First stop was to the Sarawak Cultural Village. Fortunately the weather was good... Not too hot or wet. It was a good visit as we get to know the many different tribes in Sarawak, their cultures, customs, the house that they live in, their music etc etc. It consist of several traditional building of the various tribes / races in Sarawak (including Malay & Chinese - go figure!) built around a lake. I can't remember the name of the tribe, but the house I found most fascinating is the one built more than 3 storeys above ground. The "stilts" that supports the house are actually a whole tree trunk of hardwood (balak) & the joints are actually carved & pieced together like a LEGO set - quite an engineering feat! I really wished I have the pictures now to upload here... Will try my best... Anyways it was amazing! We finished the trip around the lake & ended in a theatre watching a cultural performance of traditional music, dance & even martial arts from the variance tribes in Sarawak. The performance was really good & quite professionally done up. The only irritating thing was the "Narrator" or MC for the whole show was trying too hard to speak in accented "Mat Salleh" English that I didn't catch a single word he uttered! Only "Velcome! to Ser-raw-wek Cul-thu-rel Vil-lage... ashsher.. resher..shawer... bla...bla..bla.." Goodness! I was embarrassed. Why can't we just stick to our Manglish. At least the foreigners can still understand that.... :-p
Sadly, we then have to move to our next destination - Semenggoh Orang Utan Sanctuary (hope I spelled the name right...). There were many Orang Utans & mostly were on the trees swinging from branch to branch. There's even a mother & child Orang Utan among those that appear around the observation deck. Can't help comparing to the Bohorok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Medan, Indonesia though. There were more & the surrounding area is beautiful. There's also a guide explaining on the stages / process an orang utan had to go through to reacquaint to the wildlife & sadly how some did not survive the trauma of abuse in the hands of their captor & thus had to remain in captivity for the rest of their lives. Wish we had that in Semenggoh, but no.... no guided tour... but I love the boards where it had the names of the Orang Utans & their offsprings, Date of Birth, where were they "found" etc & pictures with their names underneath. The funniest of all, I heard a tourist exclaimed "Poor monkey to be called that, especially when it's a girl!..." when he saw a picture of a female Orang Utan named "Saddam"! hahahaha......
After that it's back to the hotel, but not before visiting the nice seafood place we went on day 2! Can't get enugh of the cheap lobsters! :-p
That concludes the end of our trip & the next day was just packing up to leave for the airport. Oh but would like to mention that we took Chinese Wine MeeSuah & Kolok Mee (it's actually our dry wantan mee) for breakfast - it was superb. Especially the Mee Suah - not to mention the cheap prices. Coffee is lousy though. 1 other comment, I've not found a single restaurant in Kuching so far who has good quality soya sauce. All of them are so dark & salty - tasting like salted black ink water - with some strange residue at the bottom. Avoid them like the plague!
No comments:
Post a Comment