தைப்பூசம் - Thaipusam

As Wikipedia indicates, the Thaipusam is a Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community on the full moon in the Tamil month of Thai (Jan/Feb). Pusam refers to a star that is at its highest point during the festival. The festival commemorates the birthday of Lord Murugan (also Subramaniam), the youngest son of Shiva and Parvati.

But Thaipusam is much more than "just another traditional festival"! Thaipusam is the most intense religious ceremony I ever attended! Thaipusam begins few days before the full moon. Participants gather in an Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur and process to the Batu Caves, 20 km up North from KL, smashing coconuts all over the place as an offering to Gods on their way. One curious thing is that Thaipusam doesn't exist in India, Kuala Lumpur is really the main place to see this ceremony. It also takes places in Singapore, but to a lesser extend.

Once in Batu Caves, the most sacred place for Hinduism in Kuala Lumpur, the devotees prepare for the celebration by cleansing themselves through prayer and fasting for several days. Meanwhile, complex ceremonies take place to prepare the Kawadis. Basically Kawadis are portable altar up to two meters tall, decorated with peacock feathers and, wait, there is more, attached to the devotee through 108 vels pierced into the skin on the chest and back! Some of the most fervent devotees attach offerings to their back with hooks stuck underneath their skin. Fire walking and flagellation can be practiced as well.

This mortification of the flesh sometime gets a bit too extreme and Thaipusam is often criticized as an incentive to masochism. The look in the devotees eyes is really scary and I could see most of them collapsing after climbing the 200 stairs leading inside the cave, to the temple where they can deliver their offerings. It is hard to believe that there is no drug involved in such behavior, but an Hindu colleague of mine, whose family is very religious and involved in the ceremony, swore me that the devotees reach such level of transe only with food and sleep deprivation and intense prayers all day long during several days. They are supposed to reach such level of faith that they don't feel pain and that their wounds don't bleed when the skin gets pierced. I'm really confused, I don't know what to believe. But I don't underestimate the power of human mind when it comes to spirituality and religious devotion...

Anyway, it was an incredible night: the procession starts at midnight, and one million people are gathered in a huge crowd, so thick that for few hours I litterally didn't see my feet, I was carried by the crowd.

Uncut, Untitled, Paper House

For those interested in understanding the Malaysian society structure, the influence of religious moral and the relationship among races, don't miss "Uncut, Untitled, Paper House". It will be performed for the next five days in the KL Performing Art Center.

Those three new plays won't turn into an endless boring analysis that will put you asleep: written and directed by up-and-coming talents, this triple bill illustrates serious topics like censorship or parents authority with examples from Malaysian everyday's life.

I was really stunned to see Islam being criticized so openly, and happy not to see the religious police burst into the theater! I see it as a great step forward for Malaysia! Is it somehow related to the latest elections where the BN, coalition holding the power since independence 50 years ago, scored its worse score ever???



Here is the program.

UNCUT

Written & directed by Teng Ky-Gan

Featuring Fish & Aishah Sinclair

This play explores the theme of censorship in Malaysia and the influence of fanatical moral policing over works of art. As he struggles to reconcile his professional and moral obligations, with his basic human instincts, Zakaria the director of the Censorship Bureau finds himself spiraling out of control as he slowly learns that human wants often triumph over didactic logic.

...

Repression, Malaysian style!

Check out Malaysian government's answer to people peacefully demonstrating for more transparency in the "elections".

This happened last Saturday, 500 meters away from the place I live.

Malaysia tak boleh...

Balik Kampung by bike

Like for all the Muslim countries, the celebration of the end of the fasting month brings up a lot of festivities in the country. In Malaysia, the Eid is called Hary Raya. For the Muslim Malaysians, Hari Raya is the time to reconcile and renew relationship with others, mainly with the family. It lasts usually a week, during which the Malays are supposed to gather with the family in their hometown and ingest as much food as their belly can contain! There is a dedicated Malay song for it, broadcast on all the radio, TV, supermarkets, cabs, food stalls, etc... This is called Balik Kampung and literally means going back to one's hometown (most likely in the remote countryside) and celebrate Hari Raya with friends and family.

Jerome and I have been totally brainwashed by the song, so we took the whole week off for Hari Raya, and decided to go on a tour in Pahang state (the most rural state of Malaysia) and go visit the Kampungs during the celebrations... Since there is almost no public transportation in this area, and to be more flexible, we rode our motorbikes. The good thing with Pahang is that it's the biggest state of Malaysia and it spreads from one coast to another. Therefore Pahang is a concentrate of the whole Malaysia.



Our trip started on the West coast along the strait of Melacca. We visited little industrialized towns with a strong Chinese influence like Muar. Those towns were created during the Spice Trade period and are now hosting most of the Malaysian industry. The West coast is from far the most developed part of Malaysia, but Jerome and I were looking for more adventurous, kampung-style attitude, so we quickly left the West coast and crossed the country from West to East, across the central mountains.

As soon as we passed the North-South highway (main trunk road in Malaysia) we instantaneously felt we reached an very different environment! No more highways, malls and tall buildings. The road became a lot more bumpy and we crossed only small dusty villages. Finally we felt we reached the middle of nowhere! The fun can take place!





On the way we stopped at Endau-Rompin park for a jungle trek. To reach the trek's starting point one must follow a dirt path for about 60 km through palm tree plantations. It seemed fun at first until the monsoon rain started to pour... Dust became mud and it became really hard to control the bikes... My bike was so mishandled that the steel fly case support got literally ripped off by the shocks. Then the trek was nice and very wild, but we felt safe because our young guide was really good. He is an Orang Asli (first inhabitants in Malaysia, they now live in tribal villages in the jungle).




At this point of the trip we were seriously exhausted and needed some rest. We spend the next two days on Tioman Island. We went straight to the Eastern side of the Island, the most quiet and wild one. We spend the next two days chilling out, diving and rock climbing. We hung out with a old Malaysian who once lived with a Dutch lady who ended up leaving Malaysia. But in the mean time they created a gorgeous half-blood Eurasian girl who took a one year sabbatical on Tioman... Yeah, this is life!

One interesting anecdote about the rock climbing thing: to pull the rope on top, we needed a local guide to show us the way. But since it was Hari Raya week, the guy was busy with the family gathering. However after few minutes he came back to us and said it was OK. So he came, along with 2 of his friends to help him setting up the climbing spot. Jerome and I felt pretty bad about it: the guy left the family gathering because of us, and for not so much money... So once everyone was more relaxed after the first climb, I told him again that we were sorry to bother them during Raya, and that since the rope was pulled up, they could leave us and come back later on to pick up the gear. But they didn't want to: he confessed to me that he was really happy to have an excuse to be released from the family thing for a while. He was bored with being a good boy and all, and he brought his best friends along at the climbing spot for them to get wasted on beers while Jerome and I were climbing! Owned!!!... Sometime I really think religions are all about hypocrisy...

After Tioman we were back on track, aiming North along the long stripe of wild, deserted sandy beach stretching for hundreds of kilometers all the way up to Thailand. That very part of the trip was actually the main reason for us to get on this trip. This ride was the most expected part! And I got to say that I was only disappointed... by the fact that we didn't have more time to spend on it! By chance the monsoon ceased pouring for few days, and riding along the beach at sunset, through small fishermen villages is a unique experience! The East coast is definitely very different from the rest of Malaysia, it really lags behind in terms of development and infrastructures.


We finally had to leave the East coast and crossed again the country from West to East through the mountains to reach Gua Musang and finally Brinchang in the Cameron Highlands. Some fresh air felt good. And I loved riding the crooked slope from Brinchang to Tapah. I only touched 4 times the concrete with my footrest...

Some figures to wrap-up the trip:

• 9 days in Pahang
  
• 1670 km by motorbike
• 6 different repairmen visited along the road (yes, bikes are local brand ;-)
• 1 Pepsi can used by repairman #2 to fix my loose wheel barring...
  
• 1 fall (but no major injury)
• 60 L of premium gasoline released in the atmosphere
• ~27 fried rice/noddles dishes eaten
  
• ~10 leeches stuck under my skin
• 6 white water rivers crossed by foot
• 999,999 liters of rain water poured over me
• Priceless: tons of fun and discoveries all along the way!

• 

In a nutshell: I was really hit by the duality of Malaysia: on one hand the Klang valley around Kuala Lumpur, its modern malls, huge elevated highways, Petronas Towers (tallest building in the world), industries, bustling development. On the other side, the rural Malaysia with many villages made of wooden stilts houses, dirt path, little markets along the road etc... Really two different countries.

Beside this, I discovered a new approach of traveling, and I sure will be back on a bike someday for another trip like that... The little man in my ear keeps whispering: "Sumatra, Sumatra"...

No need to push mah, just call lah!

After more than one year spent in KL I noticed that there are phone numbers painted on almost all the sign-posts, streetlights and stop lights in KL, but until yesterday I never had the curiosity to call and figure out whose number it was.

Yesterday, Marie's bike had a flat tire. I came to help and we were getting ready to push the bike over few blocks to reach a nearby garage. It was about noon, temperature was 35°C, that would have been hell! So I asked a guy passing by if he knew a bike shop closer than the one I was thinking about.

He answered: "no need to push mah, just call lah!", and he finger pointed a streetlight... He explained that repairmen write their phone number on all the streetlights within the area they cover!! One can call and get service 24/7 within 10 to 15 min ;-) But you need to speak Malay to give your location since bike repairmen usually don't speak a word of English...

Half an hour and twenty ringgits later, we were on the road again!

Way to go!...

Borneo

I'm not even gonna try to apologize for the looooong time I didn't upload this blog. What can I say? I have really gone through a rough time at work...

Anyway, I still found time during the last two month to do something I kept postponing for too long:

After traveling here and there, I can now claim that I know peninsular Malaysia pretty well. However I never stepped on East Malaysia (Borneo Island) before. In order to catch up, I flew to Sarawak state (Southern Borneo) two weeks ago to attend the Rainforest World Music Festival. This festival is especially famous because of its location: it takes place at the Sarawak Cultural Village, just in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by hills. Definitely a great location, but I wasn't that enthusiastic about the music itself. Also I was expecting some roots/trash/hippie experience with w33d smell floating all around but it was actually more a "friendly event". The day workshops were fun though! And guess what? I had a chance to listen to the unique Breton bombarde noise! So far away from Brittany, that was quite unexpected!


Bottom line: the festival was nice, but I definitely had a crush on Bako Park where Marie and I went for 3 days trek just before the festival. Bako is located on the south-west coast of Borneo Island. It's a wild park, we met only very few other trekkers. What is great about Bako is that after a really tiring walk into steep hills and moist jungle comes a great reward: the sea. Bako is surrounded by beaches and with a moderate luck you can expect to reach a desert beach just for you before sunset! It feels so good to spend a few nights in the simple wilderness. As opposed to Taman Negara, Bako discloses much more variety in the landscapes alternating rainforest with beach ecosystem or dryer meadows. I definitely hold it as the best place I've been in Asia for trekking so far. Big up for Marie who found the strength to carry my bag and find a remote river to get some water while I was literally paralyzed by recurring cramps.

We spent one day in Kuching, the main city in Sarawak before reaching back to KL: it's a very charming city. The riverbank is amazing, very calm and beautiful. Strong contrast with the average large Asian city, usually much more bustling...

Overall, a short trip (only 5 days), but as usual, very well filled!

Colmar Tropical

A few year ago the prime minister's wife traveled to France over her summer vacation and had a chance to discover the charming town of Colmar, famous for its typical Alsace architecture. She actually loved it so much that she wanted to get the same back home in Malaysia.

The prime minister's wife desires are a serious issue in Malaysia, therefore it didn't take long to built a replica of Colmar's main street in the mountain area of Bukit Tinggi, 80km North of KL.

Not that I was that homesick, but I'm always open to any day trip outside of KL outskirt, especially when the bike ride is supposed to be nice, along a small path climbing up the mountains! And it was the occasion for Vincent to take his bike out of KL for the first time.

It's really astonishing to walk along this replica's streets: it's like France, but surrounded by jungle and in a 35 C moist atmosphere... It feels fake, though. It's a bit like Eurodisney's castles!

Of course there are French restaurants, and yes, it is possible to order a choucroute! Now the real challenge is: can you decently enjoy a choucroute by 35 degrees???

Trekking Taman Melawati

It will soon be one year that I live in Malaysia and I now have some routines. One of them is a trek on a cliff (actually the technical term is ridge) called Taman Melawati.

One particularity of KL is that it is enclosed in a valley (Klang Valley) surrounded by cliffs. You can really tell when looking from tall buildings. And that's great because it offers plenty of nice opportunities of day treks. The Taman Melawati (officially called Klang Gates Ridge) is one of them. It actually is a WWF classified spot and the officials claim it is the biggest pure quartz ridge in the world... The Taman Melawati is located North East of KL, about 30 min bike ride from downtown. Well, that's when you know the way to the trail head. It's actually hidden at the end of a small dirt path leaving from the village called Melawati. It took me long time to discover it.

The journey to get there is quite an adventure by itself. We've been caught there by the tropical rain once. In Malaysia it can rain 10 cm in a 10 min time frame, and when this sudden huge amount of water is collected by the ridge and concentrated on the dirt path, it gets swamped in the blink of an eye. I had to ride my bike out before getting really flooded and I found myself riding in 30 cm (1 ft) of water, no kidding!! The whole exhaust pipe was sunk underwater so I had to make sure never to release the throttle to continuously exhaust gas and therefore prevent water from entering into the engine via the exhaust pipe, while praying not to fall into the ravine (couldn't see the ground because of dirty water flowing over)! Stressful time! So bad I didn't shoot pictures of it 'cause it was really impressive.

Anyway, most of the time the weather is nice and this is a really pleasant walk. I've been there about 5 times, bringing different friends each time. They all loved it. It is so unexpected to feel so remote from the city after just a 30 min ride. That's a good thing with KL: nature is never that far away. Kuala Lumpur is definitely a rather small capital. Once up there, the view is breathtaking. We actually stand at the edge of the KL area. And as we are on a ridge, we have a perfect 360 view. On one side we can see the whole Klang valley: KL and its suburbs; and one the other side the wild rainforest, the mountains, etc... Strong contrast! I like to be there, I feel like I'm at the edge of the civilized world...

Most of the time the path becomes pretty wild, but we can't get lost since it follows the top of the ridge. Sometimes it becomes more about climbing than walking! It can even be dangerous: a friend of mine survived a 2 meters fall with just minor scratches! Apart from this the real difficulty comes from the heat: there is no shadow at all and the quartz acts as a reflector concentrating the heat... That's why we usually (try to) get there by sunrise.

I heard about other nearby spots like this one, I'll keep you posted about it.






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(thanks to Guilhem for some of those pics)


A friend of mine tracked our itinerary with his GPS. Here is a Google Earth screening of it. You can download the whole kml trace here.

Livin' with the Orang Asli

Long time no post, again! What can I say, I've been crawling under big workload and also I'm a bit lazy... But for those who where wondering about me, good news is I survived the Taman Negara.

Taman Negara is the main national park of peninsular Malaysia. This 4,500 sq. km wild area has been established about a century ago in order to preserve the untouched rain forest of Malaysia: this forest is 130 million years old and hosts some endangered species like the Indochinese Tiger, the Sumatran Rhinoceros, the Malayan Gaur (seladang), the Asian Elephant and the mahseer fish. On top of that, Taman Negara is a perfect place to watch a crowd of colorful birds like the horn bill (my favorite one, it woke us up every morning with its unique fireman siren noise)... Really a nice place, and two thumbs up for Malaysian authorities for the effort they put in preserving the rain forest (unfortunately, that is really not the case in many other places where tourism incomes take over nature preservation).

This trek was among the most memorable treks I ever did. After a looooonnng drive (traffic jam because of Chinese New Year), we finally made it to the Taman Negara. I give credit to Minh, Sandrine, Audrey and Sam (yes, you counted 4 heads) for being cramped on the rear seat of the car during 5 hours with almost no complaining! (yes, traveling on a budget...)

The first view of the park was a bit surprising: having traveled across USA and having enjoyed most of the gorgeous American national parks, I was expecting a huge parking lot with rows of RVs, big park headquarter with plenty of information booth, camping gear stores, hotels, etc... Well actually when we arrive we saw some guest houses, some food stalls installed on floating barges and that's pretty much it!! Cool :-)

We spent the rest of the afternoon checking for a good guide and working with him on the best itinerary. We made it clear that we wanted to go as deep as possible in the rain forest, as far as possible from the so touristy "canopy walk". Well, our guide clearly understood that we wanted adventure, lack of comfort, loneliness, etc...

The next morning we left early and boarded in a very thin dugout for a 3 hours trip upstream the river. I still wonder how come we didn't end up in the river, eaten by piranhas... Congrats to the dugout driver! We had a chance to see some Orang Asli (native people of Malaysia, still leaving in the jungle).

We made it to Kuala Keniam on the far North of the park. As soon as the dugout driver dropped us, we knew that the only way out of the jungle was to walk three days along the elephants path to reach kuala Tahan. This was the non-return point! The walk was very intense. Imagine a thick jungle, a constant moist heat, a swamped path, occasional heavy rain, bugs, hungry leeches (those are the worst of all). But don't give me wrong, in spite of all that I really enjoyed it, we had fun!

And the first night by itself was worth all the pain: we slept in a cave. A really impressively big cave. The kind of cave in which you totally imagine a tribe of prehistoric people living there decades ago. It felt really weird to be in such a place, so surrealistic in the middle of a wild jungle. We made a fire, made some drawings on the walls (just kiddin' for the latter). It would be perfect place except for the bats: I didn't realize at first because the ceiling is like 50m high, but it is packed with bats. And at night time, bats shit... Just on you when you feel asleep after a long long hike day... Not only the idea of bats dropping on you is disturbing, but also when this dried feces hits you after a 50m fall, it really hurts!!!

The second night was a bit less fun: we fought with rats all night long. And by rats I mean monster rats. The kind of rats that look more like a dog. There where looking after our food, and even hanging the backpacks didn't solve the issue because those clever things found a way to climb along the rope. We basically spent the night round robining to chase them with our flash lights.

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Pangkor Island: double shot

I've been to Pangkor Island two week-ends in a row! This Island lays on the West coast, about 200 km North of KL. Unlike the paradise white-sand Islands on the East coast, Pangkor is more developed and the sea is less appealing. However Pangkor offers a nice opportunity to discover the very traditional life of the fishermen, to see women working at drying the fish brought by the men, etc...

The inner jungle offers some nice trekking opportunity, but watch the leeches! I found a bunch of them sucking my blood after a short walk in the rubber trees forest, and I really had a hard time getting them off my feet, and that's really not a nice feeling! (Thanks again Marie, you saved my life, I owe you big time!!)

The atmosphere on Pangkor is very laid back, people are more eager to have a small talk than in KL. There are not many landmarks aside from a typical Taoist temple, but it's still a perfect place close to KL to spend the week-end on the beach :-)








Thnaks Marie for those nice picts!