Borneo: Sarawak Cultural Village

July 26, 2010

The Sarawak Cultural Village, in Borneo, was a replica of tribal rainforest life among the 7 tribes of Malaysian Borneo. Ken was humiliated by Griffin, in blow dart shooting. He then let Griffin get his own blow dart and all the kids have been practicing dart shooting since we've returned to KL. The kids want to show anyone video-calling us on skype their dart shooting skills. They explain that usually dart shooting was used by jungle villagers to shoot monkeys, etc. Then, the kids turn and shoot a pink balloon with their blow dart.

With the blow dart, we may actually have some real competition for the lure of Wii video games at the kids' friends' homes in Park Slope.

The village showed us how they grind and sift their rice, what sort of housing people lived in (palm tree shacks to long houses with lots of houses up on stilts, all attached to each other -- a vilage on stilts, really), and their ceremonial dancing and music. Having visited a real longhouse, this replica village was a stretch from reality. It's even popular for people to stay overnite in the replica longhouses. Sometimes it's more comfy living in a replica than reality.

Photos Taken by Griffin

**This is Griffin telling you about his photos and video:

July 28, 2010

This summer I went to Grammy and Harvey's country house and took a picture of Harvey laying in bed. I also took a picture of Nanny at Nanny's house. Most of my pictures were from traveling. We went to a Buddhist temple in Penang, Malaysia. I saw a proboscis monkey in Bako park in Malaysia. We went to a paradise beach at Bako park with no one there and the water warm. We took a boat to get there.

The video below is of the legos I'm working on right now. I made a forge. I made a guy who controls a motor. I made a really good lock to get in. I made a ship with a pirate flag on it...a car/ship.

I am having the best time in Southeast Asia in the world. See ya later!

To blog readers. Love, Griffin

Kuching, Malaysian Borneo: Night Market

July 24, 2010

Every Saturday night in Kuching, there is a night market that runs from 5pm Saturday to midnight, then from 5am Sunday to noon. It's probably the best market we've ever seen. It was so alive! It was filled with every possible kind of Asian produce, 200 kinds of dried fish, and they made special treats for you. Ken discovered fresh cane juice after we'd all stood transfixed by the cane juice maker feeding an entire sugar cane into his juice machine. Ken had a big smile on his face drinking it.

Ken's smile got bigger once he tried the Apam Balik which seems to be some sort of thick crepe covered in butter, sugar, and nuts. And, they had fish, rabbits, hamsters, puppies, and some thick gross-me-out worms for sale for seemingly for all the animals to eat.

Malaysian Hawker Stalls

Mom heard about some Hawker Stalls outside of our hotel in Penang and we decided to be brave and eat there. Why is it brave? Malaysian Street Food is famous the world over, but it's also known that your stomach takes a while to adjust to street food here. We were told we had to wait a month before eating Hawker food. We waited a few weeks. My parents, Patrick and Brendan only waited a few days.

The "Long Beach" stalls backed onto the beach, with stunning sunsets at night. All of the stalls surrounded a covered courtyard. Here's how you'd order: You'd go up to any stall -- the Assam Laksa soup stall, the Singapore fried noodle stall, or the Pancake Queen stall, for example, you'd place your order, they'd ask your table number, then they'd deliver the food, then you'd pay.

We all became such big fans of the "Singapore" stall that the stall chef actually said to Mom on our third night there, "Singapore again? You need try something new." Properly humiliated, we ventured to different dinners but we stuck with the same dessert every night -- Pancake Queen's pancake with fruit and ice cream on top (Grif preferred chocolate pancake with chocolate sauce). You assume you've had this before, right? No, you haven't! There's some magic to that pancake -- more fried, more butter, more something mysterious we haven't put our fingers on. But, each time the hawker's young son delivered the pancake and demanded his money, we didn't ask any questions.

The whole meal would cost each of us no more then $3 to $5.

Yesterday in Kuching in Malaysian Borneo, we hit another set of hawker stalls called "Top Spot," this one "higher end," meaning we paid as much as $6 each for our meal. In this one, we'd go up to the seafood stall and choose our fish, our lobster, our shrimp, ourselves! I even hand-picked the vegetables. Then we told them how we wanted them cooked -- lobster grilled with "bbq sauce," veges with oyster sauce, our grouper fish dubbed "Spottie" with garlic and ginger sauce. My god, it was so delicious that Ken had a smile pasted on his face the entire time, rare for a cynical New Yorker.