John Boyd Macdonald
John Boyd Macdonald
Back in March we spent five days at a Tiwah (Dayak funeral ceremony) in the village of Bangkal, five hours west of here on Lake Sembuluh. I wrote previously about the marvellous sapundu (carved wooden pillars) of Bangkal, and about the variety…
If I was trying to think of things that I would LEAST like to find in my bed, a two metre long Mangrove Snake (Boiga dendrophila, also known as the Gold-ringed cat snake) would be high on the list*. They…
For some time, I’ve wanted to write about the mysterious masked characters known as bukung, babukung or sababuka (depending on which part of Central Kalimantan you are in – and who you talk to). But I’ve put it off because (a) I…
We recently travelled to the Dayak village of Bangkal on the Seruyan River, 300km to the southwest of our Kalimantan ‘home’, to attend a Tiwah – Dayak funeral ceremony. It was our fourth Tiwah – the previous ones were on the Kahayan…
Here’s a list of “things I didn’t know about orangutans before I came to Kalimantan”. To be honest, it was pretty easy to put together a fairly long list, because I didn’t know much about them before moving into their…
For two years in a row, we’ve had the pleasure of attending and helping with the planting of rice in the Dayak Ngaju village of Tewang Rangkang, on the Katingan River a couple of hours drive to the northwest of…
Not long after we first arrived in Central Kalimantan, I wrote about a Kuda Lumping ‘performance’ in the village of Suka Mulya, just a kilometre or so from our home. Several months later, we were delighted to hear of another performance which was…
Banjarmasin is the capital of South Kalimantan (Kalimantan Selatan, usually just referred to as ‘KalSel’). It likes to promote itself as “The Venice of the East”. The Lonely Planet reckons this is “a jaw-dropping exaggeration”, saying that the city “sprawls in all…