In the longhouses of Sarawak I met elderly people whose skin was almost covered in charcoal coloured tatoos. I had wanted to get a tat for a long time, and Sarawak felt like the ideal place to do that. Ernesto has run the Borneo Headhunters studio for over ten years. He uses modern sterilising equipment and offers a choice between machine tatooing and traditional bamboo tools. Surprisingly, he says that the traditional method is the least painful. These pictures tell the story of how I got my souvenir of Borneo. In Kuching you can get your own tatoo at [url=http://www.borneoheadh [View Full Entry]

---

---

A trip up the Rejang River is just another journey … or is it? Rivers are still the highways of Sarawak’s heartlands. The river banks are rich in foliage and longhouses are spaced along them. The wooden forts, built by the White Rajas when they ‘pacified’ the inland tribes, have been turned into museums. Tall durian trees and painted burial boxes look down on the passing speed boats. Our adventure began the day after the Rain Forest Festival of World Music finished for 2005. Four of us (Robert, Dave, Sarah and me) left Kuching and went by large fer [View Full Entry]

---

---

Bario is a valley in interior Sarawak, close to the border with Indonesian Kalimantan and accessible only by plane. The first European to go into the valley arrived by parachute during WWII. Missionaries followed in 1946. Today the population is Christian and well-educated. The community participates in the e-Bario project. This project, run by Bario community leaders and researchers from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (with infrastructure contributions from Telekom Malaysia), has provided computers and telephone lines. The villagers now have access to globally available information and ar [View Full Entry]

---

---

It’s not far to drive to Sabah from Brunei as the crow flies, but the trip by road takes a while. The road surfaces are quite good and, considering there is only one traffic lane in each direction, reasonably fast. Time is taken in queuing. The queues are in this order going out of Brunei: * Brunei - Sarawak border * Sarawak - Brunei (Temburong district) border * River ferry * Brunei (Temburong district) - Sarawak border * River ferry * Sarawak - Sabah border Bearing in mind that each border crossing involves two queues, that’s a lot of queuing! While [View Full Entry]

---

---

Creatures in Brunei don't seem as menacing as creatures in NSW. The leaf insect in the first two pictures was outside my supermarket. The lizard was up a tree in the forest. I photographed all ll the bugs and moths inside my flat. [View Full Entry]

---

---

The range of pitcher plants and orchids that I've seen in Brunei is amazing. Here are some of my favourites. The orchids are probably mainly hybrids, but the pitcher plant is a rather humble natural breed which found growing in the wild. This one was a vine that grew all over the ground and up into the trees. The orchids are growing at the government-owned Rimba Orchid Centre, while we found the pitcher plants in the Berakas Forest Reserve. [View Full Entry]

---

---

In my first post I included a video of being in Kampung Ayer in a water taxi. "Kampung Ayer" is Malay for Water Village. Traditionally the Malay people lived in stilt houses close to, or over, the water in rivers and estuaries. When Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the world in 1521, his ships visited Brunei. Antonio Pigafetta, employed to chronicle his voyage and its discoveries, described the splendour of the Sultan of Brunei's court and dubbed this village The Venice of the East. It was a bustling and extensive capital city then. Today the walls and many walkways are made of [View Full Entry]

---

---

I have been working in Brunei Darussalam for five years. Before I pack up and go back to NSW, Australia, I want to record some journeys I've made during this time. I'll start with visuals and post some of my favourite pictures of BSB (Bandar Seri Begawan). ... Gotta find out how this TravelBlog works! [View Full Entry]

---

---