Borneo Head Hunters
Today we were up in good time. We have been trying to book a flight back to Kuala Lumpur for the past day and we keep running into issues. We even called the credit card company to see if the issue was with our card which, thankfully, it was not. We tried again this morning before breakfast and still had some issues so we finally left it and headed down for breakfast. It wasn’t as busy today but there was less selection and things were extremely slow getting replenished.
We have a tour to the Mari Mari Cultural Village today. Our guide, Albert Lai, picked us up in front of the hotel at 8:45 am. The Cultural Village is located in the countryside outside Kota Kinabalu about a half hour drive. Along the way we asked about a post office as we had some postcards we wanted to mail. We had bought stamps in Labuan but didn’t find postcards until we were in Kota Kinabalu. There was a post office nearby and we parked while Gary ran into the post office. What was supposed to be a simple errand ended up taking 15 minutes or longer as Gary found out the postage the other place sold us wasn’t sufficient. The gal was forever figuring out what stamps she had and then there was going to be an issue that the stamp might cover some of the writing!! Good grief. He finally left the cards with her after she assured him she’d get the stamps on and mail them. In the end it cost us 7.75 MYR or $2.25 CAD per card to mail them. Obviously no one mails post cards anymore!! We can only hope they arrive. In 2019 while in Penang, Linda spent ages writing up 12 cards and adding the stamps the post office sold us. We left them with the front desk and they promised to mail them – to this day not one card has ever arrived. We now suspect the postage amount may not have been correct!
After the post office fiasco, it was a short drive to the Mari Mari Cultural Village. The Village offers a glimpse into the lives of Sabah’s rich culture with its distinctive houses, costumes and traditional skills of five major ethnic groups in Sabah. It was interesting to see the homes, costumes, food and drink for the Dusun (farmers), the Rungus (traders) the Lundayeh (hunters) and the Bajau (cowboys and sea gypsies) and the famously feared warrior tribe Murut. We heard all about the various tribes, who were the farmers, the feared head hunters, who had stingless honeybees and how they lived and celebrated in their community. I think we all remember hearing about the Borneo head hunters. These are the guys, they are no longer quite so scary! But we were told, back in the head hunting days the groom had to provide a head as a dowry.
We visited each of the 5 homes. At each home they had demonstrations related to each tribe. Some it was making rice wine, distilling the rice wine, cooking a tasty dish in a bamboo stick, making cookies and pancakes from rice flour or sampling the honey. At one home, they demonstrated how they started a fire with some bamboo shavings and their bamboo “starter” sticks. It was amazing how quickly they had a fire going! Following the tour and demonstrations we went to the performance area where they put on a show highlighting their music and traditional dances. It was really interesting and entertaining. At the end we made our way through the forest up a staircase to a dining area where they had a buffet lunch for us. The weather cooperated until we were ready to leave and it started spitting rain.
Check out our video below on Youtube.
Once back to the hotel we finally managed to book our November 15th flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Keep in mind it is November 11 as we write this. With that task finally out of the way we headed out to the Maybank just down the street and across the bridge from our hotel. We had only got part way and it started spitting again! Last time we used a Maybank ATM we were able to get 3,000 MYR in one transaction. This ATM informed us it’s limit was only 1500 MYR. We decided we’d check out another bank’s ATM and see what we could find. There was a Bank of Islam a block away so we walked over there and found their ATM machines don’t support any of our card types. There was also a BSN building in between the Islam Bank and the Maybank. Linda googled BSN and found that it was also a bank. We tried there. The security guard told us you could take out a maximum of 5,000 MYR in one day but it had to be in transactions of only 1500 each and one for 500. We threw caution to the wind and immediately tried for 3,000 MYR on one transaction. The ATM surprised both us and the security guard by spitting out our cash! “Just like Las Vegas” said Gary to the astonished security guard! We managed to get back to the hotel without getting soaked. After we returned it really got down to business with lot of thunder, lightning and pouring rain.
Our recent lesson learned on financing in a foreign country. 3000 MYR cost us exactly $888.70 CAD which means $1CAD buys 3.375 MYR (Malaysian Ringgit) through BMO at an ATM. Believe it or not, with our Home Trust VISA card, $1CAD buys 3.45 MYR. On our 3000 MYR cash we received 66 MYR less than if we had used our credit card for tap purchases through Apple Pay. Approximately $19. CAD. It would be ideal to use our VISA card everywhere but some places only accept cash. The real appeal of using our VISA is that it’s the funding source for our Apple Pay and it is 100% secure. We are not sure what the limit on the Apple Pay tap is but so far we have had no problems up to 150 MYR.