Blue bird on the Borneo Highway


Driving on the Borneo Highway can be tiring and fun also. On the Sarawak side, the driving distance from Kuching to Miri (South to North) is more than 800km or about 12 hours.
I traveled quite often on the Sarawak Borneo Highway by car due to my nature of work; my uncle Hen knew that.
My uncle Hen loved birds, all kinds of birds. He even kept eagle when I was young.
When I started traveling on business by car few years back, he always reminded me to looked out for people selling birds along the so called Borneo highway.

I said, "how to keep for you, the round trip is 2000km", he said, "never mind you leave them in the cabin flying or shit also can, I pay at all cost provided you give me good rare birds".
This was my uncle Hen, a real and rare bird lover, he would starve just to get another rare species!
Rare species came not easy, for a while I came back (Kuching) empty handed and uncle started to grumble.
I felt bad until I had to tell uncle this...
"Uncle, I always see this bird when I travel...every one hour or so it will just appear to me as I stop to rest, but I cannot catch it for you...I think it is also very rare species and color too".
"Why? What color is the bird?", Uncle asked.
I said..."Uncle, it is...blue, it is a blue bird, every time I stopped for a pee, this bird will appear, and follow back to my cabin, but I cannot catch it for you...because my wife also a bird lover and I have to give it to her when I come back".

Uncle jammed a moment and woke up finally...he shouted ‘blue bird’1 in Hokkien dialect, since then he never asked my favor again, but I always reminded him when I came back home that I needed to give my 'catch' to my wife first before we could have beer, he laugh!
Note1: The Hokkien pronunciation of ‘blue bird’ is close to male genitals.

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