Several years after my first attempt to motorcycle around Borneo, I was finally able to pull it off. One participant on this tour was an Italian, Salvatore Pizzo. He was an excellent rider who one year, just for fun, tagged along on his motorcycle, behind the entire Paris-Dakar Rally, without any support or sponsorship. So for him, this Trans-Borneo Expedition was a piece of cake.

We spent one night on this tour in an Iban longhouse. It would have been two nights but our canoe capsized getting there and we lost most of our belongings, but this is material for another story.

The Ibans entertained us that night with ancestral songs and dance, and a display of their traditional fighting technique. But Salvatore is a 4th degree black-belt and gave the Ibans a Karate demonstration that made their eyes pop out. Salvatore later told me he had to tone down his display because he was worried he would put his foot through their bamboo flooring. He had additional trouble with his demonstration because he had drunk around 10 glasses of their home-made rice wine.

Right now this story is pending publication in several magazines. As soon as it is, I will fill in the publishing data. Salvatore Pizzo's reportage of this tour is in Italy's Motociclismo, June, 2000.

.....continued >>> Part 1