Trivial pursuit in Malaysia
MANILA, Philippines - Many people think sharing some good old trivia about a thing or a place is dead boring. Well, I’m one of them. Museums and Google could always teach me those things. But during our last trip to Malacca and Kuala Lumpur, the tour guide kind of got my attention. He’s got some pretty amazing stories and well, trivia, that got me thinking. And smiling, too.
The Tomb is a Womb
On the way to the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, one of the oldest Chinese temples in Malacca, we passed by Chinese cemeteries that occupied hills by the road. People say they’re intentionally located here so as to be closer to God. But what caught my attention was the cemeteries’ tombstone designs which were kind of atypical. All of them were surrounded by circular stone arcs, dotting the hills continuously from one point to the next. According to Mr. Tour Guide, the headstones were designed that way. Why? He said they represent the person returning to the womb from where their life began. That explains the half circles. Clever.
Wet and wild
At the Baba-Nyonya Heritage Museum which was a stunning ancestral home that preserves the legacy of three generations of a Straits-born Chinese Baba family, there’s this woman who pretty much got all her spiels ready. Her story-telling and peculiar speaking voice was just unforgettable. I pretty much remember her saying that the Babas were a combination of the Chinese and Malay culture, a result of marriages between early Chinese settlers and local Malay women. On the house’s second floor there was this small opening from which you could take a peek at everything happening under. The purpose of that hole? When a woman does not like to marry a certain guy and he comes to visit, she’s free to splash water all over him and shoo him away instantly. Now that’s wild and wet.
The Twins have two fathers
Hats off, we all know The Petronas Twin Towers are beyond marvelous. But what most of us probably do not know is that the twins were “conceived” by two different “fathers”! The towers were constructed by contractors from two countries: tower one by a Japanese firm and tower two by a South Korean team. Those who knew from the very beginning say that it was an “interesting rivalry” as the two raced to build the now 12-year-old mega-tall twins. So I guess it’s safe to say The Petronas isn’t Malaysian but half-Japanese and half-Korean.
