Langkawi Day 9/10

After yesterday being a bit of a wash out (if it rains it really rains here), I set out this morning with the intention of getting a taxi to the cable-car and then onto a waterfall. Unfortunately my information was incorrect, and the cable-car up the main mountain here doesn't re-open until tomorrow. So on to Plan B. And this causes a bit of expectation management. Remember I am expecting stunning views and a swim in a mountain lake fed by a waterfall.

Right opposite my hotel is a museum. Now, I imagine you are wondering how there could be a museum right opposite my hotel which I would not have visited after a whole week. Its an eco-tourist attraction - a museum devoted to rice-growing. Understand now?

Ok, I guess now you are thinking this might not be much fun. After all, rice is a sort of grass, so one is being invited to, er, watch grass grow.

How perceptive you are.

So, have I whetted your appetite for more? At least titillated your curiosity? Well, its surrounded by paddy fields of growing rice. The "Garden of Varieties" sounded promising and I would like to tell you that rice actually comes in all colours of the rainbow and manifold shapes and sizes. Alas it seems not. Just green and, well, pretty grass-like. In the middle is a whole complex of buildings for which you need a little map to show you, toilets, office, security post, car park, cafe etc. Of course there is the museum centrepiece. A very pretty little building. As soon as I entered a very nice chap at the front desk welcomed me, shoved a couple of leaflets into my paws and asked me to sign the visitor-book, helpfully telling me the date, as I was evidently the first visitor of the day, although as far as I can tell they had been open a couple of hours. As I found out soon, the exit to the museum is separate to the entrance, which makes the presence of a comments section in the visitor book a little odd. Either you have to circle back to the entrance, add your comment, and then return to the back again, or you add your comments before you have actually gone in. My guess is the latter, because I noted the previous day's entry before mine said simply "very interesting." As I was shortly to find out, this comment is far more likely to be made before than after seeing the exhibits.

Now, you are clearly agog as to what would be in a rice-growing museum. Well, let me first say it isn't very big. There are rakes, and knives, and sickles, and threshers, and bullock-yokes, and hats and baskets. And they cheat a bit by adding some fish-traps that they use to catch fish in the paddy-fields. So they are adding ancillary trades, but that's fair enough. All very carefully and extensively labelled in English and Malay. They explain the uses for such items as rakes (to rake weeds) and the materials used (wood). I tried, I really did. Unaccountably, unlike most museums, there were no guards ensuring that I did not try to run off with one of their prize exhibits, say the wooden thresher or the bullock rope, nor break their strict no photography rule.

(This did let me muse on a subject I occasionally wander off into, what is the easiest job in the world? Museum attendant here might be a candidate, given admission is free and you don't exactly have to fight off hordes of tourists (as their aren't any) or avaricious crooks trying to steal your treasures (as there aren't any - crooks or treasures). So presumably the job spec is unlock the doors and thrust visitor-book in face of anyone who comes in. But no, there did seem to be an even easier one - the museum attendant's assistant (for yes he had one) whose function presumably is just to talk to the attendant to keep him alert in case anyone should come in.)

I have, I should say, great experience of awful and dull museums. The sea-plane museum in the West of Ireland for example sounded pretty unpromising even before you found that it didn't even contain a sea-plane (although to be fair as I recall it did have a bit of wreckage of one). And on a bigger scale there was the National Museum in Windhoek, Namibia, whose awfulness was compounded by the fact that it was clearly meant to convey the complete opposite of its affect. From memory, it had three basic parts, a gallery devoted to rock-art (mostly photos of it) with the strap-line that this was the world's first art and therefore a cultural and technological achievement that was a milestone as important as the first man on the moon; a bit devoted to, how can I phrase this kindly, random domestic junk over the last century (clearly not the product of careful curatorial acquisition policy, but bits and bobs that would otherwise just have been thrown in a skip); and finally a selection of photos of Namibian freedom fighters and politicians. Imagine a family photo album, but with all the interesting photos of activities removed, just leaving the dullest relatives. No better still, a room full of passport photos blown up. So what was clearly meant to showcase this nascent nation actually showed a great head start, then absolutely no development at all for tens of thousands of years, a short spell of the poorest of all colonials eeking out an existence in what was otherwise wilderness and then a photo-gallery of utterly colourless vainglorious politicians.

But I digress (wildly). Still further wonders of the rice museum complex to explore. The restaurant is recommended so I found this. The sign outside stressed that in addition to lunch and dinner, breakfast was served all day. An attractive proposition for some, but then the place didn't open until 11am. So breakfast all day, except at breakfast time. (This is still better than the maybe apocryphal story I heard of a customer who on seeing a sign for "breakfast at any time" asked for toast and marmalade in the Renaissance.)

Ok enough. Back to the hotel for me and a sun-lounger on the beach and maybe a little people - watching as well as reading my book on German history. Just a little way down from me were a group of Russians. Of course its not so long ago that there were no Russian tourists (apart from ones in uniform assisting brother revolutionaries in being liberated from the yokes of capitalism/imperialism). Now they are a fairly prominent sector in most Asian hotels. They exhibit an interesting genetic sexual dimorphism in my experience which sets them apart from most nationalities. The men are all very large and brown-haired, while the women are all petite and blond. (Of course it is always possible that brunettes are left at home to drive the tractors). They also seem to betray a particular photographic style (which as someone who takes a lot of photos, I notice. I have already referred elsewhere in this blog to the Japanese tendency to photo themselves endlessly almost totally obscuring any evidence of wherever they actually are. Now the Russian men seem to like photographing the Russian women, and not vice versa (as presumably they wouldn't be able to get all the men in the frame). But not just a head and shoulders portrait or aside a particularly striking landscape. This was more in the nature of glamour photography, one hand teasingly holding up blond hair with head tilted back, then kneeling legs akimbo as the waves come in, then on all fours crawling in the foam as if to say, "I'm coming to get you big boy...."

(Ok, ok, my German history book isn't that exciting and my imagination wanders.) Maybe time for a dip in the pool to cool off