Hello and greetings everyone. How is your weekend? I hope that you guys had an awesome time. Today is a special post from me. This is a post about the Miss Tourism International 2023 pageant week that I covered last year. This was a 16 days of pageant week before they had their final day coronation night. A total of 44 representative from different country went to Sabah for this event. It was a great experience for me, I meet a lot of new people from all around the world. I learn about their culture and some of their languages. But to be honest 16 days was not enough to really get to know them especially with the tight schedule that they had been given from the organizer.
So today is some of the photos from their activities on day 6th, they went to a cultural village called Monsopiad and here they learn about the Kadazan Dusun culture and some of their traditional foods, flock lore stories, and the cultural dance.
They had a lots of fun during the trip.
This was our tour guide inside the cultural village Monsopiad. They were getting ready to meet all the representative from 44 countries.
Partial candid group photo because during this time I was using my 85mm to cover their activities and I have another team mate to cover for wide angle.
Getting ready to get into groups.
Some of them are taking photos with our tour guide for their memories :)
This was inside the hall where they perform the local flock lore and the cultural dance. As you can see some of the are very friendly to the camera :D which is great because they will had a good photos of them taken. The representative from Korea, Cambodia, Czech Republic, Poland, India and Bosnia and Herzegovina are one of the most camera friendly person among all of the representative.
Some of them went to the stage to participate on the cultural dance. All of them was a great dancer :D and most importantly they all are having so much fun.
This part was taken during the introduction on how to make fire. It was a small place like an open kitchen and I had to squeeze between them to find a good angle to get some photos plus using a telephoto lens the 85mm makes it harder lol.
Above was the activity on hitting the balloon with blow pipe. The blow pipe was one of the weapon that being used for hunting. To be honest I was shocked because most of them really can handle the long blow pipe and had a good accuracy too. Two or three of them hit the balloon on their first try. I am impressed. Germany, Egypt, Uganda, and Korea get it on the first try.
Then after all the fun on "playing" the blow pipe, they went to the last place which is called the "House of the skull". This house is a place to store all the head or skull from the fallen enemy that being killed by the warrior called "Pengait". This house is taken care by a special person which is called the "Bobolian" or "Bobohizan". They will do all the ritual to keep all the skull safe and in peaceful condition.
Photos of the skull hanging in the center of the house. It was more than 70 years old skull and it still keeping its shape. They have some rules and restriction before entering the house. Two of the is no foul language and no pregnant woman. While touring inside the house a person in charge will keep the safety of the visitors. Not all of the representative went inside the house. The house really give me chill on my spine.
After the house tour they went for a group photo again and we went back to the hotel. And that is all for today. I hope that you guys enjoyed my post. More on them on the future post. Have a great weekend and stay safe always. Cheers!!
| Photographer |  |
| Camera | Sony A7iii | 85mm f1.8 |
| Editing Software | Adobe Lightroom Classic 10.1.1.0 |