Orang Asli Village

Orang Asli literally translates as “original people” are the indigenous people of Malaysia and they are generally known to be forest dwellers living in the rain forests of Malaysia. We took a little trip down to one such village in Cameron Highland, Malaysia. The village we visited was not exactly the normadic type but they still very much live off hunting, gathering, rice growing and using what ever forest product they can get as their main form of supplies and trade.

They generally look like Malay but I was told that if you look closely you can tell that their features are a little more wide set and rugged and they tend to be on the stocky and short side. We spent a large part of our morning at the village playing with the kids. The little girl in orange told me that she was pretty skilled at making toys out of bamboos and her dad uses the bamboos to make pipes for blowdarts.

We went back to the main areas of Cameron Highlands for lunch and the parking there was quite tough! Luckily Akiee is an excellent driver! He parked on an incredibly steep slope . To give an added layer of protection that the car wouldn’t slide down, he place a rock behind his wheels. When we got back to get the car, he was wedged in by two cars (front and back) and partly obstructed by a bus that double parked! It took forever but it was amazing that he managed to squeeze the car out of that lot!

We randomly went to the first store we saw for lunch and food was pretty good. Unfortunately, the chicken tom yum soup we ordered must have had a strong seafood stock base because I had a terrible rash after the meal and it made the rest of the day pretty uncomfortable for me.

Mummy was excited about shopping for produce and gardening pots, plants and tools to bring back to Singapore. I wasn’t too interested mainly because I had a bad case of rash that took awhile to subside even after I gulped down a handful of anti-histamines. I did however, have a really good home made strawberry popsicle from one of the stores that made me feel a tiny bit better.