Borneo rainforest holidays

Nimble-fingered villagers are busy making rattan backpacks and mending fishnets, while beef and sticky rice – which you’ll share for lunch – cooks in bamboo over glowing coals. You’ve arrived, after a few hours in the humid jungle and with the help of a machete, at a wooden longhouse, home to an indigenous Iban tribe. Aside from the addition of a few modern solar panels, this traditional communal building offers a glimpse into the lives of people as they have lived in the forest for generations.

Once threatened with eviction from their ancestral homes, these days the Iban tribe is officially recognised as the custodians of Batang Ai National Park, a protected area of Borneo’s rainforest. It’s here that travellers can visit – and stay – for a first-hand experience of traditional rainforest life.

Tourism in Borneo’s rainforests is essential: it proves that local communities can make money from the forests in more sustainable ways than logging and agriculture. “You will see deforestation on Borneo tours,” says Miles. “You will pass areas of forest that have been cut for palm plantations. It really brings the problem home.”

All responsible rainforest holidays bring benefits to the local people and wildlife, but travellers who want to get their hands dirty and make a visible difference will find that Borneo is the best place to go. Borneo holidays immerse you in rainforest life where you can work and live alongside locals, helping to monitor rehabilitated wildlife or replant the jungle one tree at a time.

“Travellers on a volunteering holiday will be living with local people, discovering their ways of life and helping them to address their problems in ways that are much more than just financial,” says Anne Smellie, operations director of our volunteer travel specialists Oyster Worldwide.