Kudat has a lot of nice and clean beaches. At our so-called famous beaches around KK, floating rubbish such as water bottle and plastic bag are so common. Tanggui Beach is not particular beautiful but I hardly see any garbage washed to the shore.
Personally I am quite disappointed to see what is happening to our sea and islands near developed region. Years of traveling in Sabah shows me how dirty Sabah is. If we don’t work harder on the cleanliness now, the tourists will go somewhere else. We won’t see the effects now, until only few tourists are willing to come to our beaches, after some years.
Getting to Tanggui Beach takes a 20-min walk. I walked through a muddy trail and a long suspension bridge. The sea waves were quite rough that day.
The weather was really bad. It was a rainy and windy day. Most of the time, I held umbrella with one hand, another hand with camera to take photo.
Despite the cold weather, I still found some village boys swimming. When they saw me taking their photos, they were so excited, waving hands at me and even did dolphin jump. I already felt so cold on the dry land. Really can’t understand why they are so enjoyable in the cold water.
This beach gets some interesting spots for outdoor shooting. Too bad I didn’t try it due to the rainy day. I will introduce you the Terongkongan Beach in next blog. That one is really worth a visit and I spent a long time on it (a lot of photos, of course).
Continued from my blog about Misompuri Homestay in Lajong Village of Kudat town…
Anyone know what are the things in the photo below? I saw them hang in the house of this village..
The guides took me to take a look at the “modern” longhouse in Lajong Village. This longhouse was built during the time Sabah state ruled by Berjaya Party. They call it modern longhouse because the structure is quite different from the traditional longhouse of Rungus people, though both designs look alike. This is just one of the many longhouses like this in Kudat.
First, this longhouse is not totally built from wood. They use zinc material to make the roof. The locals say many trees and forest are cleared for development. Without the tree as wind shield to block the strong wind and storm, their houses really need stronger structure.
And it is taller and longer. I guess it is about 100 Metres from one end to another. The building has 2 levels. The guide showed me around. I saw some residents were socializing outside. At first I was a bit hesitate to take their photos, and I thought it was rude to take photos in private area. The people there would think tourists like me view them like an animal in the zoo cage. The guide told me it was perfectly alright and she was right. They are very friendly and don’t mind to pose for a shoot.
There are over 30 families living in this longhouse. They even have a grocery store in here.
Just drop by to say Hi and take a photo, then exit without buying anything…
Another thing that amazes me is all the “apartment” does not close the door. When I pass by, basically I can see them watching TV, sleeping, eating, and doing other private businesses inside. Personally I am not that open. I will slap the door at their nose, if I find someone are curious about my living room. Everyone looks so free and relax, even the dogs.
One of the apartments is preparing the rooms for homestay (see photos below). They even have refrigerator and TV.
There are still two more blog about the Misompuri homestay. Sorry for being slow on update. I have been sick for 2 weeks. Need rest badly as my brain does not function very well… Later.
Kampung Minyak is the main reason I visited Kudat last month. I had seen hot water (hot spring) and mud (mud volcano) coming out from the ground, but I haven’t seen petroleum does that. The oil seepages are inside a tidal mangrove swamp nearby the Kampung Minyak (Oil Village). It is quite accessible, though you have to drive through a few KM of gravel and muddy road and take a 5 minute walk in a jungle trail to reach there.
Oil seepages of Kampung Minyak
The oil seepages of Kampung Minyak Village are inside a mangrove
From the photo above, you can see that there are 3 oil seepages. They are basically the same thing but look a bit difference to one another. The water at the left is darker. The one in middle is filled with murky water, probably due to the soil washed in by the rain. The one at the right is the biggest one and supposed to be the most active one. Because of vast amount of oil, the tar on top becomes harden, forming a layer of hard bitumen that seals the opening.
The smell of gasoline is quite strong here. At first impression, these wells look like the smelly ponds formed after a heavy rain around an greasy car junkyard. You can see oil films and lot of oil droplets on the water. And there are bubbles constantly float to the surface, suggest the presence of earth activity. I presume each bubble carries thin amount of oil and gas.
The surrounding soil of the seepages is greasy because of the oil deposit. They told me that in early 1900, strange black liquid seeping out from the earth astounded local community and they turned the site into a sacred ground.
Colorful reflection of oil slick
According to the research by Joanes Muda: “village elders used to offer animal sacrifices for various reasons such as for healing from illness and for protection from diseases and other calamities. One-month old newborns were also brought to the area for anointing on the forehead with the black liquid. During those days, anyone visiting the site had to sacrifice a chicken and consumed it there.” (Source:Oil seepages at Kampung Minyak, Bulletin of the Geological Society of Malaysia 56 (2010) 49 – 52)
During World War II, the Japanese also tried to mine the oil here. Then they stopped suddenly because many of them died from a mysterious sickness. Another story says that the Japanese cooked with the oil, then the rice turned into sand in the following day.
Hopefully someone can do a detail documentation about its history, as I think the stories can be far more interesting than the little oil seepages.
The oil seepages still active and release gas and oil
There was oil company had surveyed this place. May be the reserve of the fossil fuel was not big enough for them to mine it.
Greasy soil next to oil seepage
According to them, this biggest oil seepage (see below) is very deep. Nobody knows how deep it is. They used measuring stick up to 100 feet but still didn’t touch the bottom. The tar is solid to stand on, even though you can feel that it is soft underneath.
The oil seepages of Kampung Minyak Village are inside a mangrove
They also build a shelter and 50-feet boardwalk at the site. If you go there, do take a look at the beautiful mangrove trees there. In fact, there was a team of Italy TV crew went there to document the place.
What we eat and how we live in city are not the lifestyle of most Sabahans, as there are more Sabahans in country side than those in city and towns. It happened that a few places that I planned to visit were near to a village that had homestay programme, so I decided to join the Misompuru homestay in Kudat region.
The arrangement is easy, just called the coordinator (with the no. listed in their web site) and tell them your arrival time then everyting is set. Some are even reachable via e-mail, and I am currently sorting out detail with another homestay in Long Pasia. The homestay that I joined was 20 KM before Kudat, the mini-bus driver dropped me at Jalan Torongkongan, saying that I only needed to follow the path, take a “short” walk to get there. Well, it ended up was a 1KM distance. Anyway, I found the place.
There are 3 villages (i.e. Kg Lajong, Kg Minyak, Kg Rampai Selatan), with a total of 58 families, in Kudat take part in Misompuru homestay. Usually the coordinator will pick our host on rotating basis, so every provider gets a fair share. A family in Kg Lajong was selected as my host. Misompuru homestay may be not well-known to most locals, but they were already featured by some foreigner media from Asia and Europe. They also have tourists from Australia, New Zealand, UK, Japan, Korea…
After being introduced to my host, Mr Sarumpit and Ms Rusiaw (very friendly Rungus people), we took a walk around the village (Kg Lajong) as a warm up. We saw the “Horn Banana” (Pisang Tanduk) at the roadside. It was so big that it would make girls horny. BTW, my “little brother” is as big as a banana (not Pisang Emas lah).
The house is a typical village wooden house. No air-con but got Astro satellite TV. Besides a room, they also prepared my meal 3 times a day, with food they planted or bought locally. I enjoyed the crabs they caught in mangrove forest. I also like their Kudat maize, though smaller but taste sweeter and softer.
Our first visit is a honey bee farm nearby. The “Beeman” showed us how he harvested the honey. But too bad that time was rainy session, the bees can’t work so they consume the honey. Otherwise I could try the honey. From what they said, the honey is very concentrated and damn sweet, unlike the watery honey we got from the supermarket.
The bees also become more protective and aggressive during bad weather. They said honey is the best cure for bee sting. From what I read from a book about a bee farm, Ajinomoto is the best cure. Which one is the best? Frankly I am not interested in finding out. You can try it yourself.
Look at the photo above. The top portion of the nest should be in gold color, if filled with honey. As you can see, it is quite empty. I forgot the name of the “Beeman” who dressed like Power Ranger. He is an ex-army. He started the honey bee farm coz of hobby and had over 10 years of experience.
After the bee farm, we visited a few other interesting places nearby (we walked nearly 10 KM in a day!), which I will blog about later. Before I went to bed, they decided to dress me in Rungus costume for fun. Cool… since I have been dreaming I am a Rungus guy who shouts, jumps and dances joyfully in Megigol Sumandai, with a long queue of pretty girls follow behind me. Probably I should wear this in city to attract some girls. But it takes a long time to dress up like this. I am gonna be late for work everytime if I have to dress like this every morning.
Overall, it was a wonderful experience though the programme was only 1 day. Actually I didn’t expect that much and I only wanted a tour guide and a place to overnight at first. But they really treated me like a friend and served me like a VIP. I had seen many tour businesses who open their lion mouth to chew tourist’s wallet, trying to get maximum profit with minimum effort, as if they own the mountain and island. You know whom I am talking about. But the homestay people try to get minimum profit with maximum effort. That really touches me.
In Sabah, more and more people are moving from villages to city because they want a better life. On the other hand, more and more city people are envy the rural life in villages, where stress and traffic jam are not common. In fact, I wish to have a house next to a river and able to enjoy fishing anytime. Hmm… now I sound like a retired oldman.
There are a few kampung (villages) along the Kinabatangan River. Most of them are Orang Sungai (River People) who works as a fisherman. They also use the water from the river for daily life. During our trip to Uncle Tan’s Wildlife Camp, we also visit one of the houses in Bilit Village. All houses near the river are stilt houses with the purpose of (1) preventing flood, and (2) avoid wild animals such as snake get into their houses. Seem like every family also uses boat as their main transport.
Our host was an old couple who participated in the homestay programme. The foreigner tourists, who would like to experience the lifestyle and culture of local people, you can live with them, eat the local food, learn the culture and hang around with them. There are many homestay programme all over Sabah. Due to limited fund and support, they can’t afford to promote their service, which can help them to earn some side income.
Our host is very kind and friendly, and he even shared some of his stories about World War II, and how the locals live with nature. Later they cooked the lunch for us. The materials are totally natural, for example, rain water, “walking” chicken that eat natural food, pesticide-free vegetables from their garden. Since it is so natural, you got to eat it by hand. For tourists who are not used to this method, they will get the food all over their hand, face and floor, haha…
After lunch, the local children also performed a few traditional dances for the guests. Without a stage, many local dialect and cultural heritage would be vanishing. Therefore, another reason we promote homestay programme is to give them a stage to preserve the culture of Sabah.
All the guests are also welcome to join their dance. At fast it was a traditional dance, but don’t why how, everyone starts to do disco and chicky dance. So funny… everyone was having fun anyway.
