Masks and orang asli

Along the road to Tanah Rata there are scattered thatched huts on short stilts, home to the orang asli - the native people of these hills. They look very impoverished. They live on the margins of the local economy and, I suspect the margins of their own traditional lifestyle too. They sell honey, flowers and bamboo products to the passing tourists.

In Tanah Rata there is a shop, Chinese owned, that sells the most magnificent hardwood masks. Carved, they claim, by the local orang asli, but looking suspiciously like they might have been made to order in Ubud, Bali. At MR5000 upwards, these were certainly not carved by any of the orang asli I have seen around here.