Kabong Wedding

We went last Sunday to a wedding in Kabong, the village and district in which Sue works.  It was about a thirty minute drive from Saratok and my first opportunity to get a feel for the area that Sue travels to most working days.

Stopping to ask directions some way from our destination it was clear that a large section of the local community already knew who we were and why we were there.  Central Kabong is a collection of houses on stilts over a salt marsh linked by a network of wooden walkways.

The wedding was for the brother of Nora one of the teachers of English with whom Sue works.  This was the second ceremony, the first having been held in the regional capital Kuching.

They are a large, sophisticated and well travelled family and as a result I felt both very welcome and remarkably at ease in a setting like nothing else I have ever experienced.  We joined in the ceremony, took photos, ate, danced and relaxed in a palpable atmosphere of hospitality and goodwill.  Like all good ceremonies it also went on for the perfect length with no sense of obligation to linger.  We headed back to Saratok after a couple hours, exhausted more than anything else by the sheer variety of images and sensations.