
Every roundabout here has a sculpture. This one is the hibiscus flower, which is the national flower of Malaysia.

Entrance to the Mari Mari Cultural Village is via a hanging bridge across a creek. This place was set up to showcase the 5 tribes of Borneo, showing how they lived and also offering food and drink tastings.
I wasn’t sure how this day would turn out. It could be good, or it could be hokey and a little bit Disney. Fortunately, it was good.

The first area we visited was the Rungus tribe, where they offered honey from stingless bees.

If you’re ever in the jungles of Borneo and feel like eating some honey, here’s what you need to do:
Cut a small hole in bamboo.
Take it to the forest and leave for a month, but check once a week.
When the hive is ready, take bamboo, cut it in half and harvest for the honey. Too easy!
The honey tasted very lemony. Not nearly as sweet as we’re used to. It was delicious.

Our next visit was inside a Rungus longhouse. I have to say, if I had to spend some time in the jungle, I’d be pretty comfortable here. Aside from being eaten alive by mozzies, of course.

One longhouse for 1 village.

1 room for 1 family.

The longhouses could go for 1.5 km long, sometimes! When someone gets married, they just add another room.
Everyone in the tribe had to learn how to make fire. The boys… because they’d be out hunting for days in the jungle as men.
Girls… final task before she gets married. She has to make it before her prospective in-laws. No fire? It means she can’t cook, so therefore there’ll be no wedding.

Marat are the headhunters. There are two different types of headhunting.
- Ethnic cleansing. They kill the whole village, men, women, children, even babies.
- Normal headhunting. This is warrior to warrior. A man from this tribe needs to present a head to his in-laws to prove himself worthy to marry their daughter.

This is a coffin for a warrior. After 5 years, they come back, clean the bones and bury them.

“We will not be showing you the headhunting demonstration today.” That’s a relief!
They used to hang the skulls around a house. It protected the village by acting as a deterrent. Too many skulls, a group of attackers will go to another village instead.

They call blow darts the silent killer. The poison on the dart paralyses the warrior. Then the attacker runs in, chops off the head and leaves the body there.
The dart can go as far as 50 metres, depending on the lung capacity of the warrior.
My lung capacity isn’t as good as that, but I managed to hit the wall both times. Happy with that.


Tapioca and sugar. We typically know tapioca as sago… little round balls. Mum used to make lemon sago when we were kids and I loved it. I must ask her how to make it.
This was ok, but without the sugar it’d be tasteless. Before European colonisation, they used honey for flavour.

Single lady staircase. They sleep above their parents and pull the ladder up with them. If they get attacked, the girls will hopefully escape notice.
In another longhouse, we were told that after the girls went upstairs to bed, the father would take the ladder and hide it in the jungle. If the girls needed to go to the toilet in the night, they had to wake their dad or their brothers to get the ladder for them.
Every time they chop off a head, they get a small tattoo from charcoal.

Nurseries look the same the world over.
What’s also the same the world over is alcohol. No matter where they live, people have always found a way to get drunk. Here, they make rice wine. The fermented rice wine tastes just like port. The unfermented one tastes like soju. (Happy memories of North Korea…)

Sugar, rice flour and water. Yum! Like crunchy, sweet noodles. They also served a ginger tea which was fantastic.

How to keep the kid quiet while Mum and Dad are working.

Straight after this, it was time for the cultural presentation. We were among the last groups to get there, but Fortunately Frogdancer snagged a seat in the second row, behind some very short kids. Not often that happens!
The musicians were good.
This dance was fun. On the beat, the bamboo poles are moved apart, then together. The dancers have to move in time to avoid getting caught.

The Murat longhouse has a trampoline in the middle. Yes, really.
They use the trampoline to celebrate their victories, or to see who can jump the highest.
Nowadays they hang money, a camera, an Apple Watch. The highest ones win.

Here I am midair, but only just. It’s safe to say that I wouldn’t win a cracker.

On the way back to the bus, I saw the hanging bridge and went across it again, just for fun. Morna was good enough to take this photo when I called out to her.
On the way back, we stopped so that people could buy souvenirs, and the people that were going onto the 5 star resort could buy cheaper wine. I wandered around on my own, only buying a postcard of a baby orangutan to put on my fridge.
Every morning while my coffee is brewing, I look at my fridge with its postcards and magnets from my travels and it makes me feel happy. Not a bad way to start the day.

I decided that my last night in Borneo would be spent entirely alone. I’m going back to probate with Dad’s will, dealing with disposing of my parents’ belongings, dealing with banks, real estate agents and other horrible things. Tonight was a night where no one would make any demands on me.
Not even a small, beloved dog. (Sorry, Scout. Mummy loves you.)
I went up to the rooftop bar and bought a couple of cab savs during happy hour. I saw a small group from our tour up there on the other side when I walked in, but I pretended I didn’t see them until I was settled at my table, book in front of me and wines in place.
We waved.
I stayed there for an hour and a half, just reading and sipping my wine. Piano music was playing, it was warm and very pleasant.
A dinner in my room of muesli bars – like China with Blogless Sandy! – and I finished my book. It was an introvert’s dream.
I fly out today and I’ll get back to a Melbourne literally 20 degrees Celsius colder than here. How is that even possible?!?

I’m so glad I came to Borneo. We only scratched the surface of it, as we only went across the top end, but we saw so much in our short time here. My main desire was to see orangutans up close, which we did in the sanctuary. Seeing sun bears and the proboscis monkeys was an unexpected joy, and as for the otters? omg, so rapt.
The interesting thing for me is how different I felt here from how I felt in Zanzibar. I was a little on edge in Zanzibar, whereas here I felt totally at ease and very welcome.
I wondered at the time in Zanzibar if it was all of the women in head to toe coverings, but the Muslims here do that too, so it clearly wasn’t that.
After mulling it over, I think that the people here in Borneo have a clear path forwards to individual prosperity, whereas in Zanzibar there was a much larger gap between the haves and the have-nots. I wouldn’t want to be there if any trouble started.
I booked this tour through TripADeal, and it was excellent value for money. I’m leaving with so much Malaysian money still in my wallet that I’m probably going to have to book a holiday on the Malaysian mainland, just to spend it!
Back to normal blog posts, until I leave for Iceland, Greenland, Scandinavia and the Baltics in a couple of months’ time. That’ll be the longest stretch I’ve been at home all year!
Dad joke of the day:
