Kelabit, Sarawak

About Kelabit

Kelabit is a tribe in Sarawak. They are a component of the group of indigenous people collectively known as Orang Ulu. As a subtribe, they are closely related to the Lun Bawang.

There are only about 5,000 Kelabits in Sarawak today, the majority having migrated to the big towns in Sarawak, leaving only about 1,200 in their homeland, which is the remote Kelabit Highlands near the Kalimantan border. Their villages are often located at an elevation of 1200 meters or more.

Kelabits cultivate wet paddy as well as hill rice, maize, tapioca and vegetables. Domesticated buffaloes are prized, and are used as dowry in marriage transactions. Their exposure to Westerners, who visited them first in the form of soldiers during World War II, and later on as scholars and missionaries, resulted in the majority of the Kelabits converting to Christianity. Before that, they were animists who erect megaliths in honour of important people of the tribe.

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Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

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