Sarawak Day 4 - Beach and Culture

The plan for day 4 was to hit the beach in the morning and the Sarawak Cultural Village in the afternoon. The morning view from our treehouse showed that it was going to be a good day for both activities!

Here's a closer view of our treehouse, our starting point for Day 4 of our Sarawak adventure.



Without further ado, we hit the beach.



After the beach, it was time to head to the Sarawak Cultural Center. The Cultural Center is part theme park, part living museum. Tribe members from several of the tribes found in the Borneo interior live here full-time in traditional houses, showing how to make their crafts and food and create their music. In the Bidayuh longhouse (a longhouse is a traditional style of Malay house where several families live together under one long narrow structure), we were able to practice the blowgun. Here is Ben, looking very focused!

This woman was working on a beaded craft.

The tribesman at the front of this group is from the Penan tribe, a nomadic group who build simple huts and moves frequently. He provided the most surreal moment of the trip so far when he learned that we were from America and asked Katie "Do you like George Bush?" (She said "not really" :-) You know it's a small world when nomadic tribesmen from Malaysia are asking about George Bush. An interesting note about the Penan at the Cultural Center - every once in a while, they'll just wander away from the theme park for a while. I guess that's pretty authentic for a nomadic tribe! Here he is giving another blowdart lesson.

Here Katie and Eleanor are getting ready to enter the Orang Ulu house.

We came across another curious scene in the Orang Ulu house. Here, a tribe member is playing a traditional instrument....which is plugged into a Peavey amp under his seat!

Here's a view of the Cultural Village.

At the end of the day there was a traditional dance performance. Here, one of the warriors is doing a display of strength, where he picks up a heavy (20 kg) wooden bowl with his teeth and dances around with it for a while.

Here a hunter is performing an artistic rendition of the hunt, complete with blowgun which he used to pop balloons that were hanging on the other side of the ampitheatre.

After the show we headed back to Camp Permai for dinner and a good night's rest. The next morning, we headed back into Kuching for some last-minute crafts shopping, lunch and our flight back to KL. We all really enjoyed Sarawak and were glad we made it over there to learn more about Borneo and the traditional people area.