Harvest Festival

The biggest celebration of the year in Sabah takes place at harvest time. This is a time of feasting and celebration for the tribal people of the area. I asked our local expert where the best place is to experience some of that and he suggested Penampang, just outside KK, and the heart of the Kadazan homeland. It trurned out to be a major tourist trap, complete with bouncy house. Note the plastic beads on the “authentic” bridegroom hat I’m wearing.

I didn’t stay long. I took the bus back to downtown KK and stopped by the waterfront to get a couple large watermelons for the group. One of our earlier group excursions, before the project officially began was to do a scavenger hunt in the Philippino market just by the waterfront. The market is a large warehouse with about 100 vendors all selling the same cheap crap. As we were leaving that day I had noticed that people were setting up stalls on the waterfront and some started putting out vegetables. So that’s where I went to find our fresh fruit. While there I saw the wet market and the fish market. If you’re squeamish about sanitation, this place is not at all like the supermarkets back home. Meat is chopped on wooden blocks and drained into open buckets. There are flies on everything. Listen to the sounds of the sellers announcing their prices.