National Park After Dark - Bruno of Borneo: Gunung Mulu National Park (Part 1)

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Home is where the heart is. Bruno Manser may have been born in Switzerland, but his heart was in Borneo, where he fell in love with the jungle and the people in it. It was paradise, but it was in peril. The home Bruno found was in serious danger. A home he was willing to fight for the death to protect. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Mosh: Use our link and save 20% off plus FREE shipping on your first 6-count Trial Pack.Earth Breeze: Use our link to subscribe and save 40%.Microdose: Use code NPAD to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month of online therapy by using our link.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally, breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night And you've had enough of shopping from your couch Done hoping it looks anything like the picture When you tear open that envelope It's time for a little in-person spring treat It's time for a trip to Ross

Work your magic Home Take a moment to imagine it You may see images of your childhood house In an old familiar neighborhood A place you can't just imagine But you can feel and smell The blue wooden structure at the end of a dead end road

the grooves of the wooden staircase banister. Wet autumn leaves. Or maybe it's not a place from childhood at all, but one you made for yourself later in life. Maybe your very first apartment, or a fixer-upper you poured blood, sweat, and tears into to make your very own. Now what about your family?

Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. A group of people who have been with you since the very beginning. Or came into your life when you, needed them the most. People you may share last name with or sport the same signature dimples and brown eyes. But the thing about home and family is they aren't always where you were born or who you're born too. Not everyone feels at home in the town they were raised or feels connected to the people they shared their early years with. Not everyone feels the cohesiveness that comes with the typical nuclear family image. They feel out of place, a square peg and a round hole. On the other hand,

you can love where you were born and the people you are raised with and still feel like you belong somewhere else. Sometimes home is where you make it, and the people you meet along the way become your chosen family. And for some, once they find that perfect fit, they never look back. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Where are we going, Danielle? You know exactly where we're going. Tell everyone. And I'm so excited.

I love where we're going. And it's the first time we've done a story in this area. We are going to the island of Borneo. Where is that? And everyone's like, okay. And that would be where? Okay. So that is so funny that you say that because I've talked to

about Borneo to a couple of people and they're like, wait, where? What is that? And I just, I don't know why I've been so familiar with it. But, um, so if you Google image it, it is in Indonesia and it is the third largest island in the world. And it's not a country. So Borneo is not a country. It's an island and that is comprised of three different countries. And we'll get into that as we get familiar with the location and where we're going and things like that. But it is absolutely amazing. It is on my bucket list for sure and you will see why i'm googling it right now and i already see why it's beautiful it is it's absolutely it's like a tropical there's this little what we're already going off the rails it's minute one please tell me what this is i think that's a um is that a raseousous monkey race

i don't know it's noses out of this world though can you look that up Racy's, I don't know how to pronounce it, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Like, what is this thing? It is. Oh my God. No, it's not. No, it's not. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Racy's macaque is not what you just showed me. I don't know what that is. It's a primate of some sort. Yeah, I don't know what this thing is, but I need to know more about it because it's nose. You have to post a photo of this thing. Let's see. Well, we'll figure out what it is, I'm sure. Probstis monkey.

Okay. This nose is literally out of this world. Like, what in the... It looks like a squid word kind of. It does. It's like a monkey version of Squidward. Yeah. Okay.

Well, as cute as that is, and I'm glad everyone now knows of this. What is it called again? A probis monkey. It's P-R-O-B-O-S-C-I-S. Also known as a Dutch monkey. We'll call it a Dutch monkey. Okay, there we hear of this. Amazing.

A Dutch monkey. It says endangered and possibly one of the most bizarre-looking creatures on our planet. Wow. Well, that ain't that the truth. Now we got to go. Now I got to see a Dutch monkey. Whatever it takes to get you there, I am willing to hop on board with because... It doesn't take much.

Bourneo's amazing. Well, now that we just have hearty derailed, haven't even gotten to. into the story. Sorry. No, it's fine. I mean, part of the fun of doing the podcast is looking up different animals and species and landscapes and fun things that are in places that are so foreign to us here and just getting familiar with the locations of the story. So just that'll be at the forefront of your mind now. There's a lot of, I'll stop looking, but there's a lot of weird animals there. Okay. Tell me more. Okay. Okay. So yes, we are going to Borneo. And like I said, earlier, it is the third largest island in the world, stretching 800 miles north to south and

600 miles east to west. So I think when we say island, people just think of little dots in the sea, and that is not what Borneo is. And it's surrounded by the South China Sea. It's nearest large neighbors being Indonesia and the Philippines. So that's where we're at geographically. Okay. The biodiversity on this island is almost unfathomable. So kind of- I saw. into, yes, you've already kind of Google imaged it. But just as a small idea of just how large of a scope we're talking about, British naturalist Alfred Wallace once collected 2,000 species of insects in a single square mile here. Wow, that's a lot of bugs. It's a lot. The island's 287,000 square miles or 743, 330,000, has over 16,000 species of plant, amphibian, bird, fish,

mammal, reptile, and insect species that live amongst the tropical rainforests, mangroves, montane forests, and peat swamp forests, with many more still yet undiscovered or undocumented to be found. There's a lot going on here. Very cool. The island is politically divided amongst three countries, like I mentioned before, and those are Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. And most of our story today takes place in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island, which stretches along the island's northwest coast. And this area is known for the rugged, dense rainforest of its interior.

Much of it is protected parkland as well, which is really cool. What national park is it? So, funny you should say that, Cassie. So I stretched this episode. You're like, this is not a national park at all, actually. It is very national, or it's very, how do I want to say this? It does not take place in a national park the entire time. Let's just say that.

But partially? But partially for a brief moment. But it's a very... Brief moment. It's very outdoor, obviously, outdoor focused. But it has to do a lot about fighting for the protection of natural areas. So that's the tie-in. All right.

And I just wanted to go to Borneo, so cut me some slack. Hey, I'm into it. I'm ready. I actually, before we go on a little bit, of course, there's a book. There's always a book. And I actually stumbled across this when I was in Vermont with my family a few months ago. I got this at like a little local used bookstore. And it's called The Last Wild Men of Borneo, a true story of death and treasure. And I picked it up and I was very intrigued. And I was like, I wonder if this takes place in a national park. And literally like the first page had the words national park on. And then I'm like, okay, perfect. Sold. Sounds good enough.

Sold. So the national park is actually called Gunning Mulu National Park. And that is kind of where our story begins. But I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here. Back to the Malaysian state of Sarawak, where we're going to be starting off here. Just to give you an idea of how much protected area there is in this area. In a land area that's roughly the size of England,

give or take, there are a whopping thing. 30 national parks. Oh, that's a lot. Which is a lot. And some of them are open to the public, but others are actually just strictly protected natural area and no one is allowed to visit. That's really cool. With an area so wild, seemingly untouched with so much potential for discovery and adventure,

obviously there's a call to go and see it from deep within you, at least in me. And some of those people who answer that call never return home. And that is where our story begins. Once more, my soul is amazed. June 1984. So reads the entry, 30-year-old Bruno Manzers Journal reflected the day he walked out of Gunning Mulu National Park. Equipped with the bare essentials, a compass, map, 20 pounds of rice, a rain tarp, a machete, fishing net, and headlamp, along with a spare change of clothes, he took off,

solo, into some of the most pristine and spectacular virgin rainforest on the planet, where he was going, and for how long, he didn't know. But what he did know was that he was ready for another grand adventure. Bruno had barely been in Borneo for six months, but it already felt like home. Although home was technically Switzerland. Raised in Basel with three sisters and two brothers, Bruno's family shared a small two-bedroom apartment. His family was of working class, and although the family looked picture perfect, Bruno's father

was described as tyrannical. He was verbally abusive to his family, and as a result, Bruno found himself more often than not outside of his family's home in the natural world outside of his apartment. He woke up with the birds and spent his days amongst the dirt and frogs and animals. When forced to go back inside, he spent many nights outside on his balcony, even using tree branches and ferns to make a bed on the balcony, spending cold Switzerland nights under the stars in his little nest. Sounds lovely. Doesn't it?

It's kind of like a tree fort. Yeah. But not. But better. But better. As he grew older, he became more and more enthralled with the idea of self-reliance and practiced it all the time. In school, he was kind of like a middle-of-the-road student, for the most part. He wasn't doing bad. He didn't do poorly, but he wasn't a shining superstar either. When he turned 18, he received his draft notice and chose to appear in front of seven military judges in November of 1973 to object, in part saying, quote, it is the task of every individual to show love. through human coexistence and respect to all life. I believe in goodness, love, peace, and the power of prayer. Every human being is good at heart and therefore my belief and my mindset are not compatible

with the military. Fair. So he was speaking from the heart, he's like, I can't, it doesn't align with my beliefs. I don't want to serve. And the judges were moved but weren't swayed and they sent him to jail where he served his four months. He sent him to jail even though he was, because he refused to go. Yes.

Okay. I didn't know if they could force him to go even though he appealed the decision. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's like you go or you go to jail. There is no, like, we're going to make you do that. I don't know. That's wild. No, I think you're right. Yeah.

I think you're right. I was just picturing it like he appealed it. And then they're like, nope, you still got to go. I was like, nope, you're going to jail. Yeah. And it's also in Switzerland. So I'm not sure how the military operations were. over there. I probably choose jail over serving if I, I wouldn't survive war. I'm just not built

for it. No one should send me to war. I think you're in the clear. I mean, I'm not even eligible. Like, they wouldn't even want me. But I'm just saying, like, I get it. I would be like jail school. When his sentence was up, he was released and did the most Swiss thing ever, in my opinion. In June of 1974, Bruno and his older brother, Eric, climbed the Elie. with a herd of cows to live simply. And I just say this is the most Swiss thing ever because not that I have direct experience in Switzerland, but I grew up next door to a family. They're very close with my family.

And they're from Switzerland. Oh, cool. And they go there every year and like they're always, yeah, they're just like Swiss through and through. And it's just funny. My mom's partner is from Switzerland. And it's very much like I always, we always joke because I'm like, he's a cheese snob like all cheese and chocolate and like he brought home this giant cowbell that's just like

sitting in the house and I'm like this is so Swiss like cows cheese chocolate it's so funny you say that because the Swiss family that I'm speaking of so they had a dot I think she's still around her name's Indy and she's like this huge like she's like an Irish wolfhound type of mix and she has a giant cowbell on her collar that has cows on the collar. And then they always used to have our family over for like Swiss fondue, like cheese fondue and stuff. It's just, okay, anyway, going back to Bruno, this Swiss. So they go up into the Alps with this herd of cows and they had a hut. And it was a small wooden structure with a no electricity or running water. And their job there was to tend to the cows every day,

milk them, make the bake cheese and butter. And it seemed like a scene straight out of a movie like the hills are alive beautiful you're in the alps and it's a simple zen kumbaya type of thing but it was really rough work work began at 4 a.m and ended at 8 p.m. seven days a week rain or shine snow or sleet the pair had friends and romantic partners come up to visit them from time to time but they were pretty short-lived they never really lasted up there what many deemed as brutal bruno saw as absolutely delightful he thrived in the conditions and was excited to make his own clothing, live with the animals, and away from, quote unquote, the system, as he called it, and he wanted to live off grid and live off of the land. So he was in his element here. They kept a small farm with chickens and pigs as well as a

vegetable garden. In his free time, whatever little of it there was, Bruno would throw his backpack over his shoulder and disappear further into the mountains to free climb. The cow herding was a summer gig, and in the winter, he would rent out a room in a nearby town, and, and and would use that time to catch up with his friends and family and explore more and hone various crafts that he was working on. His brother lasted three years with Bruno up in the Alps, but he went on to switch up his work only slightly from cowherding to goat shepherding. So he's like, I'm changing careers. I'm going to the goats. Bruno learned to read the weather from watching the behavior of the animals and how to successfully and comfortably sustain himself off of the land.

Shortly after his 10th summer in the Alps, he was at a library when he stumbled upon a book on nomads. Cracking open the book, he flipped to a full page of a black and white photo of an indigenous man. Clearly a hunter with the caption, a hunter-gatherer in the forests of Borneo. Intrigued, Bruno began looking more into what he had just stumbled upon. The man he discovered was Panan. Aside from that, there was little to no more information, but he was eager to learn more. And just like that, Bruno Mancer changed his entire life. Known as the last nomads of the Borneo rainforest,

the Pannan people are indigenous nomadic to semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. A people of very little needs, they are not driven by consumerism or possessions and share amongst themselves equally what they have. In fact, they practice Malong, meaning never taking more than necessary. And their language actually does not have a word that means thank you, directly as it's just assumed that everyone will share everything at all times. So there's really

no word or phrase that constitutes. Thank you. It's just expected of, yeah, like everyone shares everything. You don't have to thank someone because it's just like a, it's expected. It's a given. And it's part of life. Exactly. That's cool. They have lived in harmony with the jungles of Borneo for thousands of years, utilizing plants and jungle fruit for food and their medicinal purposes, while using blow pipes crafted with amazing precision and accuracy to take down their usual prey of wild boar, deer, monkeys, monitor lizards, and python with ease. They navigate the jungles using streams and trees, as the stars are of very little use because the thick tree canopy often blots out the sky.

Children are taught from a very young age how to navigate and move through the forest, and depending on gender, hunt, gather, or weave. They believe knowledge is taught by experience. So almost from infancy, they are taught the skills to survive in the forest by older generations. And I do want to make just like a slight distinction here. So if anyone is to dive more into the Pannon people or know of the Pannon people, for the sake of this story, I'm describing the nomadic Pannan peoples as the groups have kind of shifted over time, A lot of changes have occurred, and they kind of split down the middle in the 50s and 60s,

and some of them have become more permanent or semi-settled versus purely nomadic. So their lifestyles, depending on the subgroup of Pannon people, vary. But for the sake of this story, we're talking about the nomadic. Okay, that makes sense. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice.

Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. The Pannon keep dogs to help assist with hunting and tracking and other means of food come from gathering forest products like fruits, mushrooms, and Sago, which is an edible starch that's made from this spongy core tissue of different tropical plants. And that's actually a main staple of their diets. And although they do eat monkeys and wild boar and things like that, they are known to keep monkeys

as pets. And once it's deemed a pet, no harm will come to it. So a lot of the Pannon people have little monkeys for companions. That's kind of weird that like they are. All right. It's just, I think of it like dogs. Dogs you have as pets. You don't eat dogs. But they kind of mix it together. They're like some of them we eat. Some of them are pets. Okay, but people do that all the time with like livestock here in the States. That's true. Like pigs and it's like I love this pig, but I'm going to go to Wendy's and get a bacon covered burger. But not I like my pig. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of like that. Okay. I guess when you put it, I don't know. I know a pitie. I know a pig. I know a And now I don't want to eat bacon anymore. But that's like besides the point. Let's not go down that rattle. That makes sense. Okay. I see I see it now. Okay. The Pannan were mentioned in literature very rarely. Literally almost nothing of them was written prior to the year 1900. And most of that information was from secondhand accounts or rumors. In the 1950s, the nomadic Pannan communities were influenced by state governments and foreign Christian missionaries, at which point the first anthropological

studies regarding them kind of started popping up in the literature. And it was those first studies that Bruno saw in the library and began the next chapter of his life abroad. And just to preface this, Bruno knew nothing about Borneo. But as fate would have it, just as he was starting to come across the information about the Panan, he also heard of a British caving exploration. planned for Sarawak, the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. And like I said, in the beginning, this area is kind of known for its rugged and dense rainforest, and much of that is protected parkland. And this expedition was going to the newly designated Gunning Mulu National Park,

specifically to survey and study the cave system within it. What a perfect way to have an inn to get into the park. Yeah, the stars aligned. So just a little bit, even though we're not spending a ton of time here, here, it's where Bruno's story starts in Borneo. So a little bit about Gunning Mulu. The park is named after Mount Mulu, the second highest peak in all of Sarawak coming in at 7,795 feet, which is roughly about 2,300 meters. Designated in 1974, the park was open to the public in 1985 and is the most studied tropical crass area in the world. And I think we've talked about crasts a little bit in the past,

but essentially just for everyone to envision here. And you can Google it, obviously. But across is landscape underlain by limestone, which has been eroded. And it produces these big ridges and towers and fissures. And it kind of gives it this characteristic land form type of look. It's like the dramatic landscapes. Yeah. And you know what?

When I first started reading about this, I was like, is this the opening scene? Did you see the Netflix series that Barack Obama did about our parks? Yeah, they did. And it was like the first, I think it was the first park or opening scene that they did. And it was these big crass formations with, I think it was like lemurs or something. That was in, that's in Africa. That's in, um, I know. In Madagascar, yeah.

Yeah, but it looks very similar to that. Oh, okay. I know exactly what you're describing then. Mm-hmm. Other than these rugged limestone pinnacles, the park consists of waterfalls, floodplains, hot springs, caves, and of course, jungle. The area is also affected significantly by monsoon seasons and averages between 160 to 200 inches of rainfall every year.

It's a lot of rain. The park is without a doubt the most biologically rich and diverse that we have ever covered here on the show. There are thousands of species of plants, animals, and insects to give you an idea. There have been 20,000 species of invertebrates, 8,000 species of fungi, 30,000. 500 species of vascular plants, 25 species of snakes, over 270 species of birds, 28 species of bats. The list literally goes on and on and on. So cool. The caves of the park are a huge draw for people as well, and they were first documented in 1858 and not explored formally until

1932. As the years went on, the cave system proved to be one of the largest in the world, with 183 miles or about 295 kilometers of explored cave system so far. It was, and still is, a hot spot for scientists of all kinds and was the site of several large scientific expeditions. In 1984, Andy Evis, Britain's most famous, I have no idea how to say this dude. Spelalogicest. You know like spalunking? Yeah, spalunking. It's like spalunkologist.

There's no unc in there. It's S-P-E-L-E-O-L-O-G-I-T-S. Spelongagist? There's no K. Spellogist. The guy who, this guy, loved caving. And he studied it. He studied the shit out of caves. And he was planning his third expedition of the,

the Mulu caves when Bruno caught wind of it. So this is the expedition that was kind of going on when Bruno, like, this was the alignment. It was the perfect opportunity for him. He could be a part of this huge grand adventure and get one step closer to the Pannan. So Bruno wrote to Andy and asked to be part of his team, but he was rejected. Bruno did not care about this. And he went anyways. He flew into Bangkok and worked his way south by train, jumping from car to call. sleeping under the stars and in rice patties and sought shelter in different caves. Wait, what are, he slept in rice patties? Yeah.

What are rice patties? Where people like harvest and grow rice. They're like floating, they kind of remind me of, um, you know, at home like the floating cranberry bogs. Yeah. It's kind of like that for rice. Okay. Interesting.

So he did all of this after they said, no, you can't come. He's like, okay, I'm going to come anyways. Yeah. He's like, okay, see you soon. Right, exactly. After spending several months in Thailand, he moved on to a smaller, so he's like on his way there. Like this wasn't like a in one month, I'm going to be there because the expedition's starting. He wrote in far in advance in preparation. I got to get there before they leave without me.

So he went and he has a lot of time in the area before the expedition actually starts, which he is not a part of just for the record, obviously. So he gets his way there and he arrives and he ends up going on to a smaller, pretty uninhabited island off the coast of Malaysia. He got there with six pounds of rice and he wanted to try his hand at living off of the land here. So obviously he was doing a lot of that in the Swiss Alps, but it was a totally different situation. He's somewhere he's never been in a land.

He's never stepped foot on. He has no experience in. But he's like, yeah, I got a couple of spare weeks before this expedition. I'm going to try and figure it out. And he learned by trial and error what plants were edible and which were not. Oh, that sounds a trial and error. This one made me violently ill. This one was okay.

Literally. Yeah, pretty much. That's exactly what he did. Also, he used how to successfully use a fishing net and how to live amongst the wild creatures of the jungle. He was fascinated by all of these creatures. snakes, insects, plants, bats, birds, all of these things that seem to fill every square inch of the forest. After that little six-month detour, he showed up for the expedition, and the forestry department actually convinced Andy and his team to take him. And while he was initially treated

pretty coldly by the team, because after all, he just kind of like showed up. Like, who are you? It's like, oh yeah, you who we told you not to come here. And you're here. You're here. They were obviously a little upset with him in the beginning. And although they did accept him, they were kind of giving him the cold shoulder. But pretty quickly, everyone warmed up to him because he turned out to be a very skilled cave explorer, a swimmer, climber, and surveyor. He was kind of just up to any task and put his whole being into anything that was assigned to him. And he was very capable. He was, it was clear he He was. He was an asset when they weren't expecting it. He was. Exactly. So everyone ended up like really admiring him, so it worked out in his favor. Got to shoot your shot, I guess. But back to where

we begin our story with Bruno. He was leaving the park. So he came here, he did his expedition, and now he's leaving. Yes, he had experience, clearly, as we just learned, but the jungles of Borneo are unforgiving. Bruno was very quick to learn that. With his rice supply dwindling and his slow-moving bush-wacking through the thick vegetation, he'd be lucky to get through 100 yards a day through this thick vegetation, topped with a total lack of sense of direction, he was in trouble. But he wasn't panicking yet. There was just a little bit of concern creeping up. Like, okay, well, I'm lost. He had been wandering for over a week. And although he turned to pitcher plants for little sips of water, he was running out of food and he was bordering on starving at this point.

Despite his love and admiration for all of Borneo's flora and fauna in the sense of adventure battling the jungle gave him, he wasn't totally wandering aimlessly. True, he had no particular destination in mind and no real way to get to said destination. He was in pursuit of something, or rather a someone. And on the 10th day of his trek, amongst climbing moss-covered fallen trees and untangling himself from low-hanging vines, he found the first sign that he was going in the right direction. Glancing down at the wet ground, he saw them, footprints, and then he heard it, something he hadn't heard in over 10 days, human voices. The Pannon, he thought, as a huge smile broke across his face. With a renewed vigor for his adventure, he gathered up all his

belongings and followed the barefoot prints deeper into the jungle. By 1984, when Bruno was getting accustomed to the jungle, the Pannan numbered around 7,000, and like I briefly, mentioned earlier were living in roughly two different populations. The Western Panan and the Eastern. The Western group lived in larger communities and had settled into farming communities, whereas the Eastern group had become semi-settled, but remained primarily nomadic and lived in much smaller groups and retained a pure hunter-gatherer lifestyle. And they were exactly the types of people who Bruno wanted to meet. In his mind, these people were wild and free and untouched by time. And and modern day influence, people who had escaped the system, people that valued the earth and

all of its inhabitants. He felt an immense connection with the Pannon people, despite never coming into contact with a single one of them. But that was about to change. Bruno had followed the footprints deeper and deeper into the jungle when he at last laid down to rest and drifted off to sleep. Hours later, he heard them before he saw them, soft, quiet voices coming from beyond the forest. He called out and then he saw them. Two figures peeking out from behind the trees, a man and a woman. While the woman hung back, the man stepped forward. He was carrying a blowpipe and wearing long pants.

Bruno attempted to introduce himself and give the man pieces of information of where he was from and where he was going. But the man didn't respond and instead, the pair turned silently back into the forest. Bruno had come too far now to not follow them. For over an hour, through the thick forest and what seemed like straight up a mountainside, he stumbled behind them as they weaved and moved in and out of the thick underbrush, completely barefoot, with ease. Eventually, they arrived at their encampment.

Looking around, he noticed three-sided huts with mud hearths for fires, barking dogs running around, and counted about 13 people, none of which even seemed to acknowledge his presence. Instead, glancing away or lightly grazing his, extended hand when he attempted to introduce himself. Nothing rude. It wasn't like a cold shoulder brushing him off type of thing. He described them as just indifferent, like they could care less about him being there. They all wore black bands or bangles. Their earlobes stretched with heavy rings, some of which were down past their shoulders. Men wore loincloths. The woman's hair was worn long,

while the men's were cut like mullets. Retracting his extended hand, Bruno switched tact He pulled out the last of his rice and offered it to them. Next, he pulled out his wooden flute and began playing. And this garnered some smiles and attention. Come on. Eat, they exclaimed. Bruno sat in a circle with them, around a pot filled with food, and spent the rest of the evening playing music, laughing, and sharing meals with the Pannon,

despite not understanding a single word they were saying. Food is like the international language. Yes. Like here. Like, okay. Yeah. Here we go. Food and music. Food and music. Yeah. So this didn't matter to him at all. He felt like he was home.

And for the next several weeks, Bruno immersed himself with the Pannon. He observed and listened intently, picking up everything he could about their lives, their language, and culture until he was accepted into the group and was permitted to participate as one of their own. For example, it took him a full 10 days to begin learning their names. As he wrote, quote, they guard their names like a secret. He also learned to track, hunt, and butcher wild boar, and medoc or monkey, learning that while all the meat was shared equally, I had to throw this in because it's kind of grody, but it's kind of cool too. The eyeballs and brains were delicacies reserved for the women and children of the group. Lucky us. You get the eyeballs.

Thank you. It's so funny because, of course, in the book, it's much more detail. And we'll go into that a little bit later, but he said that when the hunters would come back with an animal or like a monkey, whatever, the kids would like extend their hands greedily as if children looking for candy. Like they wanted the eyeballs. That was the prize possession. Wow. That's that's very interesting. Now I'm curious why, like if they tasted better. I think that is like a cultural, in different cultures around the world.

They're like guys shirts. You get the pop and the, I remember my dad before he passed away, he was dating a woman from, I think, Korea or China or Korea. It was a long time ago and they had just kind of got together shortly before he passed. But her name was Chafon. And she cooked a lot. She barely spoke English. And she cooked a lot of traditional meals. and she would go to the market and get a lot of things that we were not used to eating.

And I remember her sucking the eyeballs out of fish and eating them that way. Yeah. But she was healthy. She was like she looked like, like, I mean, she was probably in her 40s and she looked like she was like my age 20. Well, oh my God, I'm not 20 something anymore. I'm 32. Oh, God. But at heart, I'm 24.

I'm 20. Well, I mean. And don't knock it until you try it. If there's all these different cultures that say it's good, then they're probably onto something. They're onto something. It's better than our diet. I'll tell you that right now.

One day, one day we'll try it in our travels. We'll come across someone. I don't know. I'm excited for traveling to try different cultural foods. So even though I'm like, what? Like eyeballs, I'd probably actually try it and be open to it in real life. Me too. It's just so funny that you say that because I've been thinking a lot about that in particular.

And as far as trying being open to trying new things because obviously I think, I don't know if we said this on the podcast before, but both of us are pescatarian. So we aren't like going to Burger King and getting a whopper or anything. But I don't think that'll mean that will prohibit me from trying like an actual true experience. Like if we're in Peru or Patagonia or Madagascar and someone's offering us a traditional meal. Yeah, I won't be like, I don't eat that. I'll try it 100%. Yeah, anyways. Okay, what was I saying? The eyeballs, right. Bruno was studying everything about this group of people, how their blowpipes were crafted,

how arrows were made, and how they coated them with poison. He learned to decipher symbols that they made while they walked, how five notches on a tree meant that five Pannon were on a march, or if leaves were placed back to back and placed in a single direction on a path, that meant that someone was sick and that they needed to hurry home. So there's all these different things to learn. Home meant something completely different to the Pannan as well. And Bruno was part of their movement from place to place. He watched in awe as they disassembled and reassembled their huts efficiently, swiftly, and effortlessly. When work was done, he would sit and play music with handmade flutes and harps with the group and sing and dance and laugh. He noted his admiration for the

Panan in his journal saying that they quote live completely in the moment they have no calendar and don't know their age or place of birth if their belly is full they're happy with little reason to think about tomorrow i love that i think that time is way too much like in our society that time is tracked way too in depth your age what time a day it is what month it is what year it is and it's just so easy to get lost in all of that and to focus. Like we have so many timelines. Oh my God, I'm 30. Why don't I have a house and kids and I'm married? Oh my God. I'm 16. I need to drive a car. I'm 21. I have to go to the, you know, like there's so many things. There's so many ages and timestamps of like what you're supposed to be in society at that age. So I think it's cool that they don't have those. They don't

keep track of their age or time. Yeah, I mean, their lives are completely different. And that was one of the huge draws for Bruno to them, just like a completely radically different lifestyle compared to what he was born and raised and used to over in Switzerland. He also praised their connection to the natural world and frequently wrote up his own thoughts regarding the jungle. He says, There is no wild chaos in the jungle. Life develops according to a law that is inherent in nature. Even the smallest creature has its very own specific living space, the many relationships from a harmonic whole that we as modern people only interfere with all too often. After over a month with his hosts, Bruno moved on. He bounced between several different areas of the island,

finding homes with other groups of nomadic Panan and Dyak, another indigenous group of peoples on the island of Borneo. He formed deep bonds with all of them, learning more and more about their lives, histories, legends, lore, and their various religious beliefs. He was quoted in his journal as saying, In my search to understand the essence of humanity, there grew inside me a desire to learn from a people who still lived close to their source. I wanted to live with a people of nature, to share their traditions, to discover their origins, to become aware of their religion in life, to know these things. And learn and live he sure did. So much so that at first the Benin called him big man, in their language, of course, but eventually began referring to him as Pananmen. He found his home, his personal

Eden, his paradise within the jungles of Borneo, and amongst its people, a corner of the world that had seemingly evaded the clutches of modern society for centuries, somewhere as pure and natural as it comes. But the wilds of Borneo, its jungles, forests, and swamps that serve as the last holdouted for not only the Panon, but for species like the clouded leopard, orangutan, Malayan, sunbear, Asian elephant. That same wilderness lost a bit of its magic when the bulldozers came, threatening to level all that Bruno came to covet. While logging in Borneo, and more specifically in Sarawak, had been happening in small chunks for decades before Bruno arrived, it wasn't until his arrival in the 1980s when it exploded. The Minister of Agriculture and Forestry and the Chief

Minister of Sarawak at the time handed over logging rights to friends, family, and politics. political alliances for over 7 million acres of rainforest, a move that essentially created major logging conglomerates overnight, and they went to work. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization conducted a forestry study in the late 1960s, and they released it about a decade later in the 70s, and it recommended a limit to the annual timber cutting in Sarawak to roughly 3,564 acres. But with each passing decade, that suggested number rose and rows and rows until by 1987, it hit 180 acres an hour. That is so much land. Mm-hmm.

An hour. And we'll get into some more statistics later on just to kind of really put into perspective how crazy, especially during this time period, things got. But yeah, it's wild. Wow. As timber companies pushed further and further into the jungle, so too did their destruction. Not only were large swaths of forests felled, acres of 100-foot trees, 10 feet in diameter, were hacked to the ground. And there was more to consider. First, surveyors trampled through the jungle to mark the trees. Roads had to be built to allow for bulldozers, chainsaws, and men that powered them.

And then once the trees were cut, they had to be dragged through the forest with heavy equipment, leaving yet another path of destruction behind. So it's not just individual trees and areas. It's just everything is being affected. In a letter written home to his brother, dated March 9, 1985, Bruno expresses some of his first signs of concern. He says, the jungle here is in danger. If there isn't a miracle soon,

the bulldozers will roll over the last untouched areas. I'm trying to mobilize the Pannon against it, and at best, I would like to bust the important bridge under construction into a thousand pieces into the air. But for now, I listen in quietness. His stance on logging was very clear. But what was happening and where people stood was anything but. As an outsider to the situation, we may have a very visceral negative reaction to logging, especially when it comes to extensive unchecked cutting. Obviously, I get it, you get it. You hear about it. I mean, that statistic, even your face, you were like, what? You know, like, it's staggering. But,

But it gets really complicated pretty quickly. First, to umbrella, all indigenous peoples under the same wants, needs, and desires when it comes to logging would be wrong. So like Bruno kind of mentioned, he was trying to mobilize the indigenous communities into rallying against logging. But not everyone felt that way to put a stop to it. Not every single group was opposed to what logging would offer them. Because, yes, logging meant destruction, but it also meant roads and connection to the outside world. different opportunities to jobs, income, school, modern conveniences like electricity. It basically offered a chance at development.

And not all indigenous peoples were against that. So some people wanted it, some didn't, and others had no idea what was unfolding at all. Some Panan and Dyak communities had a very limited understanding of what was unfolding. They had limited means of communicating with loggers and logging companies, much less truly understanding what the loggers were offering them and what potential long-lasting implications the offers that they were making to them and the decisions that they would make would how they would affect their lives down the road. Long story short, the indigenous peoples of Borneo were at a huge risk of being taken advantage of. For example, Harrison Nagu, Adyak, had left his

village to seek education opportunities and he eventually went on. He graduated from law school in 1980, but when he was still in school in 1976, he returned to his home for a holiday break and happened to be at his home when there was a meeting that was being conducted in his village. A timber company had been granted concession for the land behind the village, unknown by anyone, until the day that the bulldozer showed up. They just came. And so they're having this meeting with the people of the community, and they were expressing concerns wanting to stop the logging,

but very little of them had been to school. They had very limited means of communication, speaking different languages. And Harrison, who's the kid that went, he was in school and visiting home, he described the meeting extensively how the loggers basically showed up with soda and cookies and snacks and essentially bribes for the people. Small bribes, not like here's some cookies and we're going to ruin your life, but here's some delicacies from our culture. Exactly.

And that's exactly what they were viewed as. They were delicacies. Like these people are living off of the jungle. There is no Coca-Cola and like chips-a-oy. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So they're bringing all this stuff.

They've never seen it before. Yeah. It's a bribe and it's a distraction from the issue, the main issue. And it works. Nothing really took place in that meeting at all. And while there were mixed feelings about the cleavely clear cutting of the forest among this particular group, the logging company went out in the end, and they agreed to pay 60 cents for every ton of timber taken from their forest.

60 cents. Yep. Per ton. That's literal pennies. More infuriating, in December of 1986, another timber company called Samling met with the heads of 11 different longhouses. And longhouses are going to come up later on in the story, but essentially they're a traditional style of home in which an entire village will live under one roof, but different families will live in different rooms of this structure. Okay. And most of the leaders were unable to read, yet after the meeting, 10 of them signed or put their thumbprints because they didn't know how to write

as a form of a signature on an agreement saying that they wouldn't interfere with the loggers And further, the document bound them to not complain or seek compensation for water pollution, erosion, damage to the jungle, or disappearance of wildlife, which they relied on for food. And in return for all of this, Samling offered to pay small sums for damaged fruit, coffee, and cocoa trees, along with $800 for Christmas celebration money, which was the equivalent value of two trees. That is that is robbery. It is. It's straight up robbery. And it's, they're totally taking advantage of the situation. And a lot of this has echoes of what happened here in America with indigenous communities.

Mm-hmm. And it's very upsetting. Yeah. To hear those numbers is just, like, we're going to destroy your whole life, but we're going to give you the equivalent of a couple trees, even though we're destroying your entire forest. Yep. While Western tourists were not unheard of in Sarawak, they usually stayed in coastal areas. Few ventured inland and a scarce few stayed for longer than a brief visit to the inner, most remote

areas of the island. But Bruno was very different. By now, Bruno's visa had long since expired, and he was venturing deeper and deeper into the jungle and living with various groups of Pannon. And as I kind of briefly mentioned, there's a very complicated web of various. cultures and division on the island of Borneo, even amongst the indigenous groups. But I will say most of them viewed, if not all of them, viewed the Pannan as the bottom rung of the latter. So when word began to travel about this white man living amongst the Panon, people were shocked. Like of all the people to live with, because they really look down on this group of people. And so when they realized that there was this outsider living amongst the

locals, out of all the locals he chose to live with, they were so surprised that he chose them because they were just really looked down upon. They were kind of like viewed as as animals and just like not even really people because of their lifestyle and things like that. So it was a big deal. Like a lot of people were taken aback by his choice. What's more, Bruno had shed his Western look entirely and was morphing into a Panon himself. He cut his hair in their traditional way. He went barefoot, wore a loincloth, and traditional bands of ratten on his wrists and below his knees. He spoke the language fluently. He had learned it by now and was now accepted and welcomed with every group he came in contact with. Babies were even named after him. He has fully integrated

himself into the Penan culture. And not only that, it sounds like they really respect him if they're naming their children after him. Yes, absolutely. And Bruno didn't want to just live amongst the Pannon, he wanted to fight for them. In the spring of 1985, he proposed an idea. If all the groups of Panon in the area could band together and unite for a single cause, a large forest reservation could be possible because he's watching, he has kind of like, he's between two worlds right now. He's an outsider that is very familiar with what is happening with the logging companies. He understands what this means for the Pannon, but the Pannon don't really know the implications. And they're living in all these really small, fragmented family groups amongst the jungle. So they're not this huge band of people.

They're like, you know, 10, 15 people in a group that are nomadic, isolated from one another. There's no real, like, cohesiveness, no communication with one another. So he's getting to know their culture and becoming to love it and essentially become one of them. And yet he sees what's going on and what's going to happen to them. So he wants to kind of be their spokesperson. And who better to do it? He's got the view of Western society and he understands them as well. So he sees that the logging companies are really basically screwing them over. Yeah. It's kind of his hope and goal to be a spokesperson for them. He doesn't want to influence them right now at this point. Like he's just, he's not advising them.

He's just a translator. He's a translator. He's informing them of what's going on and hoping to communicate their wishes in a way that's effective and in a way that they'll be paid attention to instead of brushed off. Cool. He met with several groups of Pannon in April of that year, 1985, and he volunteered to act as a secretary to write their proposals and concerns to the. the government. Letters regarding the proposed 3,200 square kilometer or 1,235 square mile

forest reserve went completely unanswered by the government and logging companies, but Bruno was undeterred. Despite the very real threat of being deported by the Malaysian government, he wrote incessantly over the year to the government on behalf of the indigenous peoples and to various magazines and journals regarding the destruction of the rainforest. Oh, so he's reaching out to media now. Oh yeah. And he's there on an expired visa. So he knows that this could cause him some issues with the law, but for him, the cause is worth it. And he's fully invested. By now, he was causing quite the stir. And everyone knew who he was. And that was a major problem. In the spring of 1986, Bruno was in route to a meeting with some various locals regarding this forest reservation

they were trying to create, when a police officer recognized him. He was arrested for overseeing his visa and was taken away. When the vehicle transporting him stopped over a bridge and the officers stepped away to relieve themselves, Bruno made a dash for it. He was shot at and pursued, but after several days on the run and hiding within the jungle, he was successful in returning to Long Saritan, a settlement that he had been using as kind of like the space camp between excursions to different bands of Penan. Damn.

The people had thought he was dead. Like he was arrested and taken away. He was shot at. Like, they thought he was done for. This man is determined. Oh, yeah. And this, he's just getting started. Between everything from start to where we are now.

He is like, oh, you don't want me here. I'm coming. Oh, like I don't speak the language. I'll learn it anyway. Oh, like you're trying to destroy the forest and not responding to me. That's fine. I'll keep talking. And he's very, very determined.

And he's just getting warmed up. The people were absolutely like rejoicing to see him alive and well. Like he was fine. You know, he was a little scuffed up and he was on the run for a few days. But they fed him. They concealed him, gave him supplies and essentially gave him safe harbor until it was time for him to keep moving. Because the police were on the lookout for him.

They weren't like, oh, he's gone. I imagine with a shootout and chasing him on foot that they're determined to get him back. And Bruno had to keep moving. Before his arrest, the police had raided Long Saradon for his notes, belongings, journals, tape recordings, and letters, and confiscated them all. At this point, Bruno had escaped arrest, led the police on a chase through the jungle, and evaded law enforcement. Not only was he causing quite a stir in the logging industry on the island,

he had now embarrassed Malaysian law enforcement and was officially a wanted man, and the police were combing the forests and dangerous. jungle to find him. Despite all of this, Rolf Bulkmeier, an editor and photographer for Geo magazine, which is kind of like a German version of Nat Geo, National Geographic, a big publication, had accepted Bruno's invitation to visit the jungle. So he had been in communication with this guy prior to his arrest, trying to get word out about like, this is a problem, the reinforcer being destroyed, we need someone here to get international attention on it. And he was doing all this communication through smuggling out different letters and communications with this big, intricate

web of people, both on Borneo and abroad at home, which we'll get into a little later as well. For the next several weeks, Bruno took Rolf and his team around through the jungle, highlighting the wildlife and the people and the threats to them both. Rolf was amazed by Bruno, his ability to live so effortlessly and seamlessly as a local, yet also how he retained his western roots, his ability to conversate in English, Pannan, French, German, and Swiss. In his fight to save the Pannan and the forest, he had united several indigenous bands into peaceful protests and blockades blocking access to logging roads. Bruno was one of them, but also one of us, Rolf thought.

Bruno's story was given a full spread in the magazine, and overnight, not only did everyone know him in Borneo, but in Europe too. Bruno was not thrilled with all of this attention on him directly. It was the people and the forest that he was fighting for after all. He reluctantly agreed to meet with James Ritchie, a reporter for one of Malaysia's biggest newspapers, along with a full camera crew, with the conditions that they would hear directly from the Pannan. Richie consented and did film several Pannon leaders who spoke with passion about their forest homes, but what they were unaware of was that he was also working with the government. He informed them of Bruno's location and law enforcement closed in. Dressed in camouflage and carrying automatic weapons, they closed in on Bruno, who was caught off guard. He had glanced out of a thicket of tangled vegetation to see police just a few feet away,

patrolling the area with weapons drawn. He dropped flat to the ground and froze, praying that the men wouldn't see him, but they were too close and spotted him. Bruno bursts out of the brush and law enforcement were hot on his heels and they were firing at him. In the pursuit, he lost all of his belongings,

his machete, arrows, and his blowpipe. But more importantly, he lost a 3,000-word-panon dictionary that he had been working on for years, as well as a contact book. They were closing in on all sides, and Bruno had no choice but to jump into the murky brown waters of a nearby river. He dove in and swam fast, making it across and leaping out onto the other side, onto the bank. Running as fast as he could through the thick, cutting vegetation, he noticed a chunk of flesh was gone out of one of his bare feet. He was bleeding, battered, and tired, but once again, he had slipped through the fingers of authority.

After hours on the run, he was sure he had shaken his pursuers, and as day slipped into night, Bruno curled amongst the biting insects, and tried to sleep. He was worried, not only for himself, but for his friends too. And he had the right to be worried, because contact information was now being used against Bruno. Government officials combed through his paperwork and threatened anyone with ties to him with imprisonment or punishment if they aided Bruno in any way. Because like I said before, he had this big complex web of how he was getting information in and out of the jungle. And all of those contacts were in his paperwork.

Yeah, he had a lot of help. And now they knew who all those people were. Yeah, they're threatening everyone associated with him trying to like choke him out, essentially. Bruno now had to steer clear of his little base camp home in Long Saritan, not only for his own safety, but for the safety of his friends. He didn't want to involve anybody else any further than he had to. and now he was becoming angry. For years, his pleas on behalf of the Pannon people were being ignored, brushed off, or not taken seriously. He had evaded capture for the second time, but he didn't feel successful.

He was being tricked, and the people he came to love were being taken advantage of. Because he just got, he was like, okay, I'll meet with you if you're going to bring attention to the plight of the Pannan and what's happening to the force. And then he was set up by them to the government. Like he, there's a lot of trickery and things going on here and he's, he's sick of it. That night, Rest escaped him completely as he sat up thinking. He later wrote in his journal, My basic peaceful nature is put to a hard test. Should I make my hand into a fist?

To go for someone's throat can only be a last scream of hopelessness. I try to continue to follow the ideal, die before killing. But you know what they say? Love can make you do some crazy things. And there was nothing that Bruno loved more than Borneo. It's people and their wild lands. And he was willing to give his life to protect them all. And that is where I'm going to leave you for part one.

Two parters. They're so bittersweet. It's like I want to know more. But what a good spot to split up the story. And there's so much more to this. Like I could have probably made this a four-parter, to be honest. I'm only going to do two. Because if you do want to learn more, and of course I'll finish up part two with these recommendations also.

But the book I described earlier, The Last Wild Men of Borneo, it is by Carl Hoffman. That book is amazing. And it's actually two stories in one. And I'm just covering Bruno's. So this book, I'm only doing 50% of what this book covers. There's a whole other story with a whole other man in Borneo that has to do more with, like, treasure. So that's a really good one. a movie and it's called Paradise Wars and it's all about Bruno's story. I watched it. It's two and a

half hours long. And it has, uh, doesn't touch on nearly half of what this book does. So, um, it's very, it's a very interesting story. And I can't wait to tell you more. But you'll have to wait till next week. Till next time. Till Monday. Is it Monday? Yeah, Monday. Next Monday. Well, hear more. Well, I get to hear a little bit earlier than that. But everyone else, next Monday. I'm excited to hear it. I love that you found a book. And I love, I love two-parters. I think they're cool. I think they're awesome. Yeah. I mean, his story deserves a lot of air time. And I'm trying to condense it just because, damn, did he do a lot? Yeah. This is one determined man. Yeah, seriously. So it just gets crazier from here, but you'll find out more next week. Until then,

enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale, you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Become an outsider by joining our Patreon where you'll gain access to monthly bonus stories and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our partners, you're supporting our show. To access our special discount codes along with source information from today's episode,

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