Sailing to Sarawak in Borneo, Malaysia.

Webpage by

Resources for cruisers.

SARAWAK, MALAYSIA

PHOTO ALBUM FOR THIS PAGE CLICK HERE
Click on thumbnails (where avail.) for larger views.

July to December, 1999
After too long in a marina, in July we finally sailed to the state of Sarawak, Malaysia, on the West coast of the island of Borneo. Third largest island in the world, Borneo is still largely unspoiled, though even here population and economic pressures are removing huge tracts of rain forest. Travel through Borneo is primarily on the rivers. There are few roads, both because the thick rain forest made it difficult to build roads, and also because the river network is so good that Malaysia has invested its resources into an efficient ferry system, building on the traditional means of transportation of Borneo’s indigenous inhabitants.
Renegade logs rushing down the swift-flowing rivers kept us alert and nervous as we traveled up and down the rivers.

We have never considered ourselves tree-hugging environmentalists, but every year our attitude moves

closer to that of the tree-huggers. In the United States we have grown accustomed to rivers that are not clear and whose bottom is invisible to us, believing our teachers who tell us that erosion is a natural occurrence in nature. And indeed it is, but after our experiences in Borneo and the West coast of Malaysia, we can see how the damaging hand of humans has much to do with the process of erosion. For years the primary commerce of Borneo was logging, and the rivers were the only economical means of transporting the logs from the forest where they were cut to the ships that would transport them to the buyers. We were told by the indigenous people that we visited that once upon a time the rivers ran clear, and they could see well enough to spear fish for their dinner. Nowadays there is so much mud and silt being washed down the rivers that the rivers look more like butterscotch pudding, and the locals who still fish do so with nets and traps, not with their spears. Cut down enough trees and there is no root system to hold the soil in place, and no tree canopy to soften the fall of rainy season torrential downpours, and thus the soil is washed down these swift-flowing rivers. Since logging and development is relatively recent here, the elders of the indigenous people still remember when the rivers ran clear. It happened too long ago in the United States and Europe for that memory to have survived there. (More photos)

However, perhaps because Sarawak is still relatively unspoiled the plastic bags, Styrofoam cups, and the fast-food containers that are the debris of modern civilization was not evident.

River cruising is quite different from our usual blue-water cruising. We were totally dependent upon our engine, and whereas in most tropical waters we could see what we were about to hit, in these dirty waters different skills are called into play. Only in Kuching did we see any bridges spanning the rivers, so the dependence upon boats and ferries is almost absolute.

We took what seemed like hundreds of pictures of the various boats, and categorized them in

landlubber terms. At the top of the chain were the Express boats, which look like jet airliners without wings, and carry several hundred passengers. Anchored off the third largest city in Sarawak, we were below when we heard a man’s voice calling “hello, hello!” When we went on deck we saw one of these express boats, about 100 feet long, idling off our stern. The captain was hanging out the window calling to us the usual questions “where are you from, how do you like Malaysia,” etc. Then he threw a curve, asking if he could come aboard. We replied that of course he could, but we couldn’t tie his boat up to our little plastic boat. He replied, “no problem, my friend will drive my boat” and he stepped out of his “cockpit” and without this monster boat touching us (to our great relief), he stepped aboard. He was fascinated by our little floating home, and the fact that we traveled his rivers with an engine of only 37 horsepower with a top speed of about 7.5 knots with a stiff current behind us. His boat’s engine is 1,000 horsepower (!!), and he can go 35 knots, regardless of current. (More photos)

Next down the chain are smaller, local “buses”, wooden boats which look like modified fishing boats, carrying fifteen or twenty passengers. Then there are the smaller “mini vans,” that are just large canoes with a roof carrying eight or ten passengers across the rivers. There are fast, modern, fiberglass five-man boats, the “limousines” of the river, and at the bottom are the traditional wooden canoes fitted with outboards, the “taxis,” carrying two or three people and their motorbikes up, down, and across the rivers. Darwinian evolution at work, each river travel niche filled through modification and invention.

All along the rivers of Borneo are settlements of the indigenous peoples, the Orang Iban, Orang Dayak,

Orang Ulu, to name a few. We visited a few of the Iban and Dayak settlements. They live in a most interesting communal system of a "long house". Except for the fact that it's built of wood, on stilts, and is only one and a half stories high, it's similar to a budget motel structure or a street of Victorian row houses. Basically, each family unit builds a house one room wide, about 25 to 30 feet deep, the side walls shared with the neighboring unit, with a shared verandah roof. The wide enclosed verandah is their communal area. They live so close together that it must be difficult to hold a grudge against a neighbor. You can practically hear him breathing next door. (More photos)

Even though the longhouse concept restricts the design of the individual apartments, they are each uniquely different. The material used for the front wall of each apartment can be very different; there is usually a window overlooking the common verandah, though not always one that closes; and the ceiling of each section of the verandah is often different. So it's a patchwork-quilt style of building, with the structure the unifying element. It is a long, one-room wide unit, living room at the "front" (i.e., verandah end), the kitchen at the back, sleeping quarters in the middle.

So see, modern man didn't invent apartment buildings.

The members of many of these communities are subsistence farmers, but more and more of their children are leaving the village to work in the cities, bringing back the fruits of their labor: color televisions, generators, satellite dishes. They all wore ready-made clothes, blue jeans rather prominent. We don't sigh in disappointment. Subsistence farming is a tough life, as we've seen in other places, and if their lives can be made more comfortable with the fruits of modern civilization, good for them. We tourists might like to see how primitive societies live, but we have a feeling that most primitive societies would prefer not to be so primitive, and certainly don't want to be on display unless they can profit from that display. Improved health care, less work expended in feeding and clothing oneself, a few amusements, what's so bad about that?

We have always said that you can find beautiful sights everywhere in the world, and so we judge a place by its people. In Malaysia we have found some of the sweetest people around. Add to that the ease with which we can travel, and the surprising lack of bureaucracy and we find it difficult to leave this area.

TOP

MENU

HOME

OUR LOGS

CRUISING FAQ's

PHOTO ALBUMS

CRUISER'S FORUM

USEFUL LINKS

GUESTBOOK