houses.
Given a tour around the plant, the
scale of it, with all the steam, heat
and noise, left me impressed. It also
gave me a deeper insight into what
an important factor palm-oil farm-
ing is for the local economy. One
can be biased towards the impact of
palm-oil monocultures on the envi-
ronment while taking vital habitat
away from wildlife. The size of the
palm-oil fields, seen from Borneo’s
roadsides, is simply overwhelming at
times. And yet, at the same time, the
great majority of the island remains
as untouched jungle. It can certainly
change opinions. I do think it would
help Borneo and its adjoining econ-
omies to increase its income from
tourism and become less dependent
on the growing agriculture sector.
With a great deal of history, na-
tional parks and activities, I found
Kuching, the ‘city of cats’, much more
appealing than Kota Kinabalu. Here
I met Alex Wong, owner of Feast and
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