A kampong boy ready to spin his top
This is traditional top spinning at its best. Somewhere in the remote regions in Pahang, I had my first experience with kampong style top spinning competition. The set-up is simple. Open area with dry, dusty crack earth, a few spectators and well built, half naked youths with overly sized hand made tops. The objective is to hit with the purpose of stopping or even splitting the other top and hopefully…your top stays spinning the longest.
Here in this village, top spinning is trendy and cool. All the boys seems to be at it. Yup…somehow only the boys can be seen enjoying this seasonal past time. The gals on the other hand are at the side cheering on the winning ‘hero’.
The game is simple. The first person will spin his top. The second person will then try to ‘pangkah’ or ‘cross’ the first top. What happens is that the second top will hit the first top, bouncing it off (to hopefully stop it spinning) or even hitting it so hard that the top breaks or cracks.
A player getting ready to hit the spinning top.
The third person will then try to hit whichever top that is left spinning. The final top left spinning is the winner and gets to go first the second round!
Tops are aimed at each other in what is called the ‘pangkah’ maneuver
While top spinning may look like an easy traditional game to play, with these oversized tops, one really need to have the skill and strength not only to spin them but also to hit them down hard enough to cause enough damage to the other tops. It is no wonder that they locals we saw playing the tops in this village is all rather well built.
The local boys are obviously very skilled at top spinning as well. I asked them to clutter their tops spinning. Not only did they manage to that that easily, they even lined the tops up for me to take pictures!
Spinning these particular tops requires skill and strength