Fun at the Rainforest World Music Festival 2007?

From my past two posts it is rather obvious that I was at the Rainforest World Music Festival 2007 held at the Cultural Village in Sarawak, which is about a 30 minute drive from Kuching.

The crowd was mad!

Of course as expected, I am sure there will be plenty of people blogging about it but here is another person's account of the festival. Me and my friends took a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching Sarawak aboard our trusty low cost carrier airlines, Air Asia. The flight was on time and thank God it wasn't delayed.

By the time we touched down in Kuching, we took a cab straight to our Inn where we quickly dumped our stuff and headed out to a nearby "makan" area to grab some supper. We ended up eating by the waterfront which was pretty cooling but of course, the food wasn't that superb.

Everyone was hungry!

The food was rather interesting because they served something called "Nasi Lemak Goreng" which I thought was some concoction thought up by one of my friend back in PJ.

But enough about food, let's get back to the Rainforest Music Festival. Arriving at 11am at the Cultural Village (yes, our good friend Andrew thought that the workshops started at 9.00am), I was extremely surprised to see the place entirely empty!

No crowd at all?

People were setting things up around the place, and it was pretty clear that we were there too early! On the bright side, this allowed us to actually tour around the cultural village itself to take a look at the traditional homes and enjoy the peace and quietness.

Well after 10 minutes of doing so, I got a little bored with that and was feeling quite tired from all the walking and heat. It isn't too fun walking about lugging a huge bag filled with mineral water and my camera.

How Ulu was this?

The workshops only started at 2.00pm and there was plenty of time to kill. By the time the workshops started, I decided to attend the one which was located in a super packed theater with minimal air conditioning which made the entire place so stuffy that I nodded off a couple of times.

Guitar workshop

The only workshop I enjoyed was about guitars and stringed instruments, well, they were mainly guitars there. It was truly refreshing to see the various styles and music from different cultures, it really broadened my view of how the guitar is played in different continents!

Now when you decide to go to a event way too early, this is what you find, an empty stage.

After a couple more hours, more people start to arrive at the place.
And of course, by the time the concert starts, the place is extremely packed!

Till the next post, more pictures and stories to come!

Related posts:
- Kuching, Sarawak - Part 2
- Kuching, Sarawak

Check out the entire photo collection here.