TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
A night in Tane Olan jungle
Malinau, North Kalimantan is only few hours away from the busy, urban centers of Java, but a lifetime away in so many ways.
Change Size
Heading upstream: Krimson, guide and boatman, steers visitors into the Dayak heartlands of Tane Olan. (JP/Mark Heyward)
Malinau, North Kalimantan, is only few hours away from the busy, urban centers of Java, but a lifetime away in so many ways.
Malinau is a remote area, close to Indonesia’s border with Malaysia on the east coast of the island of Borneo.
If one makes it as far as the small town of Malinau, it is only an hour’s drive along a bumpy road to the Kenyah Dayak village of Setulang. From here, it is a one-hour ride in a canoe to the primal forest of Tane Olan.
Arriving in Malinau, a three-hour boat ride from Tarakan, the largest city in North Kalimantan, it is immediately obvious that this is Dayak territory, the native tribal community of Kalimantan.
The familiar sculptures and bright colors that identify the Kayan and Kenyah tribes are evident on wooden buildings and government offices.
The impact is even greater in the village of Setulang, which sports a massive open-sided meeting hall decorated in grand Dayak style. A group of men is busy in the adjacent yard carving a set of totem poles with the same curling sculptures.
