Festival song…

I did mention in this post that the Borneo Cultural Festival 2015 would be from the 30th of July till the 8th of August and that would be a good time to come and visit Sibu.

Personally, I am not really into these things. Initially, I did drop by earlier sometime in the late afternoon to buy home the traditional ethnic Dayak ayam pansoh (chicken cooked in bamboo) but eventually, I stopped doing that as well. However, my girl and her colleague/housemate were around for the weekend…and she was not all that busy. Usually, even though she would be home Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday, she would be bogged down with all her work – all the lesson preparation, getting ready all the teaching aids and having to go through the mundane chore of writing the teacher’s record book. Who says teachers are so free, work only half a day and have so many holidays? It is work…work…work…and work!!!

Anyway, to get back to the festival, since she happened to be relatively free, I suggested going to walk around and look at what they had in store. After all, her colleague from Kuching had never been to Sibu before, much less to to the festival, so I thought she might enjoy it. Everyone liked the idea so off we went to the Sibu Town Square…

I dropped them off at a convenient place and then I went to find a place to park the car before I made my way there myself. They had all the Malay stalls on one side, around the same side as these swan sculptures & fountain…

…but since I already had dinner, I did not really walk around there to see what they had. I did stop by this Melanau Association’s booth though…

…and they did have some interesting things…

…on display…

…but there wasn’t anybody around! I did not have a problem…

…but I could imagine many visitors, tourists especially, trying to figure out what everything was and what they were for. They should have somebody stationed there to help in case anybody asked and I also felt that it would be a great idea to sell some of the Melanau delicacies such as sagu‘ (sago pellets), terbaloi (Melanau sago coconut crackers), tumpik and so on and their handicrafts too perhaps. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any.

There was a show going on and it did seem to attract a very big crowd. Some Indonesian fusion band with modern and traditional musical instruments was playing when I arrived. and after they were done, this girl took to stage…

…to sing Pink’s Try and yes, I would say she sang very well indeed. After that, there were cultural dances including a traditional one by a primary school. The three ladies actually went and watched for a while and they saw a group from China, an Iban performance…and they even saw my cousin doing his very popular Chinese mask dance but after the aforementioned song, I decided to go and walk around the Chinese stalls…

…that included this one from the Foochow Association…

…and this Teochew Association one…

There was lots and lots of food, all the delicacies peculiar to each dialect…

…but no, I did not buy anything…

Oh? They were even selling the traditional Foochow red wine…

…and I watched with interest the ladies frying mee sua kueh, something like fried or koi (fried yam cake), that is not usually available anywhere around town on normal days. Unfortunately, the photo that I took came out a bit blur so I am not including it in this post.

By then, I was already feeling so hot and uncomfortable, dripping profusely in my sweat and I felt as if I was about to get cramps in my legs so I decided to walk back to my car…which I had to park so so so far away as they had blocked all the roads around the whole area and the few parking spaces that were closer had all been taken up. Only then did I remember why I had not been to the festival all these years and was quite happy to just stay at home, relaxing in comfort within the confines of my humble abode. Back at the car, I texted my girl telling her where it was and told them to carry on and enjoy themselves – I would just wait around there for them.

P.S.:
Incidentally, there was also a trade fair running simultaneously in the big open area right across the road from the town square where they would have the Ramadhan bazaar every year and also the food festival round year end. Of course, after walking around the food stalls, I was in no condition to venture there to browse around. I did see on Facebook though that my friend, Victor, had a stall there promoting his Uncle James’ products  and a friend of mine did drop by a stall and was so sweet and thoughtful as to get my girl this very pretty pendant…

…and went through the trouble of sending it over to our house, thank you so very much, Catherine. That is very much appreciated indeed. If I am not mistaken, an old friend of ours had a stall there selling all these lovely hand-crafted trinkets and stuff and last I heard, she was into this kind of business at a shop in Bintulu.