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I have selected a beautiful dances from Thailand. It is unfortunate that I cannot understand Thai language. It did not stop me from realizing that there are some common thread between the dances in the region. I know for a fact that the Malaysian dances do have similarity to that of the Thai. Probably the long Thai or Siamese intervention on the Malay states had left its marks. The Sultan of Brunei is probably the last 2 Sultan in whole wide world. The other is the Sultan of Oman, who happen to less well known compared to Brunei. The word sultan is an Arabic word, making reference to power of force. It never was not used to be a title or making reference to the rule, until it was used by the Turk to mean the regional rulers under the caliphs. The muslims were practicing a religious state system. During prophets time, the prophet was the religious leader and the state’s leader. The same was practiced by the first 4 caliph after the death of the prophet. The selection of the caliphs were made by the council of the elders.The system change to monarchy under the 5 caliph. When the Turk muslims were ruling, the regional leaders were called sultans and they were directly under the caliph. In the Malay world, the title sultan were used for the leaders of the Malay states, and Brunei was one of them. Before the British came, Brunei was a relatively large country controlling half of Borneo and the south part of Philippine. There were about a dozen of the Malay Sultans in south east asia, a the majority of the state was small. The state of Brunei is a small country, it power was stripped off by the powerful British. He is probably the last of the sultan to have the power to rule. Two weeks ago, my family and I made the trip to visit the tip of the continent of Asia known locally as tanjung piai in Johor. The journey took four hours by car from Kuala Lumpur. We took the Seremban Highway toward Johor Bharu and came off the highway at Simpang Renggam, the follow the sign towards Pontian. Passing the Pontian town, then we moved towards Kukup and lookout for the sign for Tanjung Piai. I include some pictures of the visit…
The whole area are swamp. The walkways are made like bridges above pit soil. The vegetable appear to be almost single variety of mangrove, those there are many types of them. Mangrove trees are threatened due to illegal cutting, highly priced for its special property and used as piling material for building construction. The trees are normally straight, making is easier. It can last about 100 year in the ground. The tree is also used for charcoal production, where there are baked for more than 24 hours and slowly set to cool. Charcoal is use to replace the gas for home cooking and barbeque.  mangrove tree of tanjung piai. The swamp becomes the in-between the sea and land, protection the land agains the furious waves. A good locations for incubation of fishes. The trees are value for its timber  the roots of mangrove tree. The roots are special, it can be 6 feet high above the ground, designed to provide stability on the soft soil  Monkey of Tanjung Piai. They are used to visitors. So far no incident of attack or snapping of valuable, just be cautious  swamp crab. There are not too many animal seen during the low tide. When the tide is high, the whole area is covered by sea water. The crabs will hide in the holes if you try to be too close  Globe to show location of tanjung piai. It is more south than singapore, the southern most tip of the asia continent |
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