Traveling Back In Time...

Ramadhan officially ended in Malaysia, and most countries in this region on Tuesday, which is the end of September. Wednesday, October first is also 1 Syawal 1429, the first day of Eid Mubarak for Malaysia, and most countries in the region. Nakamora was told by a friend that Austria celebrated Eid a day earlier.
As usual there are many of people doing the same thing at the same time. Thus major shopping districts in Kuala Lumpur were flooded with crowds of shoppers at the weekend before and a few days before the end of September in preparation for the Eid. Monday and Tuesday saw traffic build-up in major highways leading to kampungs (villages). "Balik kampung" or returning to the village to meet folks and elders still residing there,the familiar annually recurring event, is here again. It is an opportunity to renew contacts, to touch-base, to meet relatives and friends, to revisit the roots, to keep up with the latest there, as it were.
Idyllic villages transformed overnight to bustling, instant towns.
Nakamora too spent the holiday in villages. Some do not have much differences from what he saw daily in Kuala Lumpur. Kids glued to TV screens, computer monitors, or little screen of the handsets - trading short text messages, multimedia files, or exchanging MP3 tunes. In a particular village in Jerteh, Terengganu, however, he saw a different sight. A sight that he has not seen for a very long time - a sight that reminds him of his childhood days. Those kids really have a good time looking for fish in the mud.
They don't seem to bother about baju raya' - new clothes to be worn on that special day, or about collecting 'duit raya.' It was only the third Syawal. Most kids would still be making the rounds collecting 'duit raya'. Probably they have already done so. After all, in a kampung like this there may not be that many 'duit raya' that can be expected - not as many as their catch, may be.
If it was not for the lack of proper clothing to replace the ones he had on Nakamora would have joined them too. The mud looks smooth. A tourist from Europe or somewhere staying at a homestay may jump right in. Mud is good for the skin, and most of them are crazy about it..