KOTA KINABALU: The festival was about sago palm and its many uses and local culture, but the succulent sago worms, eaten live, stole the show.
"It’s like something out of Fear Factor," commented one foreign visitor to the annual Pesta Rumbia, or Sago Festival at Kuala Penyu this weekend.
The sight of the fat, wriggling yellow worms — a delicacy locals call butod — juicy with sago extract, the apprehension on the faces of first-time eaters and their reactions were an enthralling spectacle for the crowds who flocked to this sleepy little town for the three-day event.
Cynthia Lim, 25, a Sabah lass who tried them for the first time on Saturday, said: "I ate the first worm out of curiosity. After that I ate them to entertain the crowd. They tasted OK."
Sarah Propsting, an Australian doing volunteer work in Sabah, said they were "not that bad".
"The flavour was quite good, it was just the idea," she said.
Held on the scenic Sawangan beach, about two hours’ drive south of here, the Sago Festival, which features music and dance, offered a glimpse into the Kadazandusun Tatana, Bruneian Malay, Bisaya and other local cultures.
The main attraction though, was the food. Fruit such as tarap, mangoes, rambutan, salak or snakefruit, jackfruit and durian, were there for the tasting, along with local delicacies like butod and ambuyat, a sticky, starchy rice substitute made of sago powder and water. There were also stalls selling local produce like fish crackers and ginger powder, as well as handicraft.
Visitors tried their hand at weaving sago palm leaves for roofing, chopping the sago trunk into tiny pieces for processing into sago powder, and stamping on the tiny pieces mixed with water to extract the pith.
Swedish honeymooners Jonas and Anki Renander had a ball trying out the different exhibits like stamping on the sago bits and weaving leaves.
"It’s like something out of Fear Factor," commented one foreign visitor to the annual Pesta Rumbia, or Sago Festival at Kuala Penyu this weekend.
The sight of the fat, wriggling yellow worms — a delicacy locals call butod — juicy with sago extract, the apprehension on the faces of first-time eaters and their reactions were an enthralling spectacle for the crowds who flocked to this sleepy little town for the three-day event.
Cynthia Lim, 25, a Sabah lass who tried them for the first time on Saturday, said: "I ate the first worm out of curiosity. After that I ate them to entertain the crowd. They tasted OK."
Sarah Propsting, an Australian doing volunteer work in Sabah, said they were "not that bad".
"The flavour was quite good, it was just the idea," she said.
Held on the scenic Sawangan beach, about two hours’ drive south of here, the Sago Festival, which features music and dance, offered a glimpse into the Kadazandusun Tatana, Bruneian Malay, Bisaya and other local cultures.
The main attraction though, was the food. Fruit such as tarap, mangoes, rambutan, salak or snakefruit, jackfruit and durian, were there for the tasting, along with local delicacies like butod and ambuyat, a sticky, starchy rice substitute made of sago powder and water. There were also stalls selling local produce like fish crackers and ginger powder, as well as handicraft.
Visitors tried their hand at weaving sago palm leaves for roofing, chopping the sago trunk into tiny pieces for processing into sago powder, and stamping on the tiny pieces mixed with water to extract the pith.
Swedish honeymooners Jonas and Anki Renander had a ball trying out the different exhibits like stamping on the sago bits and weaving leaves.
"We got to taste so many types of fruit we’d never even heard of before, like the snakefruit. The worms were interesting but we didn’t try them," said Anki, a teacher, adding that though there were many tourists, it still "felt like a local event, very relaxed".
Courtesy of New Straits Times
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