OK. So we are in Perlak. It's time to head to a nearby rural area...
The area we want to go to is some 7 km away inland from the town of Perlak...
On the way there are plenty of padi or rice fields...
The village scene look rather backwards. One could find very few houses with any sort of modern roofing and even then its only zinc roof...
Almost all the houses we saw en-route use the old traditional roof which one could hardly find in Malaysia anymore... except in traditional jungle huts intentionally made that way or those belonging to the indigenious jungle folks the Orang Asli or the local aborigines...
So far I have traversed some 500 km across many area in Aceh and none seemed as backwards as these rural areas not so far away from the town of Perlak.
But believe it or not, here lies the seat of a once powerful ancient Islamic kingdom, the Sultanate of Perlak. For the record, the Sultanate which is officially recorded as having been established in the year 840 AD and lasted more than 400 years independently was a centre for propagating Islam to the whole Malay archipelago. The reason we wanted to go to these parts is because here lies to tomb of the first Sultan of Perlak, Sultan Sayyid Maulana Abdul Aziz Shah. I will touch more on this in my other blogspots CATATAN SI MERAH SILU and SENI LAMA MELAYU (MALAY OLDEN ART) . Feel free to have a look at these blogspots later...
This is a view of the nearby padi fields from the compounds of the tomb complex...
After sometime paying respect at the tomb, it's time to leave...
The route we took to get out basically encircles these padi fields. The road is very small and tight so traffic by car is practically one way...
Soon we're back in front of the rural houses we've seen before...
Then we're back to the town of Perlak. The journey continues only to be told another day... take care! :]
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