But first, breakfast.

And fortunately, I know exactly where to go.

I sat at this same table last time.

If I look at my life as a continuum, a trail of noodles,

going round and round the world

until it comes right back to the same spicy bowl.

Oh, yeah.

That is... can I say tumescent on CNN?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can.

Oh, yeah, baby.

This is a magical dish.

I don't know. It's two types of noodles, I think.

Chicken, prawn, coconut, chili.

You know, the main event of this is the broth.

The wisdom of the ages is contained in there.

It's, like, super complex.

Ooh. Ooh-ooh-ooh.

Might need more of this.

All right.

I'll have another one of these.

More.

It's the broth. The broth.

Look at it.