Musical Instrument in Sabah

The following traditional musical instruments of the various Sabahan ethnic groups are divided according to the way in which they work:

IDIOPHONES: Instruments made with materials which produce sounds when scraped, rubbed, hit and without further intervention of other materials.

Example :

1. Gong

2. Kulintangan (smaller than gong)

MEMBRANOPHONES: Instruments where a membrane is stretched across a hallow body (the ‘resonator’) and then made to vibrate by rubbing/hitting.

Example : 1. Drum
CHORDOPHONES: Consist of Chord and Resonator. Vibrations are produced when the chord is scraped by a bow or plucked with fingers and amplified by a resonator (unsually a hollow compartment).

Example: 1. Tongkungan

2.Sundatang

AEROPHONES: Instruments with a column of air within a cylinder or cone. The sound is produced when this air is vibrate by the player’s lips or nose or a single/double reed or by air passing across the top of the tube. Sabah’s aerophones are mainly played solo and for personal pleasure.

Example :
1. Sompoton
2. Bungkau


3.Turali Bamboo Nose Flute
4. Suling


Source:
http://www.sabahtravelguide.com/culture/default.ASP?page=musical_instruments

Kota Kinabalu Waterfront

Located at in the heart of Kota Kinabalu, The Kota Kinabalu Waterfront provide a nice scenery of South China Sea. Pubs, restaurants, karaoke bars and a dance club with lively music set the mood for a memorable evening in the city.
Taste the delicious seafood at Sabah's Best Live Seafood Restaurant...A gift to all seafood lovers, The Port View Seafood Village..They have fresh supply of seafood as fish, prawn and lobster.

A good place to remember..a view at Waterfront.

p/s Nice place for couples..in the evening..coz I think it will be hot in the afternoon for sure..lolx

The Corpse Flower

Rafflesia is a genus of flowering plants that is made up of of 16 known species. It was discovered in the Indonesian rain forest by an Indonesian guide working for Dr. Joseph Arnold in 1818, and named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition.

In Sabah, the flower and host vine Tetrastigma are protected under the state's Wildlife Conservation Enactment of 1997. Rafflesia species are protected in a number of reserves within their range such as Kinabalu Park in Sabah on the island of Borneo. R. keithii, R. pricei and R. tengku-adlinii are found only in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo). Most flowers in the genus give off and smell of rotting flesh, hence its local name of “corpse flower.”

Take over a year to flower, the rarest and largest flowers can be seen at Poring (Kinabalu National Park) and the Rafflesia Centre (Crocker Range National Park). The plant has no stems, leaves or true roots. The only part of the plant that can be seen outside the host vine is the five-petaled flower. The flowers, which sit directly on the forest floor is an endoparasite of vines in the genus Tetrastigma (Vitaceae), spreading its root-like haustoria inside the tissue of the vine. This smell attracts flies, which pollinate the plant. The center of the flowers contain numerous spikes whose function are unknown, and it also holds several gallons of nectar. The fruit produced is round and about 15 cm in diameter, with thousands of tiny seeds.

Usage and potential
1. Food:
In Thailand, young buds of the flower are eaten as a delicacy.

2. Medicine:
In Peninsular Malaysia, Rafflesia buds are used by women to stop internal bleeding and shrink the womb after childbirth. Men use it as an energy drink or an aphrodisiac. Thai monks use the buds to make different concoctions for different purposes. In spite of its usage for various purposes, the chemical composition of Rafflesia flowers has not been extensively analysed yet. Preliminary phytochemical screening, however showed no evidence of the flowers' medicinal properties. On the contrary, the buds and flowers have a high content of tannin and phenols which can be toxic when taken in large quantities.

3. Other uses
In Sabah, Malaysia, it was considered a flower of spirits or a taboo flower because of its foul smell and gigantic appearance. In Thailand, the flowers are believed to have mystical powers helping one attain nirvana.

Sources

1. http://www.earlham.edu/~givenbe/Rafflesia/rafflesia/biodiv2.htm
2. http://rafflesiainformationcentre.wikidot.com/about-rafflesia
3. http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_38_2005-01-22.html
4. http://www.eglinpix.com/borneo_01.htm
5. http://www.arkive.org/rafflesia/rafflesia-spp/info.html
6. http://www.parasiticplants.siu.edu/Rafflesiaceae/Raff.pricei.page.html



p/s More info at Rafflesia Information Centre, Tambunan