Baya Rejang Day 9 (more or less)

I'm typing this the night before I post it - I only have 20 minutes of Internet time every day, in the morning just after breakfast. So I prepare my outgoing mails and blog post the night before for quick work once I get connected. And tonight I'm too tired to think, so I'll just post some pictures.Giant tampon on a stick.Yes, another phallic symbol. No, it's not crooked - I think it's my camera angle.Setting up a "river" scene (it's a lake).A Bidayuh bridge (they love bamboo).

Now, when we first arrived here at Permai Rainforest Resort, I went crazy after dumping our bags. Had to explore this fantastic place. I mean, where can you get a resort in a domesticated rainforest right between dense rainforest and a beautiful beach?The first beach, which is shared with Damai Puri Resort. There's another beach at the other end of Permai Rainforest Resort, but I didn't get any good shots of it.The view of the resort (kinda) from the beach. The green hut on the left is the Rainforest Cafe, the only eatery in the resort. The rest of the accommodation's off to the left.A straight-up view from the Rainforest Cafe.

As part of my going crazy, I scrambled over all the rocks to get from the second beach to the first and tried to get sunset shots. It was pretty cloudy, but that made for some really beautiful stuff. Enjoy.

More Sarawak Cultural Village

Our second and last day at Sarawak Cultural Village. When I heard that we weren't coming back again the next day (as originally scheduled), I quickly decided to take a quick tour, but found out that most things were already shut (and it was only 5pm). I also just discovered that the Rainforest Music Festival is held there, and so many people stay at "Home-stays" in the longhouses themselves.Part of the show involves an Iban wedding celebration, which is really a lot of dancing.The "ulu" part of the name actually means "hulu", which means one end of a river (I think it's the upriver end).This longhouse really looks like a fort. It's stood quite high up on stilts.Speaks for itself. In case you don't get that they're Muslim, note the Jawi.These guys are crazy about bamboo.You can just about see it past the trees, and that's where we did most of our shots.
These guys are the nomads of the forest here, apparently, and are the best blowpipe makers.And in case it's not obvious enough, note the red bunting around the door and the Chinese characters.My piddly little phone's camera isn't so bad after all, eh? I'm quite impressed and quite happy.

Onto Sarawak Cultural Village

When I first saw the sign to the place, it was Kampung Budaya Sarawak, which sounded funny to me. Cultural Kampung? Village of Culture? Anyway it's a lovely place, with the whole area dedication to the beautiful conglomeration of tribes and races that is Sarawak - Bidayuh, Iban, a bunch I don't remember right now, Malay and Chinese. Yes, as Raja Petra mentioned on his Malaysia Today blog (I think it was there), Malay is just a "tribe" among the many that populated this area. Well, I think "mini-nation" is more accurate - I think the comparison is very similar to that of Ancient Greece, with their city-states like Athens, Sparta and Troy as well as their island-nations like Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete. Compares well to Malacca, Jawa and Bali, doesn't it?

I'll talk more about it when I've done more research - I know too little about the history of this region (partly because there hasn't been enough written on it) and I'll need to do greater research on those Ancient Greek times. But that thought was inspired by a wonderful book I just read by David Gemmell - Lord of the Silver Bow, the first book of his Troy trilogy. Which bloody rocks, and I'll discuss more at a later time. Let's just say that I didn't expect to enjoy it this much, and ended up finishing it in about 4 days. Really wishing I brought the 2nd book with me now, but nevermind - I'll devour it when I get back.So, onto more teaser pics. Firstly, many apologies to Hani if you ever read this: you really should've dropped everything and come. But then we'll see how it all turns out, yeah? We did several scenes around and in an Iban longhouse today, in the Sarawak Cultural Village.(No that's not the Iban longhouse in the background.) It was bright and probably the hottest day in our time here thus far.Yes, it's long. It's the same length again behind the shot. That's our Director and DoP there discussing the shots.That's our rest area for shots outside the longhouse, by the lake we used as our "river".This was one of our location shoots before the Village ones. It's actually situated in our Resort.
This was another.Together with this.


And guess what closed our day on Saturday?

This.

The shoot from heaven

As mentioned in a previous blog post, film always scared me. I've still much yet to learn about working with the camera, and I took on Baya Rejang with quite some hesitation. At the end of the day, it would be great experience - but it could be at the end of a very very long day. Thankfully, everything wonderful that could happen did happen.I got to visit Sarawak for the first time. Kuching's lovely, I have to come back again and chill.We got to shoot with Gunung Santubong. We got to shoot on Sungai Santubong and Sungai Rejang. In a little sampan, in a little passenger boat, in a police boat.One of our locations was by the Sarawak Boat Club, which served as our rest place in between shots.When we moved on to our next accommodation, I found out that it was the Permai Rainforest Resort. The moon came out to greet us, too.This is our cabin in the resort, which houses 6 but I'm sharing with only my fellow actor, the DoP and the Director.


And we've just about started. More shots to follow, and man, I am having a blast. We've shooting at Sarawak Cultural Village next!

Sarawak so far

Quick update: it's our 4th day here and we're checking out of Harbour View Hotel in Kuching. It's been a blast so far; today we're going on to stay at Damai (the housekeeping here clarified that it's Damai Putra or something like that, which is different to Pantai Damai) which is near the Sarawak Cultural Village. But before we travel there, we're going into the jungle to do shoot the several scenes we have there.

We spent the whole of yesterday at a friend of the production's house, which is at Matang. From the outside it looks like any other wooden house on stilts in the jungle, but inside it is well-kept and very very English. It's quite charming, really - and we had a great time there. Tiring but great. For his "front garden" he has a farm, guarded by a Rottweiler - for his "back garden" he has a river running through it and 2 small lakes. Wonderful. There was a narrow wooden pier that jutted to the middle of the lake (I did say small) and it was a surreal experience walking up to the end. Had a nice meditation session though.

We have some real characters on board and many of them know what they're doing, which is the best part. Seeing the technical team in action is inspiring, and some of the cast are awesome. A good budget's so useful. This is, by far, my best film / TV experience. Thank you, Rob.

Moving rapidly on

How I Learned To Drive took up much more time and focus than I realised. Of course, I say that after every production so I'm just a dumbass who's not learning, right?

Anyway HILTD was an awesome run with not enough seats sold. It was a blast, had a lot of fun and learned a lot of things but most importantly got reminded of the sheer importance of marketing and publicity. We'll ace that next show.

I'm now in Kuching (first time, wahey!) quickly popping this note in to mark the passage of time (oh how it flies). I may not have the energy later on this trip as I'm shooting for Baya Rejang - a Malay tele-movie that's coming out on Astro Ria in August. It's been quite interesting so far: I've realised that my Malay is quite passable even if my vocab is a little (severely) lacking, that the crew are quite a solid, inspiring bunch (hats off to the director, DoP, sound & light team and production team), Monash University in Sunway's quite the lovely and Kuching's very the charming. Cast is generally good so far.

Tried some langkau. Strong stuff, not bad. Will be here for 10 days so I expect to try some tuak too. Thankful that I've free WiFi in my room. Harbour View Hotel's not half bad. Going into the Sarawak jungle tomorrow, fun!