One thing that I really enjoyed was to take a tour of one of the water cities...the picture below is of that tour.
To tour the water city was truly an eye-opener. To think that people can survive in what most Westerners would consider horrendous sanitary conditions is a testament to human diversity. The water over which they build their houses is where garbage goes, what they draw bath water from, what they swim and fish in and even use to cook with. The tour guide told us that after a woman gives birth in this community, they immediately place the baby and mother in the water to build up their immunity. While we were there, we saw so many children frolicking and fishing in the waters and they definately seemed healthy so it just goes to show you...we don't know everything! Another interesting thing our guide told us was that some of the richest people in the community (ie., all of Kota Kinabalu) lived in these 'water shacks' and would have expensive hi-fi and TV and electricity and everything. Some even had a car parked under the house (those houses part in and out of water obviously). It seemed that even though they were very wealthy, their ties to their history outweighed the modern life to some extent and they believed they had to be on water as their ancestors were.
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on Feb 25, 2003
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