explore malaysia
Ba’Kelalan:
Where the Buffaloes Roam
BY DAVID BOWDENI
was not sure whether the pilot
of our 19-seater MASWings
aircraft was serious or not when
he told us to turn our mobile
phones off, as they would be
useless for the duration of our
three days in Ba’Kelalan. We were taxiing
on the runway in Miri preparing to take
off for this remote community in the
northern Sarawak interior located near
the border with Indonesian Kalimantan.
He had already cracked a joke in saying,
“Feel free to move around the cabin,”
after we had packed ourselves like
sardines into the cramped Twin Otter
aircraft, so based on this to some degree,
I was unsure whether he was joking.Upon arriving, I discovered there was
occasional service on my phone with
other networks and limited internet.
It is amazing these days that there
are places in Malaysia that have such
limited service. This was the first of many
fascinating things that I was to discover
in this isolated community, one hour’s
flying time from Miri.Had I visited the Sarawak interior a century
or so ago I might not have returned to
tell my story, as some communities
there were once fierce headhunters who
would lop your head off rather than talk
to you. Christian missionaries soon put
an end to that as well as drinking andsmoking so today everyone in Ba’Kelalan
has their head firmly secured on their
shoulders, most don’t smoke and alcohol
is not important for the majority of the
inhabitants scattered amongst 12 small
communities in the valley.While it is definitely a backwater,
Ba‘Kelalan is not as remote as it sounds
as the local primary school won a
national award some years back and
even competed against other schools in
the Commonwealth to judge its service
excellence. I wondered what these
students and the community could achieve
with the same phone and internet service
that most of us take for granted.