Street Photography: Photography Trip in the Village of Ulu Rampaian, Kota Belud Part 1

This is Kampung Rampaian Ulu in Kota Belud, Sabah.

Why am I here?

Yup~ It's another field work of my course.

That's the great thing of being a Conservation Biology student..

We often go to different places for field work~

This time it's my Environment Interpretation course field trip~

So, what we mainly do were TOOK PICTURE!!!

I don't have any fancy DSLR or expensive camera..

I'm just using a normal Olympus digital camera..

Which is quite hard to use as the picture get shaky easily...

So, we have to have a steady hand!!!

So, I would like to introduce Kampung Rampaian Ulu to you all.

It's a village of Iranun etnic which is a minority etnic in Sabah.

P/s: sorry to say that I do not know about this ethic at all before this field trip.

The journey to Kampung Rampaian Ulu takes about 2 hours from University Malaysia Sabah.

Kampung Rampaian Ulu is a new tourism spot for tourist who are interested to explore village life of Iranun.

Tourism attractions here includes the flier flies sighting, hand craft of kain mogah, the making of "Parang",

the carving of "parang" casing, the making of "Gasing" and so on.

Kain Mogah is one of the unique weaving craft of Iranum.

This weaving of Kain Mogah involves only  hand touches by the ladies in this village.

The treads used in weaving.

It is all hand made!!!!

The carving of "parang" casing~

This is the unique carving pattern of Iranun.

It requires lots of skill and concentration in doing it.

You can see how serious and concentrate the master was when he demonstrating.

Any slight interruption or over strength applied will ruin the design.

This is the finishing product of the carving.

The master can make around 20 of this in a week...

He is so skillful that he can carve any design requested by the customer too.

ex: Dragon, samurai blade casing, etc..

Next is the making of Gasing~

Almost all Malaysian know gasing.

Gasing is a famous traditional games in village area 

but quite hard to find it in town area now..

The master that demonstrate to us that day is a gasing lover..

P/s: you can see his passionate toward gasing by the way he looks at gasing~

He was the champion of Gasing competition around that area.

He had a record of spinning his gasing for 29 minutes!!!

And he make all his Gasing by himself.

It is not easy to make a gasing as you have to find the balance apex of the gasing by slowly cutting the edge of gasing so that your gasing can spin stably. 

 Flier flies is the main attraction for tourist to come visit here.

The villagers build a long bridge to walk through the mangrove area so that tourist do not have to ride on boat for flier flies sighting..

The mangrove swamp is so beautiful and peaceful either during day or night~

Different kind of sensation during day and night.

During the day, you can enjoy the scenery along the mangrove swamp

while during night you can switch off your torch light and walk following the moon light~

Flier flies might be just around you when you walk through the bridge~

It was such a Breathtaking scenery~

This is a Lagoon near the village.

To reach here, you need to have a 'short' walk,

P/s: off course it will take shorter time if u travel by car.

But by walking you can see so many interesting scene along the way to the Lagoon~

P/s: the scene will be reveal for in next post~

We start to get crazy and returning to our childhood at here!!

We have so much fun of throwing stone into the water~

I get to learn the technique of cutting the river using stone from the kids around here~

So that's all for the introduction of Kampung Rampaian Ulu~

So do stay tune for my Village Life in Kota Belud part 2~

It will be about the people and interesting thing i met there~