The town of Kota Bharu, Where we had a decent stay at Crystal Lodge, good service but the bathroom door comes with a dysfunctional lock and there was renovation works on going. So it was noisy. But there are more important things to point out in regards to our research. We had asked Puan Rosnawati
back in Kandis about how to differentiate between Terengganu and Kelantan houses. Her explanation had me scratching my head until when I see it for myself in Kelantan, it actually made sense.
You see, Kelantan is in the middle between Pattani in Thailand and Terengganu. So the cultural influence is intermixed from both states up north and south. It sort of like you sit in a canteen in between a Johorean and another from Penang. You got to taste a bit of Penang laksa and Johor Laksa from their lunch packs (provided you're a good friend of both) and then make your own version of asam laksa using spaghetti. You get the idea.
Istana Jahar. Where formality, customs and rules.. rule
Three-tiered roof. Why bother with only one?
Where do you think this comes from?
So in Kota Bharu we spent our time visiting a chain of museums spread across the town. There are actually under the same management, Perbadanan Muzium Negeri. The lack of a dedicated building large enough to contain all the artefacts lead them to divide into sections and locate each into many smaller old buildings around Kota Bharu. Istana Jahar, or Muzium Adat Istiadat Diraja displays all sorts of artifacts related to previous Kelantan Royalties including customs, clothing, ornaments, weaponry, celebrations, etc; Basically all aspects of the elite's life are covered. And what I learnt was, I would never want to be a Sultan or anybody among the royal families, even the remote chance was to be upon me.
A walking distance away was the Kelantan State Museum (but we still drove anyway). It was previously used as the premises of the Land Office during the colonial ruling. It was only in the year 1990 that it was converted it into Kelantan State Museum. Typical of any museum, it exhibits a wide array of collections related to the traditional art of the state, countless documents and artifacts that are associated with arts, crafts and musical traditions of Kelantan. Many ceramic artifacts are evidences of the trade relations between Kelantan and China. There are several artifacts that have been found from archaeological sites; for example the museum nestles artifacts which were found along Nenggiri River. There are also many exhibits in the museum that sites bears testimony to the existence of the pre-historic age in Kelantan. The State Museum also houses an art gallery with one section dedicated to the history of Cik Siti Wan Kembang, the famous female ruler of one of the district in Kelantan in 17th century. You surely won't miss that big painting on the wall that pretty much sums up the whole story about her.
You will see this boat, or kolek be transformed into digital 3D, promise
And these too
We managed to gather a number of materials for our project then we moved on to Islamic Museum. It looked like we got there at a wrong time. It was closed for some reason so we head on to Muzium Diraja. But most of the display were from recent times with collection of stuff from recent ancestors of the current Sultan. So it bears less significant to our purpose. To make things worse, camera wasn't allowed (not that it was allowed in other museums we've been, only this one leaves much less room for us to sneak our cameras in) so we couldn't document anything from the exhibits.
The last destination was the Muzium Kraftangan. It was actually more like a complex because there were stalls selling handicraft, including the keris that could fetch into thousands of ringgit. Still, much of the stalls were closed that day. With nothing more to do we went to to where the crowd was. Ah, it's lunch time. Restoran Nasi Ulam Kampung Kraftangan is located right smack in the middle of the craft complex and it was so full, we knew we had to give it a try. It was totally not disappointing. The fishes, catfish (keli), stingray (pari), red snapper (tilapia merah), and many others were huge. I mean, really really big. Sucking the fatty substance from the fish heads was soo satisfying. Hey, what's wrong with a little bit of indulgence? We filled up at the cost of only RM21, for the four of us.
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