…my cuppa iced coffee…

“May the second day be bright and sunny. And may all the VMY Go Green contestants compete with high spirits,” prayed the praying mantis. Hehehehe…

One came avisiting and I managed to snap a photo of the green insect. It’s an insect, isn’t it? This one was a bit on the aggressive side. It tried to attack my mobile phone while I was taking its photos. One thing I remember about praying mantis… the females are likely to bit the males’ heads off — literally — during mating. Imagine if human females are like that. Now that is one scary thought.

Anyway, the tasks for the second day were:

1. To make a “sirih junjung” arrangement
2. To eat the”nangchem” fruit gathered the day before
3. To peel 6 coconuts and gather as much of the contents as possible
4. To catch eels, and then cook and eat them
5. To cycle from Sungai Sireh to Sungai Nibong

Make “sirih junjung”

“Sirih junjung” is an arrangement of betel leaves, complemented with flowers and other stuff (depending on your creativity), and is traditionally prepared during a Malay engagement or wedding ceremony. To be honest, I don’t really know the actual reason why there has to be one “sirih junjung” during such events. It’s a tradition, so I suppose that is answer enough.

We used the pineapple from the previous day as the base for the arrangement. The betel leaves, flowers, fern leaves, pins, scissors etc etc were provided by the organisers. There was also a completed “sirih junjung” as our reference, although we were allowed to use our own imagination and creativity. We were given half an hour to create one. None of us had any experience making one, of course, but ours was actually not bad, even if I say so myself. Hehehe… And compared to the others, ours was rather unique. As you can see from the photo, the top of our pineapple slanted sideways, instead of straight up like the others. Too bad you can’t see the body of our “sirih junjung”.

Eat “nangchem”

After the judging was done, we moved on to the next event: to eat the “nangchem” we collected from the Selangor fruit valley the day before. The rule was that each team had to eat as much of the “nangchem” as possible in 10 minutes. Or was it 15? I can’t remember anymore. The winner would be the team with the highest seed count.

Unbelievably, one team managed to finish the whole fruit. Team Cosmo, I think. Between the four of them, they managed to produce 94 seeds. My team managed to get 68, I think, and I contributed 20 something of those. Not bad, huh? After eating 15 or so of those little “nangchem”, I couldn’t take anymore in and almost spew them all out. They were very sweet and damn delicious. Too bad one of us couldn’t eat more than 3. Otherwise we’d get a more decent seed count.

Peel coconuts

In our next assignment, we were to peel 6 coconuts off their husks and to collect as much of their contents as possible. These will then be weighted and the team with the heaviest load would win. Peeling the husks was easy enough but somehow getting the contents off the shells was rather hard. And some teams cheated! They didn’t even take the shells off the contents, so their loads were heavier. Booo !!

Eels eels eels

The next task required us to catch eels! Yuck! (Yes, I’m quite squeamish when it comes to live things that resemble snakes ) The rules: 2 members from each team had to get a mud bath in the paddy field to catch those slippery buggers — using their hands, no less — and pass them to the other 2 who would dump them into containers, also using their hands. We were given 10 minutes to catch as many eels as possible. They will then be counted and the team with the highest catch would be the winner. Since the mud patch was not really that big, the “eeling” (as opposed to fishing ) was conducted in several rounds — 3 teams in each round.

Okay, I had never held an eel before in my life. Catching one while it was squiggling on the ground, and quite a big one, at that… it really took some courage to do that. So to make the job easier, I used dried paddy stalks to hold them rather than used my bare hands. And it worked! We managed to catch 6 of them.

I must say that the whole eeling thingy was a bit unfair. The eels were extremely feisty when the first few teams went afrolicking with them in the mud. By the time the last teams got their turn, however, those poor eels looked like they had bad cases of ecstasy overdose. They didn’t even move! Some were downright dead! Poor buggers. No wonder the winning team managed to catch 24 of them. Not fair! Not fair!

We then cycled back to the Centre for the next task: eat eel soup.

Hahahaha… Seriously, I had never eaten an eel before and the idea of actually eating one really did something to my stomach. But in the name of team spirits, and because every team member must eat a piece or the team would be penalised, I reluctantly agreed. Hehehehe…

Each team was given 1 minute to finish a bowl of tomyam eel. Crossing my fingers, hoping that it would not make me throw up, I steeled myself and ate my share. But surprise surprise, it was actually quite delicious. Tasted just like fish. I thought of asking for more but unfortunately they didn’t have extra. Damn! Hehehehe…

We were then allowed to freshen up, pack our stuff, eat lunch etc. before the next activity: to cycle from Sungai Sireh (where we were) all the way to Sungai Nibong.

Le tour de Kuala Selangor

At 2:30 pm, we had to cycle roughly 32 km with the sun right at our backs. Against the wind too, which made it doubly hard. We cycled through paddy fields, the Sekinchan town, rode on top of the bund near the beach (can’t remember its name), cycled through palm oil fields before finally reaching the gathering place at Sungai Nibong. Phew! What a ride. It took us around 2 hours and 40 minutes to get there. And by that time, I looked like an extremely well done sirloin steak. Man, it was hot! Not to mention that my butt felt like it had been injected with anaesthetics. Couldn’t feel a thing down there. Poor me.

Dorani Homestay

After some local delicacies, we took the bus to the next destination: Kampung Sungai Haji Dorani. There, we were met by our foster parents and were taken to the Sungai Dorani Agrocentre on special transports, locally called as “gerabak”. My team’s “gerabak” was a bit more elaborately decorated than the other teams’, much to their envy.

We received very warm welcome at the Centre, with “kompang”, “pencak silat” and “gamelan” all thrown in. Very nice. Felt like we were VIPs or something.

After a short briefing of the activities for the night, we went to our respective foster families’ homes to freshen up. By that time, I was almost asleep on my feet. So tired…

My foster father was apparently quite an important personage in the area. If I’m not mistaken, he was the head of the Sungai Dorani Homestay program. Really nice guy. And the family was really nice too. Even though our stay with them was very brief (one night only), it felt like we’ve already known them for a long time.

“Kuda Kepang” dance

That night we were presented with traditional Malay dances and the local version of “kuda kepang” — a dance performed by 9 dancers who sit on 2-dimensional horses made of hide, accompanied by a percussion ensemble. There are actually 2 versions of the dance: standard version — performed specifically for shows only, and mystical version — this one involved some hocus pocus stuff. Seriously.

After the standard “kuda kepang” show, we were informed that it was now our turn to perform the dance, much to our surprise. “You may combine with up to 2 teams and you have 10 minutes to practice.” The results? We got to see some wild horses.. some funny ones.. even one horny mare.. These guys just couldn’t get serious. Hahahaha…

We were warned during the briefing earlier that the mystical “kuda kepang” dance could be dangerous. It involved possession of the body by spirits, which could be violent if provoked. We were not allowed to:

1. wear red
2. smoke
3. use camera with flash
4. use camera with laser-guided focus
5. whistle or make “calling” noises.

Okay, that hit some nerves. This mystical thingy was really quite scary. Especially if you were in the middle of one.

Everybody was quiet when the dance started. The music, quite interesting earlier, sounded quite ominous this time. One by one, the dancers started to have these intense, faraway looks on their faces. One could tell right away that something odd was happening. My foster brother, who was one of the dancers, peeled the husk off a young coconut with his teeth, broke the shell and eat the content, all the while without seeming to be aware of what he was doing. A few fights almost broke out but the supervisors managed to quickly stop them from happening. After a while, they were revived one person at a time.

One of the scarier moments during the whole event was when the supervisors were suddenly affected when they tried to revive the dancers. It was like the spirit inhabiting the dancers jumped into the supervisors. And being more advanced in their knowledge, restraining them took a bit more effort. Scary, I tell you. I asked my foster brother about it and he told me that he was actually aware of what was happening but he felt like something was controlling his body.

It was really quite an experience for all of us. Exciting, out of the ordinary, and quite scary too.

And that was the end of day 2.

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Related post:

• VMY Go Green Selangor – Day 1, 29 December 2007
• VMY Go Green Selangor – Day 3, 31 December 2007