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.
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