As Slow As Christmas! Part III: home

Paul and I caught a ride from Pontianak to Singkawang

with Pak Zainal, who

happened to be going that way New Year's weekend. After we walked around Singkawang, and met many interesting people - including the local fire department, Willy, Jimmy, and Argo joined us. We went to Willy's hometown, Pemangkat, where we would spend New Year's Eve. Pemangkat is about the size of Monroeville, Alabama, the small town where I grew up, so the young people celebrated at midnight by driving their motorbikes around the village as many times as possible, and making as much noise as possible. Willy and I left the others back at the house - they were pretty tired - and rode around for a while. Loud music was blaring from every side street, and people were calling to their neighbors and waving to everyone as firecrackers popped in every direction. Earlier in the evening, we went to a social club to which Willy's mother belongs, where karaoke

in Mandarin and Hakka was the entertainment for the evening. People were super friendly, offering beer and best wishes for the coming year in this mainly Chinese town. The next day, we went to the Buddhist and Confucian temples on Elephant Mountain, the focal point for Pemangkat from which visitors have a terrific view of the entire village, with the bay in the distance.

I wonder if most people ever get to see the small places where their friends grew up or spent vacations when they were kids? As I think about it, I guess that we can learn quite a lot about a person by seeing these places. I am not totally sure I'd make a great tour guide for Monroeville (childhood) or Tuscaloosa (most of my life), but I think that when we show our friends these kinds of things, it means that they are officially in our lives to stay :) Our trip continued with a visit to Sambas, where we saw the sultan's palace, or keraton in the local language.

Although Indonesia is a republic, the Malay royal families still occupy an important place in Kalimantan society, especially for those who belong to the Malay nation. In the Malay culture, palaces are made of wood, not stone, and painted green and gold, the symbolic colors of the Malay people. The large mirrors visible in the photographs were a gift to the sultan of Sambas from Queen Elizabeth II of England.