Recently in Borneo Cultural Festival Category

The Borneo Cultural Festival 2008 has come and gone and the closing ceremony during the weekend was a grand affair, with fireworks and performances to mark the end of the BCF 2008. I have attended the festival for most days of the week and the turnout was great, with the festival being packed full of people despite the drizzle.



This is a performance by TUKU KAME featuring Jerry Kamit during the closing ceremony. They're also slated to perform at the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) later this week in Kuching.



I haven't had dinner yet, and thus we went in search for food with Eddy, his nephew, Mary and Mr. Poh (not me). Last call for tuak and all that. ;)



We had pansoh ikan (fish cooked in bamboo)...



...and lemang (glutenous rice wrapped in pandan leaves).



I heard a haunting refrain of The Phantom of the Opera and went to film a video of the performance. You have to watch this - the vocal range of the female singer is amazing!



I also went to Simmy's booth while I was there and talked to her about photography and models in Sibu for an upcoming project I'm doing. She's a professional freelance photographer and she has a website with her photography portfolio.



The major hairstylists were out in force at the BCF 2008 with free haircutting sessions. I just got a haircut but went for it anyway just for fun.



She ended up butchering my hair a little, with one side longer than the other but people claim that it's not very noticeable anyway, having the chubby face that comes with my weight gain.



I'm not very sure what to think of that. Blessing in disguise? Or friendly hints that I need to lose some weight? Hmm... ;)



The BCF 2008 is also about having fun and the carnival games is a place where you can get fleeced into paying RM 100 for a Made in China stuffed toy that costs RM 0.20 and yet have fun while doing it. Fleeced for fun. ;)



There are a lot of different carnival games ranging from bingo...



...to ping pong ball based games.



I managed to get a turtle key chain for my efforts.



"May you have a prosperous and beautiful future". Wow, thanks turtle! =D



There is also a shooting game that I played in an inebriated state...



...doing the usual stuff people do when they're less than sober. I love the expression of the guy next to me. :)



I find that I'm a little bit annoying (even to myself) when I get past a certain state of sobriety though.



It's also not a good idea to be going for the dart games in an inebriated state. Look at how far the girl is dodging from my questionable aim. Hmm...I didn't notice that until now. She memang siam hui hui.



I managed to win RM 2 after spending RM 25...and I felt pleased. Jesus Christ...



I'm so childish sometimes, I amaze even myself...



Mary, rating higher on the sobriety scale than myself, managed to win two pillows. Hmph...



BCF 2008 is fun for all ages (and especially for the inner child in you). There are cultural shows, fashion shows, and games galore. You can drink yourself into a stupor and shoot less-than-straight photographs of the events (which is quite fun in it's own right). ;)

I'm not sure if you'll want to fly all the way here if you're not from Sarawak, but the timing is good - right before the RWMF 2008 kicks off in Kuching, so drop by if you're already here. Cheers from Sibu!

The BCF 2008 ended the Borneo Dayak Festival (BDF) with a tuak (local Iban rice wine) drinking competition, a finale highly (no pun intended) befitting the Dayak themed festival. The Dayak is a collective reference to a local ethnic group comprising of several subgroups of which the majority is Iban.



The Borneo Dayak Festival is centralized around a long row of food stalls bordering the BCF 2008 perimeter grounds. The food stalls offer a large variety of local delights including pansoh manok (bamboo cooked meat) and tuak.



There are also stalls showcasing the native art of the Dayaks with their knitted tribal designs being the most popular.



The shapely legs of the locals are also on display in certain stalls, though I suspect it's not for sale. ;)



There are also a lot of stalls catering to the thirst of the crowd with local mixed drinks like air bandong (a popular concoction of rose syrup and evaporated milk), air jagung (corn drink, tastes better than it sounds) and coconut juice.



I came across a stall selling fresh sugarcane juice. Fresh sugarcane is made by using a pressure roller machine to extract the negligible moisture content from a sugarcane plant. It takes a lot of plants to make a single cup of the juice.



The sugarcane is first peeled and then inserted into this medieval looking machine with a hose that directs the juice down into a filter.



Careful Pakcik! The rollers are not friendly to human fingers! ;)



I would be remiss if I didn't eat the pansoh manok (meat cooked in bamboo). It's a local Iban delicacy where the meat is stuffed inside hollow bamboo plants and then cooked slowly over a charcoal fire.



It is then unsealed by taking out the leaves stuffing one end and emptying the contents into a plate. There are plastic seating arrangements at the BCF 2008 for the food stalls.



Of course, a meal of pansoh manok would be incomplete without the obligatory tuak (Iban rice wine). Tuak is made from fermented rice and it's sold in 1.25 liter PET bottles that once contained 7Up or Coke for RM 10. ;)



We had the pork pansoh manok (RM 15). There are three different types of pansoh manok in this stall - pork, chicken and fish.



I was a little inebriated after drinking the 1.25 litre bottle of tuak. Tuak can contain anything from 9 - 14 % alcohol. There's really no control in the fermentation process and some tuak is "fortified" with cheap distilled liquor for more oomph...



In fact, I was more than a little inebriated from the tuak. I went and played some carnival games after that and a video was taken of me that projects me in a less than complimentary light. More on that carnival games tomorrow - I'm going again tonight. :)



Borneo Cultural Festival 2008 is a week long annual event at Swan City (Sibu).

The Borneo Cultural Festival is held annually in Sibu and showcases our ethnic diversity. BCF 2008 has three themed areas - the Chinese, the Malay/Melanau and the Iban/Dayak cultural areas. This post is focusing on the Borneo Chinese Cultural Festival (BCCF) and the opening ceremony. I will visit on other nights to do the other writeups.



The Borneo Cultural Festival (BCF) 2008 opened up with a fireworks display. It lasted for a good 15 minutes and kicked off the festivities.



The highlight of BCF is always the food stalls.



The BCCF has ethnic food stalls operated by the respective clans.



The food stalls features the respective delicacies of the ethnicity of the clan. This is the Hainan clan, which is not very big in Sibu, which is predominantly Foochow.



The Hainan, who are known for their Hainan Chicken Rice, is also offering one of their other specialties - BBQ pork.



They also have a traditional dish which I can't remember the name of consisting of a starchy blend of meat and mushrooms.



You can actually eat your way through BCF 2008 without paying a single cent from the free samples of food, but that wouldn't be a very nice thing to do. ;)



The Foochow Association was well represented at BCF 2008. This is Mary posing in front of it. She's Foochow, although I can speak the dialect better than her. :)



There are makeshift seating arrangements on the footpath and inside certain stalls for people to enjoy their food on the spot.



There is a traditional Chinese group playing erhu and other classic Chinese musical instruments as part of the program.



Thus, naturally... ;) What did you expect, you're on sixthseal.com. :)



The Teochew group also made their presence felt at the Borneo Cultural Festival.



This is their portfolio of delicacies...



...and their pork offerings, which is rather impressive.



This is a variant of meat dumplings wrapped in square leaves instead of the triangular shape.



We compared the Hakka version (previous) to the Henghua version (above).



There was a traditional Chinese opera going on at the Chinese Cultural Festival.



I shot a video of it, it's pretty good and surprisingly entertaining for a dying art.



I would be remiss if I didn't take a photo at the Heng Hua booth, being a Heng Hua and all. Heng Hua Pride! =D



We stumbled upon a stall where we could enjoy our food within a booth. It serves alcohol which is always a plus point. RM 12 for three (3) cans of beer.



I was immediately asked to drink by the promoter. The beer kept flowing for free after that thanks to one of the kind association members.



The beer was poured into an authentic Chinese pitcher and then to bowls instead of cups for The Real China Experience.



I didn't even remember how much I drank, have to ask Mary for the figures. ;)



This is the comparison between the Hakka dumplings (RM 6) and the Heng Hua dumplings (RM 6.50).



The Hakka dumplings were wrapped in brown leaves and is completely white. There's no soy sauce in the glutenous rice, which is different from what we always get. It contains pork, mushrooms and peanuts.



The Heng Hua dumplings are the ones that I'm used to eating. It's dark from soy sauce and contains more generous and juicier chunks of pork, mushrooms and peanuts. We all concluded that the Heng Hua one tastes better, and I assure you, I didn't skew the results due to being of Heng Hua ethnicity. ;)



The amber fluid floweth throughout the night...



...and floweth



...and floweth



...and it seems like the cup (or bowl) almost overfloweth.



I think it was the rowdiest booth in the whole of BCF 2008.



Thanks to the association for giving us a good time (and free beer). ;)

Hello! My name is Sam and I went to the Borneo Cultural Festival just now coz I like bright, shiny lights. I don't like crowds though but mom and dad was with me so it was OK.

This is a Heng Hua stall that my daddy told me is my heritage. I tried to eat one of the pastries and it's actually pretty good. I got a boo boo though when I fell and scraped my knee while trying to take photos.

I heard sounds coming from the stage so I left mommy and daddy and went to watch some girls almost bo cheng sa one. I don't know why but I felt funny down there after looking at the girls.

My hands were also shaking so the photos are blurry. I don't know if it's from the girls or coz Huai Bin kor kor didn't give me any pills today. There are a lot of stalls at BCF with ethnic segregation e.g. Melanau, Chinese etc.

The stage show then changed to guys so I don't want to see anymore.

I went to walk around and saw this girl so I touch her nen nen. I don't know why, but she scolded me and ignore me after that.

I was hungry after all that grabbing action and got myself rice cooked in bamboo to eat.

There was a man making popcorn and I ate that too.

I also bought four (4) SIM cards coz I'm retarded.
016 885 3221
016 864 7478
015 885 1428
014 680 7844

Seriously though, I'm think about maintaining just two (2) lines, one for business and one for friends. I had a really good number (016 869 0110) but tardiness made me lose that one. I'm using 014 680 2348 right now.

Which of the four numbers above is the easiest to remember? 7478 and 7844 means something in Chinese but I don't like the prefix. I want to just maintain one.

Suggestions anyone?