We have an evening flight tonight so we needed something to fill our day. I booked us a last minute slot to visit the Mari Mari cultural center. We packed up last night so that we didn’t have to rush for our 8:30AM pick up.

We picked up other guests and got to the village at 10:00am. Mari Mari Village is a recreation of homes of 5 different tribes that reside in Sabah, Borneo. We’ve been to a couple of these things now (one in Latvia, one in South Africa) and even though they’re a little cheesy, I always love them. It’s like a living museum. Within and around each of the houses, they had people doing demonstrations.

These had a big focus on food, cooking, handicrafts, and hunting. We saw a local beehive of stingless bees and got to taste their honey. We kept bees for a couple of years and I will always have a great fascination with them.

We saw a guy start a fire using only bamboo.

A highlight for Millie was seeing where babies slept.

We learned how to make rice wine, and then how to distill it. It is mixed with tobacco leaves which made it spicy and delicious, but probably even more toxic than a homemade distilled liquor already is.

Millie freaked out a little when we learned about headhunters. It wasn’t the idea of having your head chopped off that worried her. It was much more concerning that the people slept with skulls hanging in their house. She is terrified of skeletons.

We tasted all sorts of local foods, like crispy rice crackers, fresh tapioca, pandan drink, calamansi juice, coconut pancakes, and more.

In each of the homes we got to see how the families were divided for sleeping and safety. We saw one that was decorated for a celebration.

At the end we watched a performance. Millie always thinks these will be boring and then sits and watches intently through the whole thing. While I watched I thought about how similar (visually at least) these costumes are to those of native Americans. It’s amazing how similar people are across the globe.

We finished the visit with a buffet lunch, and then got dropped off at the airport. We arrived at 3 for a 7pm flight, and then learned that the flight had been delayed to 8. So we live at the airport now.

Millie and I did the rounds. She got gum for good behavior. We smelled every perfume in duty free. We spent 10 minutes side by side in massage chairs while she laughed hysterically and yelled “it’s punching my butt!!!” for 9 of those minutes.

Usually I write these posts while Nick is reading bedtime stories, but I think we’ll be too tired for both after we land at 11 tonight. So I’m posting now and then we’re off to find a terrible airport dinner.