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Field trips for families

The Straits Times | Wed, Sep 16 2009

City-bred children who think chicken are born in supermarts are getting a first-hand taste of nature

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Rice is white, so the padi fields where it is grown have to be the same colour. So thought 10-year-old Felisya Hazlan until she saw the lush green fields at a kampung in Negri Sembilan, Malaysia.

It was also the first time the Primary 4 pupil saw, fed and ran from live squawking chickens which were after the corn feed she clutched in her hands.

“I’ve only seen chickens in photographs and on TV, so at first I was scared. But I soon found it amusing that chickens chased after people,” she says.

She had her reality check when she went with her family on a two-day, one-night holiday homestay at Kampung Lonek in June last year.

Her father, Mr Hazlan Aris, wanted to show his three daughters, aged 10, eight and six, the padi fields and expose them to the different Malay cultures.

“They eat rice every day but they don’t know where rice comes from. At least this holiday is more educational than just going to a hotel with a pool,” says the 42-year-old teacher who had visited the kampung twice with his school students on excursions.

Turning holidays into extended school seems to be catching on among parents who want their children to see and learn beyond textbooks and classrooms.

IPC Tours, which customises educational tours and homestays, reports a 30 to 40 per cent year-on-year increase in the number of families signing up for kampung homestays in Malaysia. At least 60 families signed up for homestay holidays with it last year.

IPC senior sales manager Ken Chen says kampung homestay trips were originally organised for schools but are now offered to families.

He explains: “Students return home and tell their parents about their experience and the teachers themselves take their families back there.”

According to the Malaysia Tourism Board, which has teamed up with travel agents to promote homestays, popular states for homestays are Negri Sembilan, Johor and Kelantan.

Its spokesman says: “It’s good for those looking for a unique package holiday not too far away from home and more importantly, which is affordable.”

Ms Badariah Ahmad, the chairman of the Kampung Lonek homestay programme, says homestays for families have been available at her home in
Negri Sembilan for the past four years, but visitor numbers rose only in recent years.

She adds that more than 50 per cent of her kampung’s visitors are families, student groups and community centre groups from Singapore.

She says people can visit the padi fields, try their hand at rubber tapping, feed chickens at poultry farms and learn to make dodol, a sweet Malay cake.

“Some children think that rubber is black because of the tyres and have never seen fruit trees or chickens before,” chuckles the 58-year-old.

For urbanites, there is a downside to experiencing a different life from one in the city. While feeding chickens and sweating it out in the padi fields might be a fun holiday activity, the simple homestay accommodation with no air-conditioning could be far less enjoyable.

Mr Hazlan says that although the toilets at Kampung Lonek in Negri Sembilan are clean, modern flushing types, there is no hot water or shower facilities. Instead, guests bathe using a pail.

Different kinds of seafood and dishes from a kelong, which is Malay
for a wooden offshore platform.

His daughters were also “freaked out” by the insects that hovered around the lights in the house at night.

“It’s a very good experience for the children. I felt I was reliving my childhood too,” says Mr Hazlan, who grew up in a kampung near the sea in Johor Baru.

In addition to farmstays, kelong stays are also getting popular with families.

Madam Chew Chai Wah took her 10-year-old son Cyrus Tan on a three-day, two-night stay at Kelong Kawal in Bintan last week to have his first taste of kelong life. Kelong is Malay for a wooden offshore platform.

Although slightly modernised with concrete structures, the kelongs are still largely made of wooden planks and stilts, reminiscent of their role in the traditional fishing industry in the region.

“Experiencing kelong life is just not the same as learning and reading about it from textbooks,” says Madam Chew, a 50-year-old butcher who also wanted her son to learn how to catch fish.