Sungai Rengit Mangrove and Festival: 7Oct07

Home sweet home! i have finally returned from my months of overseas trip. One of the good things about to travel is, i learn to appreciate what surrounding me and what i have. This is of course something that everyone said when they travel, but i can really feel this from the bottom my my heart now. If you have forgotten the last time you just look up to the sky and enjoy the sunset, then please do so. The purplish, orangish and reddish colors in the sky are just amazingly beautiful. You don't have to even go to the seaside to do so. Just look up eventhough you are in the bus or car!
Do enjoy the pictures below. These are some findings in my warmth hometown.



Near to the river mouth, this area used to be a rich mangrove. But nowadays, it left only a few mangrove trees and hardly even see the mud lobster mound.
We still got a fat monitor lizard though!



Monitor lizard eats insects, crabs, dead animals and anything it can catch. It 'smells' the air with its blue forked tongue to track down carrion and small animals.



Climber crab. It feeds on mangrove leaves and scavenge for meat.



Archerfish. It feed on insects near to the water surface. The interesting thing is, archerfishes have elongate mouths to forcefully pumped out water to knock down the insects near to the water surface. But they have to practise and learn to be accurate over time.



Needle fish. Normally found near to the water surface as it eats small surface-dwelling fishes. It has a pair o long jaws with sharp teeth.



Calyx of bakau, a kind of mangrove tree.



Monkeys are common along the river near to the mangrove. You can easily sighted one at Tanjung Pengelih Jetty.



Oysters and alive! Oysters are molluscs with two-part shell. They stick one of their shells firmly to the rock with a strong glue.



It was the 'birthday' of the guarding deity of my clan, "Sim" (沈). The Teochew chinese opera was one of the yearly events to celebrate the birthday of the deity. i was surprised to see the Chinese electronics sub-title by the stage. i almost feel like i am in Singapore Esplanade Theatre! :) Nowadays many young people are not able to speak or understand Chinese dialect, not even to mention be able to appreciate the opera. This sub-title was really useful for the young people to understand the performance.





Offerings to the deity.



Fire cracker!

Other than Shore (1): The Mazhu Temple

The temple is only a few footsteps away from my home. It used to be a more tiny and decent small temple for the Goddess Mazhu, the protector of the fishermen. When i was still in primary school, the villager renovated it. The sad things when people renovate an old building is, they standardize the design. Chinese architecture is difference in a way that, the dialect group of Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hainanese... all have their unique difference architecture designs. But nowsaday due to lack of study or lack of people to know in these differences, all renovated temples are follow to the Northen China palace kind of design. Hence the origin of the temple gradually becomes hard to differentiate by the building itself...
At least the roof of the temple not really changed much than the structure i saw when i was young.

The temple is now so prosperous that the committee of the temple built its own building right behind of the tiny temple.

The 'wealth' of this temple is not surprising, consider it is famous among many Singaporean aunties. They either come from Tanjung Pengelih or a lot of time you see them come by chartered tourist buses all the way from Singapore via JB (at least 2.5 hrs).

When i went back home on 11 December 05, it was coincidentally a festive day to thank the Goddess for her protection to the fishermen in the past one year. At the night before, there was a Karaoke singing performance by fellow villagers. This kind of activity has added a little bit of spices to the peaceful and quiet life in the village. Sometimes i would say that, all these activities all more to please the mortal than the immortal.

The temple is near to the river mouth and right in front of the temple is the river.

i think a mud lobster mound managed to survive the 'massacre' of the villagers when they cleared the mangroves and reclaimed the river bank with red soil.