The island realm of the Sulu Sea near the port city of Semporna is a nimbus of picturesque atolls framed by an intact underwater world. Caught in the pull of modernisation along Borneo’s coastal cities, only a few Bajau clans still live as they did hundreds of years ago. On a floating home. Their profile defies any monopoly on truth, because depending on perspective, they are seen as refugees, outsiders, nomads, illegal island squatters, record-breaking free divers or maritime self-sustainers.

Asli’s rustic houseboat glides gently through the morning shadows cast by the island of Bodgaya. Along its narrow sides, wet laundry from the previous day stiffens in the early light, a single change of clothes for each of the nine aboard.

“Anything beyond a sparse household has no place on our floating home,” the father says, leaving just enough: rudimentary hunting gear, a few straw mats and hammocks, blankets, a barrel for collected seafood, two gas bottles, drinking water containers, cooking utensils, and a rusty grill. Aside from a flashlight, no electronics reveal any trace of modernity. Driftwood lies stacked on the roof, gathered by the children from the shore, a silent witness to past journeys across the swells of the Sulu Sea. Close by, surplus catch that has been laid out to air-dry carries them through the approaching southwest monsoon, when storms silence the dives.

Now, in summer, life on the water is demanding but calm. Surrounded by a symphony of every imaginable shade of blue, Asli enjoys his favourite breakfast, the Filipino dish kinilaw, where raw ocean bounty is cured in coconut vinegar. He needs no cutlery. From time to time, his softened fingertips fish out a mouthful of boiled cassava roots, Asli’s preferred source of starch, which he traded for sea urchins in the port city of Semporna last week.

The barge yawns, creaks, and sways. Inside the living area, also known as bedroom, also known as galley, Asli’s wife Saliha mixes talcum powder, turmeric, and rice flour into a creamy yellow paste. The resulting borak buas shields the faces of women and children from the harsh UV of the Malay sea sun. At the far end of the roughly ten-square-metre plywood floor, Saliha’s mother Jamariah grinds turmeric roots into a pulp. Mixed with uncooked rice, the blend serves as a conduit to the spiritual realm, where the souls of ancestors and the sea reside.