Finding Myself in Borneo

Bronze, 2020 Independent Publisher Book Award Best Regional Non-Fiction: Australia / New Zealand / Pacific Rim

Winner of New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards 2019 for non-regional Biography /  Autobiography / Memoir

Honorable Mention, Readers' Favorite Awards 2019 in the travel book category

Finding Myself in Borneo is an honest and buoyant chronicle of a young Canadian man's adventures during 1968-70, while teaching secondary school as a CUSO volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia (North Borneo). Travel with Neill McKee on his unique journey through vibrant Asian cultures as he learns the craft of teaching, the Malay language and local customs, and gains many friends in his small community. He climbs the highest peak in Southeast Asia-Mount Kinabalu, has a love affair, and navigates Borneo's backwaters to make his first of many documentary films. McKee travels by freighter to Indonesia, where he discovers the scars of that country's recent genocide, a contrast to his hilarious motorcycle journeys in Sabah with his American Peace Corps buddy. They make a hallucinogenic discovery-North Borneo is, indeed, J. R. R. Tolkien's famed Middle-Earth of The Lord of the Rings! The enterprising duo establish the North Borneo Frodo Society, an organization Tolkien joins. 

McKee's second Sabah sojourn and other return trips offer the reader the opportunity to match the early anecdotes to what in fact happened to the land and people who touched his life, and he theirs.

Acknowledgments 

1. Travel Notes: Ontario to Singapore 
2. Lessons in Kota Belud 
3. The Rain at Four 
4. A Journey through Middle-Earth 
5. Bonding with Borneo 
6. Going Native 
7. Dog Days 
8. Borneo through a New Lens 
9. Unpacking the Batik Painting 
10. Blessing the Prodigal Son 
11. Rounding a Bend in the Road 
12. The Sabah Situation 
13. Serendipity 
14. Paradise Lost 
15. You Can Go Home Again 
16. No Longer “The Land Below the Wind” 

Postscript: A Brief History of North Borneo 
Illustrations 
Chapter Notes 
Works Cited 
Glossary of Malay Words and Expressions Used 
North Borneo Frodo Society 
About the Author