Bario Pictures

Pictures of Bario in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak in Borneo, Malaysia

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De Havilland Twin Otter plane arriving at the airfield at Bario, Kelabit Highlands

Reception line for the opening of the 2010 Bario Food Festival. The whole community turned out to welcome dignitaries and visitors.

Kelabit women regard long extended earlobes and extensive leg tattoos as signs of beauty. These practices however are taken up less enthusiastically by the younger generation.

The rich farmland high on the cool plateau in the Kelabit Highlands in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia is home to the famous Bario organic rice. The Kelabit people, who were once head hunters still live in modern longhouses. These are wooden link houses built on stilts. Long communal verandas can either be open for meetings and festivals or closed in as cooking areas. 

Margaret chatting to some of the older ladies still living in the longhouses. Their families have graduated from university and lead successful careers in the coastal areas of Sarawak, in other parts of Malaysia or in other parts of the world.

We enjoyed the Food Festival, chatting to the local Kelabit and Penan people, sampling jungle food and admiring the hand crafts. In the evenings we were inpressed by traditional music, singing and dancing.

Catherine a very friendly Penan woman who looked after us at the evning festival meal of wild boar and jungle vegtables. Having fun with visitors from Indonesia, just a few kilometers from Bario, who had been invited to the festival.

We were invited, along with Chris and Sarah, to plant cinnamon trees on the war memorial hill. The Memorial is to a group of British and Australian soldiers who parachuted into central Borneo to set up local resistance fighters to disrupt the Japanese occupation of the island.