Activity In Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

Before the sun rise, we are forced to pull ourselves off the bed, since morning is the time where everyone begins with their activity. As our mission is to explore the activity of people, it is a must to wake up early so that we can have more time to observe and investigate the bits and bits of the people who lives here.While, there is one saying that early birds catches the worm, we get to have the opportunity to visit one of the morning market in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah which is 'Gaya Street Market'. The only special thing of this market is that they only open every Sunday morning from 6.30 a.m to 1 p.m.

GAYA STREET MARKET

As the picture, you can already smell the atmosphere of the crowd in this morning market, all ages can be found in this market. While, the typical activities that occur in the market such as buying and selling activities ongoing. For an add-on, 3 activities that are related to human-human communication are:

1)  Bargaining prices between Hawker and Buyers.

2)  Gossiping similar topics between Aunties and Uncles.

3)  People shouting 'Excuse Me' to find spaces to pass through the market across the crowd.



Unlike the typical activities I mentioned above, there are few activities which are hardly found in normal market in Kuala Lumpur. From our observations, not only verbal communication takes a big role in the market, but non-verbal communication, too, are involved between human-human activities in the morning market.

Donation Activities 

Donation activities by singing, dancing and etc to attract people to donate money for 2 reasons: improving the facilities of the market and to gain an amount of money to raise fund for charity.

Calligraphy 

On the other hand, there was another activity can be found in the market which takes my attention, so I snapped a photo of this stall where a young lady was showing off her calligraphy abilities. Usually, people calligraph 'Han' words but this young lady was doing some impressive arts by using just ink and brushes with only black and white colour tone. The drawing was used for business purposes.

Begging For Money Through Traditional Instruments

While, we continue our journey exploring the market, suddenly a mysterious rhythm which can be heard a mile away from our location. The closer we walked, the louder the rhythm. Oh!! It was an old man playing an 'erhu' which is a two stringed bowed Chinese Traditional Musical Instrument. 

This picture shows two customers buying cloth from a hawker. While, the hawker is explaining the pricing and quality of the cloth to the customers.