Faces of the Orang Asli (Camp Infinity pt.1)

Jun 8, 2017
3 min read

Hey guys!

How have you been? I just came back from a school trip to Malaysia and thought I'll share with you about the two days at Kluang.

Day 1 in Kluang, Malaysia and personally it was a rather refreshing experience. We visited the orang asli village, the orang asli's are a tribe that first originated from Africa. After lunch, the first thing that caught my eye was a young boy dressed in a brown mesh-like vest and pants, all rinsed, dried and weaved using wood. Along with his interesting outerwear, he was also holding a long wooden stick which is known as the "sumpit". It is used to protect themselves from being attacked by animals. I thought it was amazing that a small boy like him knew how to defend himself from such danger.

Followed after, I got interested in looking at some of the women doing their cultural dance in a sheltered hut. I headed towards the hut and got a chance to speak with another one of the villager who shared with me that marriage for women in the asli village starts from the age of 16. But what was more surprising to me was that, mix marriages for their culture is allowed! I originally thought that for tribes with a long heritage, there are strict rules and customs to follow but that seems to have changed over the years.

We also went to another hut where 3 women, around the age of 40-60 taught us how to weave a "karang", also known as a crown made of nipah leaves. According to the women, the nipah leaves only lasts for about a week. However, another material that they do use are pandan leaves as it is more long-lasting. The lady showed me a sash made of pandan leaves and told me that it was kept for 8 years already! Incredible right? She also mentioned that the different colours of the pandan leaves was developed by boiling them.

To be honest, attempting to make the crown was tough. There were many directions that you needed to fold the leaves into and it got rather complicating. We asked a young girl who is about 16 how long she took to learn it and she said:"within minutes". That surprised me because I personally was struggling even after 10 minutes! If you're wondering, why a crown? This is actually one of the necessary things that a woman needs to be able to do before she can get married.

The women of the village also need to be able to cook. This is where it gets interesting. We got the opportunity to try cooking one of the things that the asli women have to be able to make.

Coconut glutinous rice in a pitcher plant. It basically tastes like ketupat back in Singapore. How we made it was first, we take an empty pitcher plant and then take a spoon of the glutinous rice with coconut milk and fill it half the size of the plant pod. This is because when steaming it for 20 minutes, it will expand and make the pod full. You may be wondering: aren't pitcher plants poisonous? Well, they are but that is why the Asli women must master the skill to get rid of the poison to make the dessert. I have to admit that the slightly sweet coconut glutinous rice tasted quite bland but maybe a little bit of gula melaka with it would've made it heavenly.