Hussin and his Mah-Meri men

There's a store on the main street in Tanah Rata that sells local handicrafts. Ordinarily we're pretty blase about these things (overpriced tourist dreck) but something made Nazma stop, and we went in. Then I looked up. Wooden masks on the walls, dozens of statues lining the showcases everwhere, and not the cheapo phony "antiques" you normally see. Every one was different, and they were freaky: I mean Lovecraft-esque stuff-of-nightmares freaky; you'd think this was the Cthulhu Museum and Gift Shop. We'd never seen anything remotely resembling this level of artistry, skill and just sheer twistedness.

Turns out they're made in a village of Orang Asli ("aborigines") living on an island on the west coast of Malaysia. Actually they're made by only about 6 guys, and each statue takes about a month or two to do. Apparently each of these is a character from their many folktales, as interpreted by the individual carver, so either their stories are all uniformly scary, or the sculptors are all sick sick geniuses.

In this store, one medium-sized statue, say a foot tall, could cost you over $3000 CAD, so it's definitely a step above the usual trashy souvenirs. And if you had the money you'd pay it: the marquee piece is a tiger holding a chain: real wooden links carved from a single block of solid hardwood. We found out later that actually only one guy in the village knows how to carve the rings, and he doesn't need the money badly enough to spend a month whittling, so not very many get made these days.

In any case, it stuck in my mind and wouldn't go away after we'd left town. This led to a fool's crusade across several Malaysia sultanates that spanned the rest of our time in Malaysia. Long story short, if I've been vague about the descriptions, and you're wondering why I haven't bothered including any photos, or what the big deal is anyways, it's because we've ended up finding, buying and shipping 3 of these bad boys back to Vancouver, and no, we didn't spend $3000 each. Everyone's welcome to come over, hear the story, and draw your own conclusions.