Sir William Hood Treacher (1849-1919) was a British colonial administrator in Borneo and the Straits Settlements. In Selangor, he was at the Anglo Chinese School in Klang on Mar 10, 1893. His career in Borneo started in 1871 when he arrived in Labuan to be the acting Police Magistrate. In 1873, Treacher became Colonial Secretary […]
Sandakan No. 8 (1974) is a Japanese film directed by Kei Kumai which focused on the ‘karayuki-san’. ‘Karayuki-san’ is the Japanese term for young women forced into sexual slavery in the 19th and early 20th century. Directly translated, it means ‘Ms. Gone-To-China’, although it was expanded to ‘Ms. Gone-Abroad’ as it saw these young women […]
Did you know that there was an American colony in Sabah? And at one point in time, James Brooke and successors were not the only white ‘Rajahs’ on Borneo island. The establishment of Consulate in Brunei In 1850, the United States signed a bilateral treaty of Peace, Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation with the Sultanate of […]
It is the 1920s. Imagine you are a pastor’s wife, and have sailed thousands of miles from your home to live in a very foreign country. You don’t speak the local languages so there is no way you can understand their cultures or customs. Your husband is always away from home preaching to people you […]
After the ninth episode of South Korean hit drama ‘Start-up’ aired last November, Kota Kinabalu went trending online. While bragging about the view of the sunset from his family’s holiday homes, the character Cheol-san mentions the sunsets at Santorini and Kota Kinabalu. The capital state of Sabah is not that foreign to South Koreans. During […]
The Borneo campaign of 1945 was the last major Allied campaign in the South West Pacific Area during World War II (WWII) to liberate Japanese-held Borneo. One of the combats that took place during the campaign was Battle of Beaufort in 1945. Located about 90 kilometers south of Kota Kinabalu, the town of Beaufort […]
Do you know a plague of locusts once hit North Borneo about a century ago in 1919? The Sarawak Gazette on Dec 16, 1919 reported that until that year North Borneo had never suffered from a locust plague on a big scale. “As far as is known the only occasion on which they have appeared […]
The Brunei Civil War took place centuries years ago from 1660 to 1673. However, the consequences from this particular warfare seems to have an effect even to this day. Adding on to the element of disbelief of this piece of history, the Brunei Civil War had, in fact, started from a cockfight. The Brunei Civil […]
Different beliefs offer different views of the afterlife. In some views, the afterlife takes place in a spiritual realm. Another popular view is reincarnation. It is where the individual may be reborn into this world with no memory of his past life. Meanwhile in Sabah, the Timugon Murut people have their own perception of the […]
The Timugon Murut is one of the 29 ethnic groups of Murut people. Overall, the Murut people can be found mainly in Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysia as well as in Brunei and Kalimantan, Indonesia. As for Timugon Murut, they mainly live in Sabah. Each of the ethnic group of Murut people including Timugon Murut […]
