A Giant,100 foot snake stalking the rivers and water ways of Borneo

An old folktale about an otherworldly beast from the rainforests of Malaysia/Indonesia. A story that was told to me by a family member during one evening after a family dinner. The story told takes place during WWII because of the relevance of the Japanese invasion.

According to legend, the Nabau was a terrifying snake more than 100ft in length and with a dragon's head and seven nostrils.

But now local villagers living along the Baleh river in Borneo believe the mythical creature has returned after this photo of a gigantic snake swimming along the remote waterways has emerged.

The picture was taken by a member of a disaster team monitoring floods in the Ulu Rajangregion from a helicopter. The photo was taken at 5.30 pm on the 31st of January 2009 at one of the Sungai Baleh tributaries.

According to the local cultural folklore of the the Ibans people , Nabau is like a “petara” (god) which has super natural powers. Seeing it alone will bring luck to the man or woman who sees it. Its scales give the beast super strength.

Villagers who claim to have seen the snake say they have given it the name of Nabau, after an ancient sea serpent which can transform itself into the shapes of different animals.

The most common accusation is that the photo has simply been manipulated on a computer, while others complain that the river is a different color to the real Baleh rover which is a murky brown.

But villagers who insist the snake exists say that photos of the creature being taken in different parts of the river prove it is swimming about.

Earlier this month scientists unearthed the fossil of a killer snake that was longer than a bus, as heavy as a small car and which could swallow an animal the size of a cow.

The 45ft long monster - named Titanoboa - was so big that it lived on a diet of crocodiles and giant turtles, squeezing them to death and devouring them whole.

Weighing an impressive 1.25 tons, it slithered around the tropical forests of South America 60million years ago, just five million years after the last dinosaurs were wiped out.

Partial skeletons of the boa constrictor-like prehistoric killer were found in a Colombian coal mine by an international team of fossil hunters.