Sarawak Cultural Village

This place should really be called “Sarawak Cultural Theme Park”. Silly of us to expect a village. We knew it’d be touristy, but just thought it’d be a shop that had a little performance and some examples of Sarawakian houses to look at. Maybe if we’d actually looked at their website we would’ve known what we were getting ourselves in for – all 14 acres of it.

Anyway, it was hot and sooo painfully touristy that it was almost amusing. I won’t go into detail but most of it made us cringe despite their best intentions. We stayed for the ‘cultural show’ at the end which is how we discovered most of the ‘traditional people’ we met in the houses were actually performing artists who then danced the dance of whatever culture was required.

To end a fine afternoon at the cultural village there’s nothing like a bit of audience participation. Here we were enjoying the air-conditioning and a comfortable seat and Mr ‘I-have-feathers-and-a-silly-costume’ thought I should join him on stage. What do you say to a man wearing that attire and is also able to puncture balloons with spears from a great distance? I did my thing and speared a dangerous balloon before it attacked me. Holly laughed a lot (and too probably too many photos but at least no video) and then we got to leave via the ‘cultural staircase’. More on that later in the web gallery.