Due to a stupid mistake, I don’t have a lot of photos of today. Long story not worth going into ... Today, I went on a tour called “prime commodities of Malaysia” -- it is a port full of agriculture and economics for me. Yesterday, orchards & spice gardens, today palm oil plantations, rubber trees, and rice mills.
Malaysia is a very large exporter of palm oil, which goes into an amazing number of products we consume. It’s the most widely produced vegetable oil in the world. We went to a factory, where we learned how they extract the oil. Palm trees bear fruit every three weeks all year around. Harvesters knock them off the tree with huge stick-like-things and then pick them up off the ground. During the factory tour, we saw everything. There are bundles of red-fruits attached to each clump that are processed first for their nuts and then the seeds are extracted into oil. Every part of the palm fruit is used for something. The large clumps (sorry to be so unscientific & it would help if I had photos!), once shed of the red-parts, are burned for bio-fuel. In the factory, we walked all around and climbed up to the top on very steep metal stairs. Holding on to the hand-rails, you feel the oil on the rails. The platforms up there were also all slippery. This is definitely something that wouldn’t be allowed in the U.S.! Tourists climbing up oily stairs & standing on oily platforms in the middle of a factory.
Then, we saw how they tap rubber trees. The itinerary made it sound like we were going to a rubber plantation, but really we just pulled to the side of the road with our guide and he took us back through a bit of overgrowth to the rubber trees. Malaysia & Indonesia are the largest makers of condoms in the world. And latex surgical gloves. In case that’s ever a Jeopardy question, you’ll be prepared. Natural latex is tapped by cutting into the side of the rubber tree and letting the sap fall into little buckets. Latex tappers are all women -- we’re told because the cut must be gentle not to harm the tree -- and the sap must be collected every day. A tapper can tap 500 trees in a day. A man will then come by and empty all the buckets. It’s very hard work and each bucket is only 60% usable latex, the rest is water. Many rubber plantations in Malaysia are now replanting with palm trees, because palm oil only needs to be harvested every 3 weeks. Rubber is much more labor intensive. The tree’s life is 20 years, they cut diagonally one direction on one half of the tree every day for 5 years, then diagonally in the other direction on that same half every day for the next 5 years. Then the same thing on the other side of the tree for 10 more years. After 20 years, the tree is cut for wood. Furniture and such.
After the rubber, we went to a rice mill and learned all about how rice is processed. We also got to walk all around that factory in hard hats and masks. It was very dusty. The biggest thing I learned is that white rice & brown rice are exactly the same kind of rice. White rice is just “polished” -- all the nutrients, actually, are polished away to make it white. The farmer arrives to the mill with his rice paddy which is weighed. The truck + the paddy are weighed minus the weight of the empty truck. From that gross weight is then deducted the estimated water weight and the estimated weight of the impurities. The farmer is paid on the net weight. First the paddy is dried in dryers that take 24 hours to run a cycle. They have 15 dryers in the mill. They also have what they call a LSU dryer, because it was invented by a professor at Louisiana State! After drying, the paddy goes into a husking machine where the husk is removed and then a separating machine, where the husk is separated from the rice. They opened the top of the husking machine for us to see and rice was hopping all around. Then there’s a sifting process that removes the “bran”. The outer layer is called the husk, then there’s a layer called the bran, and then the rice grain. After sifting, it all goes into a machine that cleans the rice and removes the impurities. After that, you’ve got brown rice. If you want white rice, you’ve got one last step of polishing. As with the palm oil, they use everything. So, the brown/white rice gets dumped out into giant 1 ton bags of rice that go off to a wholesaler. And the bran gets sold for animal feed.
The Malaysian government heavily subsidizes rice production and they still import a huge amount of rice from other countries. Particularly Vietnam and Thailand. China is the largest producer of rice in the world but they consume most of what they produce. The company we visited (Bernas) is a former government agency (now privatized) that is the only company in the country licensed to import rice. As a result, there is also rice smuggling on the border with Indonesia, which goes up and down (down now) based on what the cost of rice is on the world market. The Malaysian government provides input subsidies to the farmers (free fertilizer), output subsidies (on the sale to Bernas), and also sets the market price. Since it is Malaysia’s staple food, they take the stockpiling of rice & goals of self-sufficiency pretty seriously. Also rice farmers are the poorest paid workers in Malaysia and there is a conscious effort to help improve their conditions.
After the trip, Dawn & I walked around George Town a bit (I misspelled it yesterday, you might have noticed). We went up to Little India, which felt a little silly since we just came from the real thing.
On a segment of the street that forms an F, we passed an Indian Hindu Temple on the bottom street, a Chinese Buddhist Temple on the left side street, and a Mosque on the top street. All a stone’s throw away from each other. We were lingering outside the mosque wondering if we could go in when a man came out to get us and told us to come in. We could hear the call to prayer as we were walking up. We took off our shoes, he walked us in, told us to sit on one of the carpets and told us to watch. He said he’d come back and get us after the prayer was over. He even said it was ok to take photos. Many of the mosques in the area won’t let non-Muslims enter at all.
After the prayer (Muslims pray 5 times a day and this was #3), he gave us a tour of the mosque. It was quite beautiful. Originally built in 1801 with some more modern renovation.
Then, he took us back to his information center and talked to us for a very long time about Islam. He was very interested to learn that I was Jewish. He said that Jews don’t very often come to Malaysia. People carrying Israeli passports are not allowed into Malaysia nor are Malaysians allowed into Israel. He said, up until a couple of years ago he "didn’t know what a Jew looked like". He was quite nice and very informative and answered all of our questions. I asked whether the Muslim community here spoke Arabic, but he said no. They can follow along and read the Arabic characters in the Qur’an, but they don’t know what they mean. I said for very many of us that is true of Hebrew as well. He asked me a number of questions too, but his command of the Old Testament was wayyy better than mine. I was only able to answer some of his questions. I’m not sure I’ve been in a functioning mosque before. I’ve been in several in Spain, but all are now historical museums or such.
Finally, we walked along the “clan jetties” by the water, where Chinese fisherman live and work. It’s like a boardwalk with homes built on top of it.
Another nice day, if very very hot. I like Malaysia very much. I’d add it to the list of places I could totally see myself living in … if it weren’t so !@%$#%@ bloody HOT! One more hot country (Vietnam) and then we should hit more temperate climates. I can’t wait! …
I’ve finally created flickr sets for each country’s photos. I’ve linked to them at left, in case you like that better than using the map’s navigation. There are more photos on flickr than I’ve included in each blog post, so go there if you want more. I’ll put up new sets as we leave each country.
