At the sound of the buzzer and other stories

Selamat petang

I'll begin my blog entry for today with one of my traditional greetings, albeit this time it's in Malay and not English. Selamat petang is the Malay translation of good afternoon, for those of you who didn't catch on ;-). However, that might seem a bit confusing since I'm no longer in Malaysia. I'm currently in Brunei, however, they still speak Malay here (as well as Chinese and English). I wanted to wrap up my time in Malaysia before moving onto Brunei.

I finished up my time on the beach and began the trip back to Kota Bharu for a day and night there before catching my flight to Borneo. The ride back was much more pleasant than the trip out and I was thankful for that (I was dreading the boat ride...really, I almost didn't get back on the boat). I got into Kota Bharu and hit the town running. I had a day to soak it all in and hit the museums first. I went to several and several turned out to be a bust. One (and only one) stood out and was very interesting. It was called the War Museum, however, it touched on much more than that. Kota Bharu was one of the main points of attack during the Japanese invasion and the start of WWII. At the same time that they bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked Malaysia at Kota Bharu. This northern state has traded hands several times since then and I'm going to have to look into this regional history more closely later. Thailand was neutral during WWII and had allowed Japan to launch attacks from her territory and construct the Thai-Burma Railroad. In exchange for this, following the invasion of Malaysia, Thailand was given several of the northern states of Malaysia. They were returned following the Japanese surrender, however, it's a part of the history I'm unfamiliar with and is interesting in light of the current issues facing the south of Thailand. There is much more to tell there and there is much more still to learn, but I'll move onto the more exciting part of the day. I found my way into a market and was shopping around and was looking at the batik shirts. It's a traditional type of shirt and the batik is the way in which the designs are added to the shirt. It's a combination of dyes and waxes and such and to be honest I have only a patchy knowledge of the subject and will have to fill that in later as I wasn't given a real clear description. However, it's beautiful. I looked around and eventually bought one the following morning before leaving. At the market, I ran into Greg and Marilyn and we headed to the cultural center to watch the free (wonderful) shows. There were several different shows and the first one was a type of dancing/fighting. I'm at a loss to describe it (I took several videos and hopefully will be able to post them once I get home) but it's a combination of dancing, theatre and fighting all blended together and set to music. It's really neat to watch and every position (including the hand and finger position) is highly choreographed and full of meaning. The facial expressions and showmanship that the performers has was wonderful to watch and made it very entertaining. After this we moved to a different part of the center and were shown a traditional Malay game called striking tops. There were 5-6 people participating and they all had pieces of wood the size of a large bowl in the shape of a top (the kind you spin) with a piece of rope wrapped around it. One person would throw the top and get it spinning. In a wonderful display they would start these large tops spinning by throwing them. More impressively is that they had to get it to start spinning within a certain area no bigger than a welcome mat. After the top was spinning, another person would use his top to knock the other top. It seemed like there were several objectives. First, you wanted to hit the spinning top and knock it away and second (and the most prestigious result) is to knock the other persons top away and start your top spinning on the welcome mat at the same time! We saw this happen only once, but it was impressive. Next we saw them play a traditional instrument, the coconut husk drum which made an impressive sound but doesn't give much to write about. Lastly, we played featherball. For those of you who know takgraw, it's similar to that. For those of you who don't what they do is they take a piece of leather and make a springy base. To that they attach a handful of feathers. Then they take this contraption and play hacky sack with it and kick it around a circle. All parts of your body are game except you hands. Again, very similar to takgraw. I partook in a little game and then headed off to dinner.

Now this is the story that I've been waiting to tell. Malaysia is a predominately Muslim country. As such, most people are supposed to pray 5 times per day. Helping to enforce this and prevent distractions, the government (or someone) closes the evening market from 7:00 - 7:45 every day so that the people working in the market can go pray. Greg, Marilyn and I went over to the market at about 7:40 and were greeted with an empty market. However, there was one man with a megaphone sitting in the center of the market and several others milling around the edges. We decided to wander around the market and just try to get the lay of the land and the man with the megaphone sprang into action and prevented us from even entering the market! We were told to wait outside and to come in later and he would also us anywhere near the market. So we retreated to the edges of the market and as the minutes ticked by more and more people surrounded the edges of the market. At 7:45, the man with the megaphone sounded a buzzer and the market was re-opened and in an instant the market was transformed from a barren and empty lot into a buzzing center of activity. Literally instantaneously people began selling and buying food. It was incredible. I wish I could have captured it on video. Following the re-opening of the market, we descended upon the food stalls and ate our fill. I hadn't eaten much that day and my stomach was huge and ready for anything and so I gorged myself with delicious Malaysian food. After dinner we went back to the cultural center to watch a shadow puppet play, but it proved of little interest and we called it a night. On our way back into the city we passed by a A&W's and Greg hand a hankering for a root beer float. Now, that's not something I would have thought to order or crave but once he mentioned it I was sold. And so at 10:00 (right before the store closed) we had a good ol' fashioned root beer float. And that was my day.