Art critic Jerry Saltz once said, “Don’t go to a museum with a destination. Museums are wormholes to other worlds. They are ecstasy machines.”
This is so true, especially if you are visiting Sabah Museum for the first time where each of the gallery inside the building will transport you to a different world.
Established in 1965, the museum was first housed at Gaya Street in Kota Kinabalu. It moved to its current location in 1984 at Bukit Istana Lama.
The main building of Sabah museum is designed after traditional Rungus Longhouse.
As you walk inside the museum, there is a huge 20m long whale skeleton to welcome you. There are galleries of ethnography, natural history, ceramics, history and archaeology.
Every gallery has so many things to see and learn about Sabah, from its rich culture to its abundant biodiversity.
There is a small section dedicating to ‘Budaya Mengayau’ or headhunting, which explains this old tradition of Sabah’s indigenous people.
For example, did you know that when headhunters came back from a raid, they were not allowed to bring the heads into the village?
So what did they do with the heads? For Kadazandusun of Tambunan and Tamparuli, they hung the head on a tree or bamboo and called it sogindai.
In other communities, the heads were kept in a temporary hut called sulap.
After several days or weeks, a Bobolian or Bobohizan (high priestess) would performed a ritual, after which the heads would be allowed to be brought into the village.
If history and ethnology are you preference, you could find yourself reading through each panel for hours.
Open daily from 9am to 5pm, the museum charges RM2 for Malaysians and RM15 for non-Malaysian.
Photography is allowed (no flash) for visitors to capture their experience.
Here are photos taken by KajoMag at Sabah Museum for visitors to learn more about the Land Below the Wind:
