"It's tough to make a living here," said Okang Lepun, a Kenyah tribesman and father of seven who lives in the dusty resettlement camp of Sungai Asap, 30 km away from the dam wall.

The 45-year-old is one of the lucky ones. He earns an income from selling vegetables to the dam's construction workers.

But he, too, would prefer to have his old life back.

"Over here, you have to buy everything -- rice, meat, fish. There's no hunting ground, there's no river to fish," he said. "We even have to pay for water and electricity."

Large tracts of rainforests, where the Kenyah, Kayan and Penan people once lived, have been cleared to make way for the Bakun dam, which is set to flood an area the size of Singapore.

To peer into the cleared land slated to be flooded and see the dam wall, visitors must drive for half an hour along a bumpy logging trail until they reach a security post.

Inside, lines of dump trucks rumble along dirt roads, hauling boulders up steep slopes to feed construction of the 220-metre high rockfill dam on the Balui river in central Sarawak state.

Some 16 million cubic metres of rock will be used to build the Bakun dam, one of Asia's largest hydro-electric projects outside of China.

"The dam wall is now about 190 to 195 metres high, and should reach its full height in six months. Work is progressing well," said a source at one of the firms building the dam.

STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND

Malaysia defied fierce environmental opposition in the 1990s to go ahead with the Bakun project, saying its cheap power would lure industry to Sarawak, one of its least developed states.

But a decade later, the much-delayed project is still up to four years away from completion.

There is still no major customer lined up to take a slice of the 2,400 megawatts of power the dam will be capable of generating and some of the local tribal people feel let down.

Indigenous people from the area account for only five percent of the project's total workforce of over 2,000, made up of mostly Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Chinese.

Displaced families -- about 11,000 people in all -- received 1.2 hectares (three acres) each under the resettlement deal.

Some say the land is not enough, too far away or infertile.

"We are used to cultivating rice, but we can't do that here as the land is not suitable," said Nyurang Ului, a Kenyah headman, sipping tea in a traditional Borneo longhouse, a row of timber homes built side by side, as one, and raised on stilts.

Ului, 70, is grateful for closer schools and clinics since the move, but he is worried about the future awaiting the small children capering along the longhouse's communal verandah.

"Five years from now, life will be even more difficult. Some may return to the old place," he said, adding that many had exhausted their compensation paid for abandoned ancestral land.

Several years ago, about 400 people moved back to their ancestral land above the Bakun dam site, joining many others who had refused to leave the forests, according to environmental group Friends of the Earth Malaysia.

GOVERNMENT PROMISES A BETTER FUTURE

Sarawak Land Development Minister James Masing, formerly chairman of Bakun resettlement committee, said it was just a matter of time until people adjusted.

"If you look at five to 10 years down the road from today, they will be in a better position. There are better education and better facilities here," he told Reuters.