Heart of Borneo – Digital detox – Retreat or Sabbatical

The “Villa Corona” got its name when Thomas and Beatrice hid away from the world during the first long Corona lockdown in early 2020. We have spent two months in the middle of the Borneo Jungle – totally offline!

The world could have ended during this time, and we probably wouldn’t have noticed. Two months without email, without television, without internet, without telephone, no social media, no WhatsApp, without the slightest contact with the news of this world – and, fore sure, without getting in contact with this virus…

That was a very special experience. Thanks to COVID and the lockdown, it was possible.

Now, however, we offer you the opportunity to plan and implement such a temporary timeout from everyday life even without COVID.

We plan the trip down to the last detail, we provide you with food and supplies according to your wishes and needs, and we provide you with escorts from local, indigenous Dayak people who will be waiting for you about a 40-minutes walk from Villa Corona. They will visit you if necessary and requested, or they will guide you wherever you want to go.

You will determine the length of your stay and the degree of self-sufficiency. If you want, you can hunt and fish on your own or togeher with the Dayak, gather mushrooms, roots, leaves, and tubers as the Dayak do, and you decide how much adventure you want to indulge into your program. If you love to cook on your own, that’s ok, if you would love food to be served every day or every once in a while, that also can be organized accordingly.

Villa Corona is well-developed. It has the best toilet and shower in Central Borneo. Cooking is optionally available over a fire or LPG gas. Electricity is provided by a solar panel and 12V DC battery, and water is fetched from the spring behind the house or the river 5 minutes from the hut.

Hornbills, squirrels, monkeys, civets, owls, and a variety of songbirds will be part of your daily encounters, and we will teach you how to keep any unwanted animal guests away from the hut.

The length of your day will be exactly 12 hours and so will be the length of the night since the position of Villa Corona is just 1,7km north of the equator. From sunset to nightfall it only takes 20 minutes and the twilight in the morning until sunrise is correspondingly short

In an emergency, our local Dayak can take you to the last village on the Joloi River within a few hours, and from there, in the worst-case scenario, even further down to civilization. We will provide all needed emergency equipment, medication as well as survival gear for your comfort.

You don’t need special language skills to communicate with our local Dayak friends. Our English-speaking guide can stay close to you, until you learned the basic communication and keywords to communicate with the Dayaks. As from then on, you teach the locals some basic English, they gone teach you more in Bahasa Indonesia or even local Dayak language.

When your retreat is going to end, you can then paddle down the river, from the very top, slowly, gently and peacefully approaching the civilisation again in three or four days, carrying tons of memories of the deepest Heart of Borneo in your heart!

What an unforgettable once in a lifetime experience!