Boar Hunting and Bali

Boys weekend.  Ladies weekend.  Two totally different adventures.  I'll share mine and perhaps Maureen will get around to sharing hers.

Last September Maureen and I had traveled to West Sumatra.  It was less than a week before an 8.3 earthquake devastated the area.  We fell in love with the beauty of the scenery and the people. While exploring around we met Porcupine (Zal) a tour guide at his restaurant on the shores of Lake Minanjau.  He told us about his adventures on wild boar hunts and I knew I would have to return to check this out.

The architecture and the scenery around the lake are stunning.  Here is a typical building, viewed from the 44 hairpin corner descent to the lake shore and village.








It wasn't too hard to round up four other adventurers to check this out.  For all of us, the experience was totally different from our expectations.  We arrived in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia early Friday morning.  Zal picked us up and took us on a tour through the country-side en route to his home on Lake Minanjau.  Our first stop was to see an 8.5 meter python.  The python was found by a villager and he had him on display in a rickety tarp affair that left us wondering who the python's next meal might be.  According to the villager when he found the python they started up a conversation and the python told him he could put him on display until he had earned a certain amount of rupiah and then he would have to let him go.  The snake really was big, with its head about the size of my thigh.

The snake was on display right outside a restaurant where we had our first meal.  Padang food is renowned for its spice and the meal lived up to its reputation.   They brought out about 30 tiny plates full of food.  There is no ordering as you just choose what you want and pay for only for what you eat.  Even though we were in the heart of Sumatra it is really, really hard to get a good cup of coffee.  The local coffee is roasted till it is almost burnt and then ground into a fine dust.  It is prepared like instant coffee with a spoonful or two put into a cup and boiling water poured over top.  The big difference is that it doesn't ever dissolve so if you are not careful you can slurp up a whole lot of sludge from the bottom.

We drove a bit further into the hill town of Bukittinggi.  This a former hill resort town of the Dutch colonists.  Spices are abundant in the part of Indonesia, hence the former name the Spice Islands.  The Dutch controlled the trade and the area for over 350 years.  We explored the town a bit, checking out the central square and the market.  Cruising through the market with the guys was a little different than going with Moe.  We didn't really stop at any stall and nothing was bought.

Zal then took us to see the Japanese caves.  These were described in an early post.  Everyone found the story rather fascinating.  On our way to Minanjau we drove through the silver crafting village.  We did stop and gifts of appeasement were purchased.

The gang on the view site outside the Japanese caves. From left to right, Zal (our guide), Derald Cook (from San Francisco area), Jeff Cole (Bend, Oregon), Rick Pucci (Toronto), Paul Brodie (Sydney, Australia area), and moi.

Both Paul and Derald have had past teaching experiences in Indonesia (other islands though).  The locals were always amazed when they started speaking Bhasa with them and then loved to talk to them.









Zal has spent 25 years guiding in the area. A few years ago he settled down, married and then opened a restaurant on the lake.  His wife is a wonderful cook and both nights we were treated to excellent meals which were a fusion of local Indonesian food and other types.  We had fresh sweet water prawns done in a couple styles, an incredible venison dish, steamed fish, chicken dishes, vegetable and rice dishes.  The quality of the food and the presentation of the dishes really were a surprise.  I asked her where she picked up her skills and the response was from magazines.

  I walked through the village before we took off on our hunt the first morning and checked out buildings.  The curved, spiky roofs are supposed to represent buffalo horns.  Apparently many years ago a wise leader of Sumatra convinced an invading army from Java to settle their differences by having their buffaloes fight each other. This is a David and Goliath Indonesian story.  The Javanese brought their largest and strongest buffalo to fight for them while the Sumatrans led out a small calf.  The crafty Sumatrans had taken the calf away from its mother for a few days before hand and it was starving.  They also attached a sharp spike to the top of its head.  When the calf saw the Javanese buffalo he ran up to it looking for something to suckle and in the process stabbed the bull in the stomach with the spike and killed it.  Somehow the style of these buildings represent this victory over the Javanese.                                                                                        

 

Our journey to the hunt started off in the back of a pick-up.  None of us were really sure how things would work and with the language difficulties Zal was not really able to explain it.  We piled into the back of the truck with 3 dogs and a couple other hunters. As we drove through the village we stopped to pick up a couple other hunters with their dogs.  We then had a 45 minute drive through the Sumatran country side on the way to a small village on the edge of palm plantation.

When we arrived at the village we were immediately introduced to the chief who asked us to sit down and be served breakfast.  All of us had a hard time sitting cross legged but managed to squirm our way into some sort of similar position.  The food was excellent, mainly chicken dishes with lots of spicy sauces.  We washed it down with the local tea.  No utensils are provided and we did manage to eat with our hands although not as deftly as the locals.



Here is Zal and I with the chief checking out the spear.  I thought this might be the instrument that finished off the boar but I was very wrong.                                                                                

While we were eating men from around the area began arriving with their dogs.  We began to realize that this wasn't going to be a private affair.  For the locals, who are Muslim, the boars are haraam (forbidden) and unclean.  As farmers they also see the boars as a major pest as they dig up and destroy their crops.  There is no love lost between the locals and the boars and besides a concept like animal rights hasn't quite entered their radar of political correctness.  We found out that boar hunting in Sumatra is a rather bloody and brutal affair.

The assistant chief or deputy has this rusty old single shot musket thing that he signals the start of the hunt with.  In the hunt you a group of men who go to one side of a stand of trees or grasses where they believe the boars may be and then they drive to the other side where the hunters and their dogs are waiting.  The musket man leads the beater group while the chief takes the others into the area where the boars are being driven to.

Most of the boar hunting time is spent waiting patiently while the boars are driven towards the group.  There probably were 200 hunters with their dogs waiting for the boars.  All of the men had long scarves which they would throw at the boars to distract them if they broke lose and headed towards them.  Once the dogs picked up the scent or sound of the boars rushing towards them they would be released to chase them down.  The dogs were very well trained and waited quietly and patiently for the boars.

When they did manage to trap a boar they conquered with shear numbers.  They would bring the pig down and literally tear it apart.  Not a very pretty sight.  They group was followed by plantation workers from Miri (another Indonesian Island ,but Christian).  After the dogs were pulled off these folks salvaged what meat was left on the boar.

Derald displaying the boar's head after the Miri workers cleaned things up.

The hunters with the chief.














We came across these young girls in the middle of the jungle.  They were about 4 or 5 years old.  Their job was to sit in this little hut on stilts for the day and pull on the strings.  The rice in the field was just about ready for harvest and this is how they scared the boars away from the field.

Things we'll miss and things we won't

We are now ONE month away from end of this school year.  It is really hard to believe that our 'adventure' is about to end.  We will return with many, many memories.  As with any adventure there are some things that are memorable for more unpleasant reasons.  We have begun to compile a list of things we will remember, miss, and not miss from our time in Malaysia.

Things we'll miss-

•  wonderful friends from Australia, US, NZ, Holland, Canada, all over
• playing tennis in June, September, December, whenever
• fresh tropical juices for less than a buck
• polite, bright, cooperative students (well, 95% worth)
• the food, Malaysian, Indian, Chinese, Thai, fusion all good and all inexpensive
• shorts all year round and no jacket required, ever
• the Plaza on Thursday market evening, buying fresh fruit, supper for $2.50, sipping some Guinness with good friends
• Air Asia sales, let's see Perth, Siem Reap, Chiang Mai for 0RM, can't beat that
• the monkeys
• Gold Class theatre tickets for $10
• weekly Thai massages

Things we won't miss-

• the traffic- only those who experience it can understand how nuts it is
• soaking wet shirts from sweating all the time
• living in AC
• the U turns- driving 2 km more in order to make that right turn
• the cleaners (all female) walking in to the bathroom and mopping up while I'm taking a whiz
• getting the response 'no can lah' to simple requests or perhaps even worse 'yes can' but doing nothing
• no recycling
• the belief that lanes and turn indicators are optional
• the malls

As the school year wraps up, the activities seem to ramp up.  We spent last weekend working the doors of the theatre production at the school.  Somehow we landed the role of 'front of  the house' and it has been our job for the past two years to man the front of the theatre for the twice yearly productions, managing the ushers, selling tickets and t-shirts, helping out with concession, stopping people from taking flash photos, and many other things that go with show time.
The commitment with the sport teams is now over although Maureen's final game of the softball season was last week.  It was all anticlimactic after the big regional tournament in Bangkok however.  My soccer coaching seems a distant memory.
We have had lots of social engagements over the past little while.  Mari Makan again two Fridays ago.  Mari Makan is sponsored by the parent association.  Every national group brings food from their country to share.  After the feast there is a lot of dancing and visiting to be had.  I only managed to make it around to a small sampling of tables and it was all delicious.  I took advantage of the Asian offerings (Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Philippine, Indian).  Maureen managed to try a bit from a few other countries (she took smaller samples).  There were about 30 different tables, so there was no shortage of food. The Canadians did desserts this year and so Maureen offered something from the Whitewater cookbook.  What could be more Canadian than that? 
The following night we headed off to a big function sponsored by the Canadian Association of Malaysia, Canada Rocks.  Along with another great meal (mainly pork, rather rare in a Muslim country), we got to dance the night away to a cover band playing Bryan Adams, Tom Cochrane, Tragically Hip, BTO, and other Canadian classics.  We had a great time consolidating friendships with people from all over Canada.
Every weekend from now to the end looks full with a variety of activities, road rally, end of the year dinners and bbqs.  It will be busy and then everyone, well almost, disappears back to their home country or to some adventure in another one.  Maureen and I are here for Malaysian tax reasons until mid-July.  We do a few trips planned during this time in and out of Malaysia but more about these later.

 Maureen and Denise (from NB) setting up at the Canadian table at Mari Makan. (The Habs shirt I don't mind but the Flames??)

 The Filippino table.  The food was yummy too!

 The Thai table.  I didn't miss this one although the papaya salad started a fire in my mouth.

 Even the Swedes had something to share.

The softball team jumping for joy over their first place finish in the Kuala Lumpur international school league.

Here they are with coach Hyham and their feet on the ground.  Still happy.

From Perth to the Philippines

There has been a considerable time lag between this post and the last one.  Our life in Malaysia has kept us very busy.  Both of us have been coaching teams.  I coached a U11 Girls' Soccer team.  This age group always brings some interesting experiences.  Maureen took on two teams this past term, despite everyone warning her against it.  She coached the Jr. Boys' Basketball team again this year and took up the post as senior coach of the Girls' Varsity Softball team.  The end result was that she exhausted herself trying to run different practices and games on the same day.  The softball team provided some fringe benefits as she traveled to both Singapore and Bangkok for tournaments with the team.  The concept of 'fringe benefits' is used loosely here, as accompanying a group of 15 to 17 year old girls to a foreign country is no holiday. Despite the coaching and the rest of the work related to school we did manage to make a trip to Perth, host Bruce and Lois Morrison, get in a rafting trip, lead a group on a high ropes adventure in the jungle, and head to the Philippines for a convention and beach holiday.  I also took a quick trip home in mid-February as my mom had developed some complications after falling and breaking her hip.  Things looked a little grim for her for a few days but she has now perked up and is on the road to recovery.  It was nice to get home and see her, as well as Cole and Alana, my brothers and their families, but the 5 day turn around left me rather exhausted.


We left KL for Perth as the festivities for Chinese New Year were heating up in Malaysia.  Perth seemed rather sedate and western after the pace of South-east Asia and this brought a nice relief for us. We went to see a high school friend of Maureen's who had traveled to Australia soon after high school and stayed.  Barb and her husband, Kevin, proved to be great hosts and we had a good time getting reacquainted with them and some other transplanted Nanaimoites in Australia and discovering Perth and the area around it.

Maureen and Barb on a Perth beach in Scarborough.  The weather here was perfect.  Warm but no humidity,  I didn't have to change shirts three times a day.

On our second day in Perth we took ferry to Rottnest Island, rented bikes and road around exploring beaches.  Perth is located in South-West Australia where there is a lot of mining happening.  We found things to be rather expensive compared with cost of living in KL.

The biking was easy as it was fairly flat.  We got to see quokkers (sp??) here.  Tiny little things that look like some sort of cross between a rat and a kangaroo.

Barb and Kevin keep a house boat at Mandurah, a toney resort community south of Perth.  We spent an evening on their house boat and then went out the next day to go crabbing in the Peel Inlet.

Sunset shots on the dock.  The marina was full of very big and expense boats.  As we cruised out of the harbour to go crabbing we seemed to pass thousands of million dollar homes. 
 

Hauling in crabs.

All of our visitors are taken to the Sky Bar now.  It has an incredible view of the twin towers.  We dragged Lois and Bruce here a couple of nights after they arrived.  The lounge is on the 33rd floor of a neighbouring hotel and is dwarfed by the towers.

The other place we like to take people to is Malacca. Her Maureen is walking with the Morrisons along the canal in the older Chinese section of the town. St. Francis Xavier Church is in the background.

Another stop on the tour of Malacca is the place where St. Francis Xavier was entombed for a few months before he was shipped to his final resting place in Goa, India.  Here are some local school girls hamming it up for photos by the tombstones.

Bruce, being helpful as ever, is filling out a questionnaire for some school girls on a scavenger hunt, inside La Formosa, an old Portuguese fort.

Manila is a shoppers paradise.  The goods are plentiful and cheap.  Here at Green Hills there were about 200 pearl stalls all vying for the ladies' business.

Hannah, the one in the yellow dress, is from Manila and so she led the assault on the stores.  Assembled here are the teachers from MKIS ready to take on the shops at Green Hills.

Maureen and I did take time to do a little site seeing in Manila.  We went to the old section of town and explored around the Spanish colonial area of Intramuros, built in the late 16th century.  Manila is overpopulated and polluted with sections of extreme poverty.  Despite this the people are welcoming and friendly.  English is widely spoken so it was easy to get around and communicate.

After the conference was over we hopped on a bus and headed south to catch a ferry to one of the 7107 islands in the Philippines to spend some time at the beach.  Nine of us from the school rented a house in Puerto Galera.  It was superb, sitting on a point overlooking one of the many bays.  It came with a maid who cleaned and cooked for us.

We were  about 1 1/2 km from the town itself and so enjoyed the hike into the village for groceries or meals.

This was the little local beach just down the steps from the house we rented.  The weather was perfect.  The temperature was about 32 degrees with a slight overcast and a nice breeze to keep the mosquitoes away.

We could go down the beach and watch the local fishermen haul in their catch for the day.  They never seemed to have much in their boats but what they did have was shared with everyone on the beach.

The boys went to watch some cock fighting, which was being held in an arena right next to the rental.  Here one of the winners is being sewed up for the next time.  It is a rather brutal affair.  There are no draws only ones that live through it and ones that die.

Some of us spent an afternoon sailing.  Peter, our guide, dropped us off at one spot to go snorkeling.  The snorkeling was actually very good but unfortunately the current at the time was so strong it was a little tricky in the water.

Sunset from the sail boat.  We did have a great day with strong winds ending with a beautiful sunset.  The only thing we missed was seeing the dolphins that abound in the waters.

There are two main forms of public transportation on the island, tricycles, as shown above and jeepneys, extended jeeps with bench seats.  Here Maureen and I are on our way to Sabang a diving area on another part of the island.

The little tricycles were used for hauling both people and goods.  Here they are stacking up a load of furniture but you would also see them loaded down with produce and other goods to be shuttled from one part of the island to another.

We want to go back to the Philippines again sometime.  We explored one area besides Manila and of course while we were there learned of lots of other places to see.  That kind of reflects our whole experience outside of  Malaysia.  We have a taste of South-East Asia, just a nibble.  Just enough to whet the appetite.
We spent the first day on our return to KL dealing with passport renewal.  We've used up all the available pages in our passports and need to renew.

Thaipusam and Bawang Assan Longhouse

We do get a lot of holidays at MKIS.  Our weekend was book marked with Thaipusam on Friday and Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory Day on Monday.

We went out to the Batu Caves, the site of Thaipusam, on Thursday evening with a couple of other teachers from school.  The festivities are in full swing on Friday and into Saturday but there were enough pilgrims on Thursday night to get the flavour of the event.  I called it Thaipusam Lite.  Batu Caves have been a Hindu shrine for over 200 years.  The caves are enclosed in a massive limestone outcrop.  The entrance to the cave is up a flight of 272 steps.  Sitting at the foot of the stairs is a massive golden statue of Muruga.

During Thaipusam the steps and the area at the base of the stairs to the caves is overtaken by over 1 million pilgrims.  Pilgrims take part in Thaipusam for two reasons, either to give thanks for some special blessing they have received during the year or to make penance for some sin they have committed.  On Thursday night there were no more than a couple thousand pilgrims taking part in the pilgrimage up the mountain.  There are a couple of sights along a near by river where the pilgrims gather to prepare for their ascent up the stairs.  The first first step cleanse themselves either in the river or at the temporary outside shower stalls put up at the river site.  Most of the men and some of the women will then get their heads shaved.  They then dress themselves in a golden or yellow robe for the pilgrimage.

Most of the folks we saw were families and after cleansing themselves they would pick up their pitchers of milk and line up to be blessed by one of the priests before heading up on their pilgrimage.  There were a few hardcore devotees who prepared themselves in a special way for their walk up the stairs.

One fellow had what looked like a BBQ skewer shoved through one cheek and out the other.  He also had small hooks on his back.  His task was to walk up the stairs holding a burning offering in each hand.  The flames were rather big.  We walked beside him as he stumbled up the stairs. It was quite a struggle for him to make it.  Another fellow had large hooks placed into his back with numerous bunches of fruit attached, apples, oranges.

We spent at least an hour watching another fellow have what seemed like a 100 hooks embedded into his back.  All of these had bells and flowers attached.  Once these were attached he smoked up something strange, chugged a few beer, and then proceeded to bless his followers before they all headed up the hill with him in the lead.  All these extreme devotees were accompanied by a group of drummers pounding out some iritatingly loud rythmn on their drums.

 

  

 

Bawang Assan Longhouse

We spent most of Friday lazing around our condo and packing up for our trip to Sibu.  Sibu is on the island of Borneo, in the East Malaysian sultanate of Sarawak.  Air Asia had a ticket sale on at some point last year and I picked a 5RM ($1.50) destination to explore.  That should have been the first clue that it might not be a popular destination point.  The second clue should have been when I could not glean any information from anyone on our well-traveled staff about the area.  The third definately should have been when I couldn't find any information in any of the guide books or online about Sibu.  I suppose I was holding out hope that this was the last great unexplored parcel of land in Borneo.  I was somewhat wrong.

Sibu is the third largest city in Sarawak and lies on the Rawang River.  The Rawang flows deep into Borneo and is the thoroughfare for transport and commerce into the region.  It is an enormous river and at Sibu, 60 kilometers from the coast, it is still a mile wide.  The area around Sibu is completely flat.  So flat that the tidal surges up the river at this point are still 10 to 12 ft high.  This leaves a long neglected section of sludge between the river and the shore for half of the day.  This area was filled mainly with logs and similar debris, but similar to most of South-East Asia it also has a lot of garbage.

The city is composed mostly of people of Chinese descent.  The British brought the Chinese over by the thousands during the colonial periods to work on the rubber and palm plantations.  When the British pulled out the Chinese took over pretty well all commercial interests in the area and began to rapidly expand the forestry industry deep into the interior of Borneo.  The Rawang brings thousands of logs to Sibu each day for the saw and plywood mills.  Much of the rainforests of Borneo end up here before being shipped out to be assembled into furniture for an Ikea (or whatever) near you.  Sibu apparently has more millionaires per capita than any other city in South-East Asia.  The affluence is well apparent by the palatial homes we could see on the drive from the airport into the city.  It was interesting to note that the husband in the homestay family we stayed with worked in one of the sawmills as a security guard.  He indicated that out of the 1500 employees at the mill about 1200 were Indonesian workers.  Their compensation for a 12 hour shift at the mill was 15RM, the equivalent of about $5.  A little less, I think, than the IWA wages back in BC.  Deregulation and non-union labour has benefits for some I suppose.  The sad part is that the Indonesian workers are there because it is better than opportunities in their home country.

 

This is outside of the longhouse we stayed in.  All made of wood and everyone cooks with a wood stove. Hmm.

  

The walkway in front of the longhouse.

  

The communal veranda.  During most of the day it was filled with children playing and older folks visiting.  During the evening the adults gathered to share stories and tuak.

After a long search I did find that it was possible to take part in a longhouse stay outside of Sibu so after spending the first night in Sibu we headed 50 km out of town to a Iban longhouse village called Bawang Assan.  The Iban's are an indigenous people of the region.  They were know in the past to be headhunters and although we did see evidence that this, I believe the practice was abandoned long ago.  The longhouses are the traditional dwellings of the Iban.  They stretch all along the river systems of Borneo.  The entire structures are on stilts to keep above the tidal surge that seems to be prevalent along the rivers. Here large numbers of families live under one roof with separate quarters to each off a large communal veranda.  The longhouse we stayed in had quarters for 34 families and there were 6 longhouses in the village.

 

This gruesome site was hanging from the rafters in one of the other longhouses we visited.  Our hostess didn't really want to talk about them.  There were about a dozen bundled up together.

  

The village was situated on a tributary of the Rawang, the Bawang.  This is the little jetty where everything docks.  During the day a supply boat (Walmart) visits.  I'm sure it has one of everything.

 

Back side view of the longhouse.  It was surrounded by rice fields.

We had some very gracious hosts who taught us a lot about longhouse life and Iban customs.  We got to try on some of their traditional costumes, make some of their food, and drink tuak, their home brewed rice wine.  We were actually scheduled for two nights at the longhouse but quickly realized one would be enough, so at the end of the second day we arranged for a ride to the airport and caught a flight back to KL.

 

Maureen making some cookies with our hostess.  All deep fried in palm oil of course.  The most difficult part of the process was getting down and up from the little stool.

  

Some of the cookies.  They were actually pretty yummy.

 

Dressed as Iban.  I wouldn't wear the loin cloth and Moe wouldn't go topless. Sorry.