[Sarawak] Cultural Village – Final

Now back to where we last left about the Penan people. Well, this time instead of taking the back of the Penan man doing his fishing, let’s view it in another different angle.

Ahhh well, according to him, that’s how they used to dress but as modern civilization started, most of them started wearing jeans and t-shirt now. Well, time changes a lot of things. As Penan is one of the few smaller tribes, they don’t really have a longhouse (maybe they do) but usually they live in huts. Let’s move on to the next place of interest.

Rumah Orang Ulu (Remote People House) is what I can say, woah~~~~ look at the height of the house. In the cultural village, it’s the tallest structure for a Rumah (house).

Some historic backgrounds of Orang Ulu

Orang Ulu basically are meant to consist of a few ethnic roughly 27 very small but ethnically diverse tribal groups in Sarawak, with a population ranging from less than 300 persons to over 25,000 persons. So basically it’s a group of different tribes.

Well, so being WEIRD ONE I have got to explore this majestic place and go up the special stairway instead of the simple stairs made for normal people. Well, I ain’t normal people, I am WEIRD am I.

Just look at those steps, Woah, dearest Princess Yen has taken an excellent shot of me going up to the entrance of the Rumah Orang Ulu.

Oh forgotten to mentioned, at every tribal house, there is a checkpoint where we have a passport and get to put a stamp on it. Surprisingly, if you’re going in as a student, you won’t get that passport. So how does the passport looks like? We will showcase the passport before you eyes.

The Back and The Front of the Passport

More about the passport later, I must say it was a splendid way from up here viewing the entire Sarawak Cultural Village from here. What’s to do here? We get to explore the place and it’s just like another longhouse, but this time there are props for us to play.

Look at Yen go with the musical instrument. Well, I wanted to shoot more and more of the antics of her playing until she suddenly does this.

No taking my photos or I’ll beat you up with these sticks. Then I stopped.

Finally time for a commercial break…. opps this isn’t a TV channel. Time for a toilet break and we have the tallest toilet ever built for tourist like me. What??? Got such thing? Have a look.

Toilet on stilts!!!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHA NOT!!!

It’s the Rumah Melanau. Well, now that you’ve seen most of the houses, you wondered why were they built on stilts? Surprisingly I just deduced it, one it’s to keep away from wild animals. Another one is to keep an alert from enemies. Well, like I mentioned on the previous post, Iban used to be a headhunter tribe. Those days, it’s the strong to survive.

When we finally reached the bottom of the Rumah Melanau, it’s time for stamping again on the passport. Now you’ll know what I am talking about. It’s a stamp like any other stamp. DONE!! Princess Yen stamped on the passport (I don’t need to do all this!! Hehehe)

Another long house, but this time the view of a healing hall in the Rumah Melanau. Well, to ward of evil spirits and others. A background on the Melanaus, they were traditionally fishermen as well as paddy and sago farmers. Some were skilled boat builders.

By the way time for some relaxing photos taken from the Cultural Village to relax the eyes from all the brown and greens. Let’s have a look at a certain flower which I don’t know what species it is.

Blur?? Yup, it’s meant to be blurred. Especially for readers to adjust their eyes from looking at all the constant brown and black and green colors of earlier photos.

Finally it’s time for the other two to be visited. It’s the Malay house and the Chinese house. Surprisingly, I can’t really take anything special about these 2 houses as most look like modern houses. The reason the Sarawak Cultural Village was built so that people will know about the different ethnic group living in the lands of Sarawak.

As the day started to grow dark, it’s time to finally touch the ball for it’s good luck.

By doing so it’ll give you tonnes of luck and the Power of The Ball.

LOL… Forget that I said that. I just created that up. Basically it’s just one of those ornaments and somehow we both got interested in taking pictures with balls. (Errrr… that sound mighty wrong)

Finally after going through all those ‘Rumahs‘, I have finally collected all the stamps. I felt like a kid able to collect things while visiting these traditional houses of people in Sarawak. Then I just have to act cute.

Pitiful face, Cute leh…. =P~~~~~ (I is can SYIOK SENDIRI)