Before the world knew his name from Crazy Rich Asians, Henry Golding walked into the jungles of Sarawak to earn his ancestors' tattoo. This is the story of his Bejalai.
Henry Golding is better known today as the lead of Crazy Rich Asians, the 2018 Hollywood romantic comedy that made him an international star overnight. But the year before all of that, he was standing in the rainforest of Sarawak, following his Iban uncle through terrain that his forefathers had navigated for centuries, preparing for a rite of passage that would define him as a man in the eyes of his tribe. Discovery Channel's Surviving Borneo captured all of it — and it remains one of the most quietly extraordinary pieces of Malaysian television ever made.
The show is built around a single concept: the Bejalai. In Iban culture, the Bejalai is a voyage of personal discovery that every young man must undertake before he can marry. It is not optional, not ceremonial, not symbolic. It is a genuine journey of self-determination — a weeks-long test of endurance, cultural understanding, and spiritual readiness. Golding, a descendant of Sarawak's Iban tribe whose lineage connects him directly to what was once one of Borneo's most feared communities, sets out to earn his. The journey ultimately concludes with a traditional hand-tapped tribal tattoo on his right thigh — painful, permanent, and meaningful in ways that no amount of fame could replicate.
A voyage of personal discovery undertaken by young Iban men as a rite of passage to manhood. The Bejalai grants the traveller wisdom, life experience, and — traditionally — the right to marry. The journey may last weeks or months, leading the traveller far from home into unfamiliar lands and communities. Its completion is marked by a traditional hand-tapped tattoo.
Golding's reaction to the prospect of the journey, as captured in early episodes, captures the show's tone perfectly: the responses he received from family and friends ranged from "what the hell are you doing" to "you are going to have the time of your life." Both assessments, it turns out, were correct. Surviving Borneo is an adventure show in the most literal sense — there are rivers, jungles, and remote highland communities — but it is also a deeply personal portrait of a man grappling with a heritage that his career had taken him far from.
"It's amazing to think how generations ago, my forefathers would've been doing the same."
— Henry Golding, Surviving BorneoAt the time of filming, Henry Golding was already well established as a television presenter and local celebrity — best known in Southeast Asia as a host on BBC Asia's The Travel Show. His Iban heritage, through his mother's side of the family, had always been part of his identity, but the demands of a television career across Singapore, Malaysia and the UK had kept him from fully exploring it. Surviving Borneo was, for him, as much a personal reckoning as a professional project.
When Crazy Rich Asians arrived in 2018 and turned him into a globally recognised name, international media scrambled to tell the story of who Henry Golding was. Many landed on Surviving Borneo — and specifically on the story of the tattoo. Asia Tatler, The New Paper Singapore, NextShark, and SCMP all covered the connection between the show and the man Hollywood had just discovered. The Bejalai was not just a television moment; it had become part of his origin story.
Surviving Borneo was produced by Matavia Reka out of Malaysia, commissioned by Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific under Rohit Tharani's direction of content curation for the region. It was part of a 2017 wave of 16 local productions that Discovery commissioned across Southeast Asia — one of the most ambitious regional content pushes the network had undertaken to that point. The series runs to six episodes and airs on Discovery Channel. It remains available on Amazon Prime Video.