Life in a Tribe

After breakfast this morning we all loaded up into the bus and headed to the Sarawak Cultural Village. The cultural village is a park on the foothill of Mount Santubong, complete with seven authentic ethnic houses. The seven ethnicities represented were the Bidayuh, Iban, Penan, Orang Ulu, Melanau, Malay, and Chinese. The only ones that we learned about in class were the Bidayuh, Iban and the Orang Ulu. Right as I entered this park I fell in love. Even though by the end of the visit I had to ring all the sweat out of my shirt, I think it was definitely worth it.



We started with the Bidayuh house, where the women performed a cultural Bidayuh dance. I really liked their dance because the music was a lot more upbeat than the rest of the houses. This is also one of the only houses that I got to take a picture in front of because the tour was moving pretty fast.



Then we moved on to the Iban house where they presented another dance to us and here they had traditional food that we were able to try. The Iban who was playing the music for the dance was gracious enough to take a picture with me. I though it was interesting because he was just standing there with no smile when everybody else took their picture. Since I like to pose in my pictures, when I got up there, I posed for the camera. Although he was hesitant at first, he eventually came around.



Next on the docket was the Penan house. In my opinion this was the most humble house out of the bunch. There were no dances or women, only three men who were half naked. One of them was painting some sort of instrument while the other two were making money. The Penan are famous for the manufacture and accuracy of their blowpipes, so the main attraction was a blowpipe that they let people use. I was the first one to try it and I was disappointed in my efforts to say the least. All those years playing trumpet is officially a waste of time in my book.



Following that we went to my favorite house, the Orang-Ulu house. The unique thing about the Orang-Ulu dance presentation was they used a guitar-like instrument called a sape, instead of drums. I was really interested in this instrument for some reason, I really liked the way that it sounded. So after the dance I talked to the man who was playing it and to my surprise he told me that he made that sape and many more. He actually showed me the one that he was currently working on and explained how he made it.



After seeing the rest of the houses we finished off our day at the park with a show that they put on. Even though it was primarily a dancing show, it also had a hint of comedy and a splash of danger mixed in. The Penan were the ones who brought the laughter and terror. They showed us how to really use a blowpipe and shot some balloons, but not before pointing it at the crowd and pretending to shoot it at us. They ended the show by inviting us onto the stage to dance with them. The people in our group were scared at first, but one of my friends convinced me to do it. Once I stood up to go, most of our group followed. It was a lot of fun being up on the stage dancing with them. After the show ended we were able to walk down to the beach to see the South China See. I thought this was really cool because the only ocean or sea I have ever seen is the Pacific Ocean.



We came back from the cultural village, had some lunch, and then we got on a boat and rode around on the Waterfront for about an hour before crossing to the other side of the river.




On the other side of the river was a little village where everything was a lot more authentic and a lot less touristy. We got to try these deep fried bananas and layer cakes, which are both really popular here in Sarawak. One of the things that we saw that really stood out to me was their fish. They had fish almost on every street, but there wasn't any way of keeping it cool that I saw. All that they had was fans over the fish. I still don't know the reason behind that, although I'm assuming it's to keep the flies off of them. The other thing that stood out to me was the fact that there were a lot more cats wandering around the street. I know that Kuching means "cat" in Malay, but I didn't know that there were this many cats in the city. We had dinner at a little outside food court there and I thought it was hilarious how there were so many cats moseying around everywhere. All of the cats were really calm and friendly and none of them tried to steal anybody's food, which I thought would happen for sure.

Orang-Utan: Person of the Forest

The first thing on the itinerary for today was a walking tour around Kuching. I really enjoyed this because even though we've been here for two days, I don't really feel like I've gotten a good feel for the city yet. The first place that we visited was a Chinese Taoist Temple. According to them, the color red represents good luck and the color gold represents prosperity. So obviously, the entire temple was red and gold and it looked really cool. I also appreciated it a little bit more because we got so see people come in and do their prayers. I really like seeing the differences in cultures and religions and the way that they prayed was completely different from anything I have seen so far.



We continued on to the original Sarawak museum which was the first museum ever built here. It was built by Charles Brooke, the son of Sir James Brooke who was the first Rajah of Sarawak.  The museum featured a lot of preserved indigenous wildlife, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures. I did learn a lot about the history of Sarawak and about the animals that live there. I am a visual learner, so when we learned about all of this in class it didn't click. So now that I was seeing it in person, I was finally starting to understand and apply everything that we learned about in class. After the museum we went to Little India and walked around. Something that I really am not used to is walking down the street and seeing so much fresh produce and other food sitting out in the open. To me, that is the biggest culture shock that I've experienced so far.

Once we finished the tour we ate lunch and then immediately got on a bus to the Semenggoh Wildlife Center. The Semenggoh Wildlife Center is famous for it's Orangutans, which I learned means "people of the forest" in Malay. Coming in to this trip, I was expecting to be in nature a lot and today was the first day that we really did that. I really enjoyed just being out in nature and being able to see Orangutans hanging around everywhere made it that much better! But they didn't just have Orangutans, they also had crocodiles. Although, those weren't very interesting because they just laid there and occasionally opened their eyes. The Orangutans were really fun though, especially since our tour guide gave us a lot of background on a few of them. It felt like I already knew their personalities before we went to go see them. I used this opportunity to get a lot of great pictures that I'm really excited to share. The sad thing about this place is that it is a rehabilitation center and the reason that they stay here is because they have something wrong with them that inhibits them from returning to the wild. Orangutans are actually one of the many endangered species in South East Asia and I really hope that we, as a human race, can and will do something to help them.

                

 


We had the opportunity to choose where we wanted to eat dinner tonight, so my friends and I decided to get a classic Malaysian dish called "Laksa". I know that I have said this so many times, but this meal has to be my favorite meal of the trip so far!



Sal Puma

Take Me To Church

This was the first Sabbath of the trip. We went to a Seventh-Day Adventist church here in Kuching and it just so happens to be the same church that our teacher, Dr. Perumal, went to when he was growing up here. This church was actually a lot of fun and the people were so friendly. We started off the service at 9:15 AM. They played a couple of songs and then two of my fellow classmates gave some testimonies. Then we sectioned off to another classroom and played a bible game with the people in our age group that went to that church. After that we all congregated back in the main church and listened to one of my classmates, Jonathan Mamora, play the piano. I usually wouldn't mention that in my blog, but I feel like I have to because that piece of music blew me away. Then Dr. Perumal gave a sermon about the prodigal son and more importantly about grace. Once he finished, my whole class got up on the stage and we sang "Jesus Paid It All" to the church. It was like choir all over again! Fortunately, we got to eat after that and we had a huge potluck and it was probably the biggest potluck that I have ever eaten at. I ate more there than I did for any other meal on this trip. I think there's something about homemade food that I enjoyed. During the potluck I got up to throw away some trash and instead of putting it in the trashcan, I shot it like a basketball. It must have been a windy day because I missed pretty bad and all I heard was a little kid laughing at me. I let him try and he made it his first try, so I guess he had the right to laugh. I started talking to him about basketball and we just talked for the rest of the time after that. His name is Cyprin and he is 13 years old and he made that whole church experience a lot more memorable for me. We ended up leaving the church at 2:00 PM, although it didn't feel like we were there for four hours.


  
    

When we got back from church we had a four hour break, so I took a nice sabbath nap and got to watch a little bit of Netflix which was much needed for me. We met at 6:00 PM to go to dinner on a rooftop. This place was really cool and the food was good too. Although, it didn't really compare to the homemade food we had for lunch. I was feeling adventurous tonight so I decided to try the fish,  which is something I have kind of been avoiding the whole week. The fish was surprisingly really good as well.

   

We have free time for the rest of the night, but there isn't much to do here. So some friends are coming over and we're going to play cards for the rest of the night. All in all it was a very relaxing Sabbath here in Kuching.

Sal Puma

Friday Night in Kuching

Today, we flew from Johor Bahru to Kuching. Kuching is the capital city of Sarawak and is located in the island of Borneo. We landed at about 3:00 PM and the first thing I noticed about Kuching was that it was a lot cleaner than Johor Bahru, which I definitely appreciated. Since the Sabbath is tomorrow we didn't have much going on in the itinerary, so we had a lot of free time to explore the city. I didn't really get the opportunity to go walking around on my own in the other two cities we were in, so I took advantage when we had the opportunity to go walking around. We had about an hour before we had to meet back at the hotel for dinner, which isn't too much time. My friends and I decided to just walk down a couple streets to get a feel for the city. We walked down and something that stood out to me was how nice all the locals were. We asked them questions about their city and they were more than happy to help us out. I got a great first impression of the city and it's people.

 

While we were on our way back to the hotel one of the funniest things happened to us. A large group of Indonesian tourists walked past us and started to giggle. I turned around and noticed one of them walking towards us trying to build up the courage to ask me something. She asked me if they could take a picture with us! I don't know if they asked because we were American or if it was because my friend Mark is super tall. But either way, it made me feel pretty famous. We talked to them for a little bit and took some more pictures before making it back to the hotel. 

Our whole group met in the lobby of the hotel and then we walked to where we were going to have dinner. It was an Indian restaurant, but this one was a North Indian restaurant so we could actually use utensils. The food here was great, they had the best naan I've ever had. Along with some mutton, fish marsala, and chicken marsala. They also had this thing called cheesy naan that blew everybody's minds. After dinner some of the girls in our class wanted to do some laundry at the laundromat and asked me and Mark to come with them. We all went and did laundry for about an hour. This was the first time I have ever been to a laundromat and honestly one of the first times that I even did laundry on my own. It was definitely a really cool experience for me. Afterwards we walked down what they call the River. It's basically a night market that's right by the waterfront and it looked awesome during the night. We started the Riverside by our hotel and walked all the way down until it stopped. At the end there were so many people congregated there and most of them were playing Pokemon GO. But the ones that weren't were playing with glow in the dark toys. We stayed there for a while before heading back to the hotel at around 10:00 PM. 

Day one in Kuching was a success in my book, I can't wait for three more days of this amazing city! 

Sal Puma 

      

Chinatown

Today, my roommate and I woke up at 6:30 AM to get to breakfast on time because right after breakfast our whole group met up to have a reflection about our first impressions of Singapore. After that we got a lecture by the very charismatic Dr. Wong. I felt like it was a stand up comedy routine that was about the facts of Singapore. He told us almost everything we ever need to know about Singapore during that lecture and I honestly enjoyed it. After the lecture we had lunch and then went to a Peranakan museum, which was three stories tall. The Peranakan are people who are hybrids between the native of Malay and any other race. The most common one is the Chinese Peranakan. I thought this museum was really interesting and provided me with a lot of fun facts. My favorite part of the museum was a room where they had close up pictures of various different kinds of Peranakan with which race of Peranakan they were, their name and a quote. I just thought it was very well done and it had me feel connected to the Peranakan.



After the museum, we headed to Chinatown and had dinner there with one of Dr. Perumal's friends. This was by far my favorite meal of the trip. I am a very picky eater, so up until this point I have just been tolerating the food and not really enjoying it. Although, this meal might have changed my mind. Once we finished eating we hit the town, Chinatown to be exact. The first thing I did was I went on the hunt for souvenirs for some very lucky people back in the states. At this point, it was just me and a small group of friends out on the town. We agreed to go to a different Buddhist temple, because I really enjoyed the Buddhist temple we went to yesterday. Unfortunately, the Buddhist temple was closed when we tried to see it, so we just had to take pictures in front of it.



During our excursion we stumbled upon another temple, but this one was a Hindu temple. This temple was so much bigger and more colorful than yesterday's temple. We had to take off our shoes, of course, but luckily this time they didn't make me wear a skirt. When we first got in we looked at all the paintings on the ceiling. It was cool because we knew what was going on in the picture. For example, there was a painting of the three Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. We could easily differentiate the three and that was the first time I actually applied something that I learned in class. While we were there we could see people praying and making food sacrifices, so I thought was was really interesting. I just wish we had a tour guide to explain what was happening, because we were confused about what was happening a good portion of the time. Apparently, this temple must be a big tourist attraction, because if you wanted to take pictures you had to pay $3. That price was three dollars too high for me, so I decided to just sneak some pictures when nobody was watching.

 

We capped off the night with some really good shaved ice and arrived back to the hotel at around 9:00 PM. So it was another full and exhausting day, but thankfully it wasn't as tiring as yesterday.



Sal Puma