Hey everyone, this is Asher writing to you after a fun day in Kuala Tahan. This morning, I woke up to a big surprise: I went viral on TikTok! A video of me advertising my host mom’s Rojak Mee (spicy peanut sauce noodles) at the local night market on Wednesday—posted by my homestay sister, Lany—has over one million views. That was quite the shock to wake up to! 


After that morning surprise, we began our day. Our group met on the riverbank at 9:00am and traveled 15 minutes upstream. On the way, two of our guides, Ja and Angah—both seated at the front of the boats—took turns splashing the entire group with their oars in a friendly competition. It was fun to see each other get soaked, and it was also pretty refreshing in the heat.








When it was time to disembark, everyone arrived at the shore drenched. Once we got off the river, we hiked roughly 20 minutes along a creek to a waterfall. The walk was not easy—the path required lots of maneuvering around slippery rocks, gushing water up to our knees, and dense jungle trees. Parker took a few funny spills in his Crocs, but he was completely fine. 






We eventually reached Teras Waterfall, which was powerful, although not enough to deter us from going under it. After what seemed like 20 minutes of picture-taking, Angah and Ja brought our group a bunch of colorful rocks from the river as a source of pigment to use as paint in shades such as orange, brown, and red. We had fun painting our faces. Let’s just say that Fernanda and Neil’s white shirts might not be coming home. 





On our way back from the morning activities, we enjoyed some rapids and more splashing from Angah and Ja. After our final lunch at the floating restaurant where we’ve been regulars, we returned to our host homes, freshened up, and gathered at Angah’s house to prepare and complete our last eGuide presentations. 




Before we began our eGuide prep, Ms. Buxton announced to the entire group that we had been given a rare and special plaque by the mosque that we visited yesterday. It has a picture of our group with several of the mosque’s leaders and expresses gratitude to our school for being so friendly and expressing interest in Islam. We look forward to sharing it with the Menlo community when we return!




For our eGuides, the task today was to create a resource to help local tourist guides introduce the indigenous Batek tribe whom we had the pleasure of visiting several times in the past week to visitors, while doing so in a way that is mindful of their own history, culture, and traditions. We were able to incorporate the interviews we conducted with members of their community about their culture, day-to-day lives, thoughts on modernization, and more.



In the afternoon, we enjoyed some downtime, playing cards together and kicking the soccer ball around with some of the local kids.


The trip has been a blast. Can’t wait to share more when I return!


Selamat malam everyone,

Asher


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