THE GUARDIAN OF THE FOREST – The Borneo Expedition Episode 1 Trailer

WHAT IS OVERLANDING

“Life is a journey, not a destination” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Overlanding as the name suggests, describes undertaking a journey over land whether with your own vehicle or on your own two feet or in an overland truck with other people. The essence of overlanding, no matter what your mode of transport, is that the journey is what is important, not the destination.

The beauty of overland travel is that you get to see and experience parts of a country or continent that would be very difficult to access, if not impossible without a vehicle. You get the opportunity in meeting new people, or simply after an affordable way to travel from one stunning location to another, an overland trip will cover the best highlights, national parks and adventure travel activities that the location has to offer.

But overall, overlanding is more about your attitude. You need all the usual attributes to enjoy travel. You need an open mind, to be tolerant of other people, a sense of humour and you must relish the idea of foreign places and unusual situations. By nature there is a lot of camping involved which makes it a cost-effective way to travel. If you enjoy camping in the open, sitting around a campfire, looking out of the window at different scene every day, and don’t mind skipping a shower every now and then, overlanding is for you.

THE BORNEO EXPEDITION ADVENTURE TRAVEL SERIES

The Borneo Expedition is an adventure travel series to develop, document and promote sustainable overland routes within the island of Borneo and beyond. Each expedition comprises of an exhilarating experience designed to promote key destinations of significant geological, ecological, cultural and historical importance.  This is our first venture into videography. Working on the final edit and will be released in the first quarter of 2016 and hope to get this adventure series up and running to promote overland tourism in Borneo and beyond.

Episode 1 touches on the experience of 4 overland vehicles and 10 crew members traversing more than 600 Km from the city of Kota Kinabalu to the most southern town of Sabah which borders the fringe of the Kalimantan and Sarawak Border. The journey involves a 180 Km offroad section and upon reaching Long Pasia, expedition members have to track a journey of 30 Km return to the Maga Nooh Campsite located at the beautiful Maga Falls.

Long Pasia is also the home of the Lundayeh people of Sabah that has similarities with neighbouring Lundayeh people of Kerayan-Kelabit highlands of East Kalimantan in Indonesia and Lawas, Sarawak where they called themselves Lun-Bawang. The Lundayeh plants padi as the main source of income and the rice of Long Pasia are considered the best similar to the the famous rice planted from Bario of the Kalabit highlands. Long Pasia is already famous for a place that is very far down south and the Maga Falls is also shortlisted by Sabah Tourism Board as a destination. However, information is not comprehensive of the surrounding trails and tourist attractions around Long Pasia. The Ministry of Tourism and Environment Sabah has made an excellent effort to educate the people of Long Pasia to convert or take up their homes under the homestay programmes. Villages are invited to undergone basic training to run homestay businesses in Long Pasia.

Based on feedback and discussions with homestay operators, one of the most common problems faced by them was not having enough guests. There was this myth that has been perpetuated that once they build the homestay, attend a training course and received a certificate of attendance and licence to operate, the customer will come.

Not sufficient efforts were made for marketing, promoting, pricing, packaging and engaging with the tour operators who may be able to play a leading role. Some could not engage in conversation in English with the guests and were unable to meet the needs and interests of the guests. Just like any other business, Homestay is only a viable business if done right. For a successful homestay development, the certain conditions must be present to ensure a long and sustainable growth. Many NGOs have come to Long Pasia and they have contributed their part to educate and uplift the living standards of the villages by implementing hydro-power, solar power and so on..  However, more effort can be channel to the development of assets based tourism products such as surrounding activities and trails to support the development of the homestay business.

The people of Long Pasia to date still have to consume untreated water from the river, live on few hours of solar power and generator sets per day. Major income is still rice planting which are only harvested once per year. Most of the rice harvested are only for self-consumption as not much more to sell. Due to the altitude of Long Pasia (above 1,000 M), low land fruit trees all bear sour fruits, palm tree do not grow well (luckily) and they don’t have much alternative crop other than planting rice.

OUR MISSION

This project aims at complementing the homestay programmes for the people of Long Pasia by developing the most important criteria, Asset Based Tourism Products.

Long Pasia has a rich natural environment, biodiversity, adventure activities and culture which are the main ingredients for a successful homestay development programme. This project proposed to implement the following:-

  1. To improve the facilities and trails of the Maga Falls and its surrounding areas.
  2. To produce marketing materials for promotion of the activities surrounding Long Pasia.
  3. To do join promotion with Travel magazines, Tourism organisations to put Long Pasia as a strong destination for domestic and international tourist.
  4. To produce a certificate of achievement for the Maga Falls trail.
  5. To work out a pricing strategy for tour products including homestay from Long Pasia and work with interested tour operators.
  6. To produce Episode 1 of The Borneo Expedition – Long Pasia Xpedition to promote Long Pasia and Maga Falls.

OUR PARTNERS

Mitsubishi Motors Malaysia were kind enough to loan us their all new Mitsubishi Triton for filming of our Episode 1 and we wish to thank MMM for their wonderful effort which without the Triton, we would have not enough cargo space to carry our equipment and rations. We were also given the chance to drive the all new Mitsubishi Triton and we were impressed!  A true workhorse vehicle and we hope to get to use it more on our future expeditions! Thank you Jassie Gan and the Mitsubishi Team for the speedy coordination and approvals!

Big thank you also to GT Radial of Indonesia for providing the mud terrain tyres to fit the Mitsubishi Triton and their performed wonderfully. Thank you Leonard Goh and the team at GT Radial Indonesia for the long term support towards our ventures!

We would like to work with more partners such as corporate organisation, governmental organisation, non-government organisation (NGOs), media organisations to achieve our mission and if you believe your organisation can support and contribute to this CSR project, please contact Mr. John Kong (Hp: +6016 8349888) and Email: john@theborneoexpedition.com so we could share more information with you.

 

 

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