The River Kampong: Malay master-craftsman, head of the Brunei silversmiths. Malays build their houses on stilts, a simple and straightforward hut. In the whole of Malaysia you can tell a Malay house from a Chinese or an Indian one by its stilts. True the Sakai in Malaya and the Iban tribes of Borneo put their houses off the ground but they are different again. In Brunei town the Malays have gone one better, they have built their town in a river. Ten thousand men, women and children are born, live and die, eat and sleep over the water. The men are fishermen, and as fishermen the men and boys see something of the rest of the world; but the women are in a sense prisoners, doubly imprisoned by religious convention and the water of the Brunei river. May 01, 1950. (Photo by British Official Photograph).