Across the Land

Tawau is my hometown. Not that I was born or raised in Tawau proper, the city. Nope. My Bugis father had first worked in the coconut and palm oil plantations before being employed by a logging company in Wallace Bay on the Sebatik Island. So, I grew up mostly in the planned plantation and logging communities in Sabah for the first 12 years of my life. Then, I flew off to the peninsular for my secondary studies and furthered my studies overseas before settling down in KL and Selangor with my small family. I do go back yearly to visit my mother and siblings who still live there. My father has passed away more than 15 years ago.

My Kampung, Wallace Bay. This was my last trip of the year 2012 which is taken annually and free of charge. Although my family and I have been going back religiously since more than 12 years ago, it had been only this year I seriously wanted to pay real attention to the place I called my hometown. Maybe it is this middle-aged syndrome..It has not grown much physically which I felt relieved and it still retained much of it old characteristics. I wish it had more tourist attractions that I could enjoy and blabber about but there are not many. And I'm 'scared' to advertise this small town for tourism because of just one thing. Its cleanliness.  It's dirty and smelly in most parts especially the eating places at Taman Sabindo. Even the area near KFC. This really put me off!  Although other areas might be clean, the phrase that echo in my mind is, ' Tawau ni comot dan selekeh'. Common, Majlis Perbandaran Tawau. But.... Tawau is still my hometown. Wallace Ba...

According to Wikipedia, " Kuih  (also  kueh ,  kue , or  kway ; from  Hokkien : 粿  koé ) are bite-sized snack or dessert foods found in the  Malay Archipelago  as well as the Southern China  provinces of  Fujian  and  Canton .  Kuih is a fairly broad term which may include items that would be called  cakes ,  cookies ,  dumplings ,  pudding ,  biscuit , or  pastries  in English and  are usually made from  rice  or  glutinous rice   Kuih are more often steamed than baked, and thus very different in texture, flavour and appearance from Western cakes or puff pastries. Many kuihs are sweet, but some are savory." Well. I have just used wiki to help me explain what 'kueh' means. Lazy kueh is translated from the Malay word 'kuih malas' which terms come from the state of Kelantan. It's named as such because it's very simple to make. The more common name for it is 'c...

Finally my kampung gets electricity! That means my mother's house will have a refrigerator which is greatly needed and we are able to switch on the lights whenever we want to. With the previous individual generator supplier, the lights were switched on at 6 pm till 11pm and then, the oil lamps would see us to the next dawn. Without constant supply, you cannot imagine how the kampung folks survived and dealt with food storage during the festival celebrations. My mother was really an expert on this. My children quite love this 'quiet' life of their mum's kampung and objected to their grandma's intention to move to the town. Wallace Bay is located on the Malaysian part of the Island of Sebatik. The other part belongs to Indonesia. It is said that, there are houses which are built on the boundary making half part of the houses stand on the soil of either one of the countries. The shore of Wallace Bay as the boat is approaching the jetty at far right. The ...