Tenom ( ms, Pekan Tenom, ) is the capital of the

Tenom District The Tenom District ( ms, Daerah Tenom) is an administrative district in the Malaysian state of Sabah, part of the Interior Division which includes the districts of Beaufort, Keningau, Kuala Penyu, Nabawan, Sipitang, Tambunan and Tenom. The ca ...

in the

Interior Division The Interior Division ( ms, Bahagian Pedalaman) is an administrative division of the state of Sabah, Malaysia. It occupies the southwest portion of Sabah, bordered by the neighbouring state of Sarawak on its west. With an area of 18,298 square ki ...

Sabah Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah borders the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and the North Kalimantan province of Indone ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

. Its population was estimated to be around 5,148 in 2010. It is located about 176 kilometres south of

Kota Kinabalu , image_skyline = , image_caption = From top, left to right, bottom:Kota Kinabalu skyline, Wawasan intersection, Tun Mustapha Tower, Kota Kinabalu Coastal Highway, the Kota Kinabalu City Mosque, the Wism ...

and 128 kilometres north of

Long Pasia Long Pasia is a village in Sipitang District, Sabah. Long Pasia is a home town of Lun Bawang/Lun Dayeh tribes and has a population of about 1,000 people, and all of them are Christians of Borneo Evangelical Church (SIB). It is located about s ...

, which is the one of the famous attraction in Sabah. In the early days of British colonial rule in Malaysia, the town was called Fort Birch. The town is considered the unofficial capital of the

Murut Murut may refer to: * Murut people The Murut are an indigenous ethnic group, comprising 29 sub-ethnic groups inhabiting the northern inland regions of Borneo. The Murutic languages are a family of half a dozen closely related Austronesian lan ...

community, whose most important festival, the annual Pesta Kalimaran (Kalimaran Festival), is held in the town. It is also the main gateway to other areas within the

heartland and the minority of Lundayeh.

Economy

Agriculture

The fertile land in Tenom and its surrounding area has made it primarily an agricultural area. The main agriculture sources in the area are

rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and ...

while

soy bean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu a ...

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

, vegetables,

cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...

and

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. S ...

became the second contributor to the Tenom economy.

Coffee

Tenom coffee is a popular type of ''kopi'', a

Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...

term for

beverage made from beans grown in Tenom. Among the main and largest producer of Tenom

is the

Yit Foh Tenom Coffee Yit Foh Coffee Factory Sdn Bhd (doing business as Yit Foh Tenom Coffee) is the main coffee producer in the state of Sabah, Malaysia since 1960. Founded by Mr. Yong Loong Vun in Kg. Chinta Mata on the district of Tenom, it is the oldest coffee com ...

, Tong Fah Coffee Factory and Fatt Choi Tenom Coffee. Tenom coffee is made from Robusta variety. The

coffee bean A coffee bean is a seed of the ''Coffea'' plant and the source for coffee. It is the pip inside the red or purple fruit often referred to as a coffee cherry. Just like ordinary cherries, the coffee fruit is also a so-called stone fruit. Even thou ...

was processed using traditional firewood and drum rotation methods followed for almost 50 years without adding any artificial ingredients or colourings.

History

Originally, coffee started to be planted in Sabah during the administration of

British North Borneo (I persevere and I achieve) , national_anthem = , capital = Kudat (1881–1884);Sandakan (1884–1945); Jesselton (1946) , common_languages = English, Kadazan-Dusun, Bajau, Murut, Sabah Malay, Chinese etc. , gove ...

, but only focused in the area of the east coast on the

forest reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...

near mangrove areas. However, due to an outbreak of disease, it was abandoned in 1910. Since then, coffee production was concentrated in the west coast area. Tenom received attention when the

British North Borneo Chartered Company The North Borneo Chartered Company (NBCC), also known as the British North Borneo Company (BNBC) was a British chartered company formed on 1 November 1881 to administer and exploit the resources of North Borneo (present-day Sabah in Malaysia) ...

(BNBCC) established coffee and other plantations in the area. To take the resources to major towns, a

railway line Rail terminology is a form of technical terminology. The difference between the American term ''railroad'' and the international term ''railway'' (used by the International Union of Railways and English-speaking countries outside the United Sta ...

from Melalap to Jesselton (now

) was built by the British in the late 1890s. To increase the coffee production, many labourers from

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, mainly those of

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

and

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

descent were brought to Tenom by the British as local workforce. Today, Tenom is widely known as an

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

site with large coffee production and has been dubbed as the "Sabah's coffee capital". Together with

rice field Wendel D. Ley Track and Holloway Field is a stadium in Houston, Texas. It is primarily used for track and field and soccer for the Rice University Owls. It is bounded by Main Street (southeast), University Boulevard (southwest), Reckling Par ...

and fruit crops, coffee is the second largest contributor to the Tenom agriculture economy after

. Due to its large demand from other countries since 2010s, the government began to help to address the shortage of raw coffee supply in Tenom.

Tourism

Among the primary tourist attractions in the district are the Sabah Agricultural Park (Lagud Seberang Agriculture Research Station), the Tenom Orchid Centre and the Murut Cultural Centre. The town is also known in the tourism industry for whitewater rafting on the Padas River and the coffee factory.

Tenom railway station Tenom railway station ( ms, Stesen Keretapi Tenom) is one of four main railway station on the Western Sabah Railway Line located in Tenom, Sabah, Malaysia. History Like most areas in the West Coast Division; the area around Tenom in the Inter ...

is the final stop of the

Sabah State Railway Sabah State Railway (SSR) is a railway system and operator in the state of Sabah in Malaysia. It is the only rail transport system operating on the island of Borneo. The railway consists of a single 134-kilometre line from Tanjung Aru, Kota Kina ...

, which originates from Tanjung Aru.

Gallery

File:Tenom March 2006.jpg, Panorama of Tenom in 2006. File:Tenom Sabah Outdoor-Swimming-Pool-06.jpg, A swimming pool in Tenom. File:A mug of Tenom coffee.jpg, A mug of kopi made from Tenom coffee beans.

References

External links

{{Authority control Tenom District Towns in Sabah