Saturday, April 10, 2010

My laptop seriously is giving me problems. First it offs itself every two hours, then it decided to shut down an hour earlier. Brought the laptop to Dr. Douglas to reformat it. Came back and everything seems fine until today, it decided not to ON for me. I want a new one!!! MacBukuPro? hehe

Anywayyyyy I wanna write about my orang asli trip! That way, many many many years later, I can read back and remember this trip.

It was for my Anthropology class thingy. We had to choose an orang asli village to visit and record a video out of it by asking them questions like their beliefs, traditions, culture, customs, their work life and etc etc.

My group had 8 people inside including me and we cannot go to the same village with the rest of the groups in class. So I don't know howwww but we ended up deciding to go to Jerantut.

I didn't know how far or long was it to go to Jerantut until I google-d it. It was a 3 hour drive! OMG. We had to take two cars. And we met in college at 6am. I was so excited for the trip I did not sleep at all. Plus I'm the one who drove to Jerantut. -.-

Not only it was a 3 hour drive to Jerantut town, we had to drive another one hour to the jetty to take a sampan ride to the orang asli. SAMPAN. omg. Frightened the hell out of me when my group mate told me we had to take a sampan to the destination. I do not know how to swim and I don't feel safe in/on water. =/

So low right.. It's like sitting on the water... Imagine 8 of us plus the Pegawai from the Orang Asli department and the sampan dude, on this sampan. When I sat on the wooden plank, it felt like I was sitting on the water. Summore halfway the journey to the village, the sampan didn't move because the waves were strong and the sampan just couldn't move at all...... Panic gila.. The sampan dude frightened us summore.. He said "Uh oh, tak boleh gerak.. Tolak!!" I really pushed the sampan with my ass.. but everyone else was laughing thinking it was funny because the sampan didn't move. wtf. When the waves chilled, the sampan moved again.

BTW, it was only a 10-15 minutes sampan ride hehe

Finally we reached the village! There was only a few houses on the village.

They told us to build a home takes three to four days and if is only a hut, it takes half a day. And the women are the ones who build the houses and men only need to prepare the tools. Girl Power!

The orang asli showed us how to make fire using the traditional way. Super amazing that one. Then he asked us to try the "sumpit" which is something like a blowpipe weapon. Soooo reminded me of Russell Peters and his KFC joke. hehe

When we wanted to take pictures with the orang asli kids they ran away! Shy! So we had to like chase them -.-

In this trip I learned a lot about them. They do not look like Malaysians at all. They totally look African. Curly hair and really tan skin. Well they are call the Negritos. So I guessed they were all kinda forced to be orang Melayu because they told us they used to eat pork. And before we left, we asked them what changes do they want in their lives and they said they want a school for them because when they go to the school at the town, the Malay kids laughed and teased them for being orang asli kids. wtf. The orang asli kids were shy so they quit school.

Anyway the head chief in the village called them all and we took a nice group picture.

Tiring but super fun trip!

xoxo.