Land below the Wind
风下之乡

On February 28th 2009, my wife and I made a trip to Sabah, a place fondly known as the "Land below the Wind".

This trip was made possible at the persisted invitations of my primary school classmate, Mr. Lim Seng Kwang, whom I met last August after a lapse of 40 years since we left the Methodist Secondary School at Nibong Tebal.

Seng Kwang and his daughter Winnie came to receive us at the Kota Kinabalu Airport. He teased me in Teochew dialect, asking me if I had had the feeling of ‘Chu Tanjong’[ 出丹绒]. ( ‘Chu Tanjong’ literally means ‘Exit (to) Georgetown of Penang’’ ,that is , ‘going to Penang Island’.) This reminded me of our younger days when we were still in primary school. At that time ‘Chu Tanjong’’ was hard to come by as most of us were from a poor family background. Rarely would one have the chance to go to Penang Island. Whoever got the chance to do so, he would be very happy and excited that he would have a sleepless night before the day of travel. He would go round the town trumpeting to the ‘whole world’ that he would ‘Chu Tanjong’’ as if he was the only privileged one to be given that opportunity. Seng Kwang would go to the extent of irritating and ridiculing his cousin brother for not be able to ‘Chu Tanjong’’ until a quarrel followed by a fight ensued. In the end, he and his cousin brother were to be thrashed with a few cuts by their grandfather before he could ‘Chu Tanjong’’ the next day.

Like what Seng Kwang said, my trip to Sabah was yet another instance of ‘Chu Tanjong’ [出丹绒]. This time the 'Chu Tanjong' bears another meaning of ‘exiting from Penang’ to come to Sabah[出丹绒去沙巴]. Of course, to visit Sabah was nothing that I could be boastful of. But, because this was my inaugural trip to East Malaysia, certainly some amount of excitement and curiosity about Sabah did prevail in me.

Though it was a 4 Days 3 Nights trip, two days were meant for travelling. The remaining two days were used to visit places in and around the city of Kota Kinabalu. This time around we were unable to go for island-hopping or to visit other interior parts of Sabah. To have a complete tour of Sabah, according to my dear friend, we need another 5 or 6 days.

On this trip we could only visit a few places. Visiting Gaya Street Sunday Market, Kinabalu Park and Poring Hot Spring took us one full day, Sabah Museum and Lok Kawi Wild Life Park took another day.

During our stay at Kota Kinabalu, the visibility of the peak was not possible as the weather was cloudy with intermittent rainfalls. But on the very day after we left the city for home, the sky was bright with the peak clearly visible from all angles in Kota Kinabalu. According to Seng Kuang, it was an indication that we were destined to come again to Sabah for a second visit. Kota Kinabalu features a number of tourist attractions in and around the city itself. It has an international airport with direct flights to no less than 150 destinations. Tourists flock from all corners of the world to climb Mount Kinabalu or to scuba dive in the neighbouring islands. As such, the tourist industry in Sabah is blooming with hotels and lodging houses mushrooming by the hundreds.

In the city one can hardly see motorcycles and bicycles. To see an Indian is even harder. For the few days we stayed at Kota Kinabalu, we only saw once an Indian man selling honey in bottles at the Gaya Street Sunday Market.

The Sabah natives comprise of various ethnic groups and religious groups. The two largest ethnic groups are Kadazandusun and Bajau. Christianity(Roman Catholic) is the major religion of the natives. It is of little wonder that we saw umpteen churches and chapels located along the way from the city to the Kinabalu Park. Intermarriages among the natives and the Malays or the Chinese are not uncommon to form new hybrids that it is hard for a person to tell which ethnic group a person is just by the look of the person.

I was introduced to a few words in the Kandazandusun dialect by Seng Kwang. He said if we wanted to say “how are you” to a native Kandazandusun, we just have to mention to him in Teochew dialect “coffee not the same”, that is “kopivosian”. “Kotohuadan Kior!” is meant for “Thank you!”

People carry weights in the gymnasium. My wife and I 'carried weights' in restaurants at Kota Kinabalu. By the time we came home, the plane had to carry an extra weight of four kilograms; two kilograms from each of us. Seng Kwang was our 'training instructor' guiding us ‘to carry weight’. We were introduced with the best food he could find in Kota Kinabalu. Within three days we had tasted Sabah famous beef noodles soup, variety of seafood, dim sum, fish head curry, drunken chicken, 'Vietnamese' chicken, sour fish curry and so on. Anyway, we really thanked him and his family for the warm reception they have given us. They had made our stay in Sabah a memorable one.