When Michael Api sits around an evening campfire with his mates, the men with whom he has wrestled, joked and shared meals since childhood, their chatter often turns wistfully to 'the good old days'.
They don't talk about football fields, bowling alleys or burger joints, but of their affinity with the receding forest that was once their home. As fireflies dart through the humid sub-tropical nights, the young men recall how good life was when their fathers and grandfathers would return from a hunt bearing food for the community, which often included the sweet treat of a jungle fruit.
'They would get a wild boar a couple of times a week,' says Api, 32. 'They'd carve out the kidney first and barbecue it as a treat for the children.'
Api is swaying on a wooden walkway 30 metres above the ground in one of the richest remaining rainforests on Earth. From the canopy-level platform he surveys Malaysia's World Heritage-listed Gunung Mulu National Park, at the northeastern end of the state of Sarawak.
The ancient forest is thought to contain 3,500 plant species, more than 8,000 types of fungi and 20,000 animal species. Ten varieties of pitcher plant and more than 170 types of wild orchid drape over the tangled greenery. Orang-utans and long-tailed macaque monkeys still range free, the low hooting of hornbills resounds through the leaves, pygmy squirrels dart along branches and brilliant green Rajah Brooke birdwing butterflies escort those traversing the park's boardwalks.
Api's childhood friends are among the first generation of Penan, the peaceful, shy and reclusive jungle people of Borneo's interior, to be forced out of their nomadic lifestyle and into the coastal towns of Malaysia.