M & M: Half of Malaysia + Manila

March 2 & 4, 2018*

*When there is a gap, that means I was at sea getting from Point A to Point B

Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

So, as I learned four+ months ago, Malaysia comes in two parts: Malaysian Borneo is on Borneo, the third largest island in the world. The other half, Peninsular Malaysia, lies across the South China Sea and shares land and/or maritime borders with Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. It took me 3-1/2 weeks to get to the other half!

Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sabah, is nicknamed KK to differentiate it from Kuala Lumpur, the national capital of the country, which is known as KL.

Malaysia is 61% Muslim. Have you ever seen a photo of a Muslim woman praying? Me neither. Since each Muslim male must pray five times a day, there are mosques everywhere — including pop-up mosques along highways. (The one above is definitely not a pop-up.) Muslim women are allowed to pray at home, so they don’t take time away from homemaking. Remember I told you that one male Muslim guide in another country, when asked what the men do while the women are home working said, ‘They sit around and discuss stuff.’ To be fair, we did have at least two working Muslim women tour guides, in Oman and Egypt. Now that I think of it, they didn’t stop work to pray at noon, one of the proscribed prayer times.

We were headed for the Mari Mari Cultural Village, a reconstruction in the forest of numerous indigenous tribes’ homes, foods, hunting (for game and heads), entertainment and cultures. Numbers 2-6 on the list above give you the tribes’ names. The reproduction buildings were built and are staffed by descendants of the tribes they represent.

First time I posted this photo I cropped out the objects in the lower right so you could focus on the barista’s beautiful face and costume. We were offered local coffee (in disposable plastic cups) plus the opportunity to blow our noses and sanitize our hands. The packet on the left might be bug repellent, but I had brought my own. I’d brought bug repellent bracelets in assorted colors. And bug repellent wipes. And bug repellent in a stick. I had brought enough bug repellent for every passenger on the Sun. I did use some of my own that day since we were in the jungle (though they refer to it as a forest). But I only felt the need to repel bugs two or three other times the whole trip. Didn’t use my malaria medicine either. I almost wish I had, since it cost a fortune. I suppose I’ll take it with me next time. You never know...

We were served many different local foods. This young woman had made us fried pastries.

This is a sort of crêpe.

Young men were waiting for us to climb down onto their Lansaran (a trampoline-like floor made from reeds), form a circle, and begin to bounce. I began to hop. Not a wise move.

Headhunter tribe dance included blow-gun attacks. Simulated, of course.

Manila, ‘the Pearl of the Orient’

From tribal huts in the forest to this traffic-jammed metropolis...

The entrance to the Casa Manila, an elegant reconstructed Spanish colonial home of a member of the ‘elite’ class. In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan ‘discovered’ the Philippines and claimed them for Spain. At the end of the Spanish-American war, in 1898, they gained independence from Spain — when the U.S. paid $20 million and claimed control. That lasted until 1946, when the U.S. ‘relinquished sovereignty.’

There has been a church or cathedral on this site since 1571, when the archbishop of Mexico sent a priest to found a church here. The present Manila Cathedral, the eighth, dates from 1958: of the seven preceding structures, four were destroyed over the centuries by earthquakes and the seventh by Allied bombing in 1945.

Founded 450 years ago by Augustinian priests, the nearby San Agustin church (above) survived earthquakes and WWII, but the first two structures built on the site in the 16th century were destroyed by fires. Concluding that bamboo and wood were not ideal building materials, the next builders used stone. It has suffered some earthquake damage and lost one of it towers, but is still standing.