Welcome to the 'Jungle Dave' Experience

“You might not want to go swimming right here. Last night, we saw the crocs fighting a Giant Sawfish where you’re standing now”. (Note to self: Get out of the water.)

Meet Jungle Dave – Brunei’s leading guide, environmentalist, cultural anthropologist, and general rainforest renaissance man. This 37-year old with a big moustache has been guiding intrepid adventurers deep into the uncharted Bornean rainforests for the past 21 years. In that time, he has become the leading expert on Brunei’s wildly diverse flora and fauna. He is the undisputed go-to guru for one of the most intense jungle experiences in the region.

We – he, I, and two local guides – are standing on the edge of the milk tea-coloured Sungai Belait, a river stretching back hundreds of km into Borneo’s heart of darkness. It amazes me to learn that, given Brunei’s miniscule size, no one has ever really explored this river or, more specifically, what lies across this river.

This virgin patch of trackless jungle is reputedly the home of several rare species of carnivorous pitcher plants, even rarer Sun Bear, Borneo Gibbon, several species of hornbills, and the elusive Clouded Leopard, Borneo’s largest wild cat. And to find them - or merely signs of them - we are about to get into a scrum with a wall of jungle. A jungle that clearly means business. But first, I really should get out of the water.

Jungle Dave – that’s what it says on his name card – knows every trick of the jungle and every trail in these jungly hinterlands, having spent the last two decades assiduously learning from the tribes of the interior, like the Iban and Belait Malays.

In recent years, he has taken this intimate knowledge and has become a one-man beacon for the environmental and cultural protection of Brunei’s pristine rainforests.