Bali, Sulawesi and Lombok: 18 July-13 August 2005
Trip Start
Mar 28, 2005
1
11
17
Trip End
Feb 02, 2006
Denpasar,
Indonesia
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
During my almost 4 weeks in Indonesia, I visit 3 of its many islands:
BALI: 4 days in Ubud
SULAWESI: 9 days on Bunaken, a small island north of Sulawesi (diving hot spot) and 6 days in Toraja in central Sulawesi
LOMBOK: 7 days on Gili Air, a small island northwest of Lombok
Ubud, Bali:
From Denpasar airport I take a taxi for the one-hour ride to lovely Ubud, an artisan city with many tempting shops, restaurants, wonderful spas (I enjoy a wonderful relaxing massage and flower bath ...
01 Ubud: rice paddies
. fantastic) and nice excursions to the surrounding rice paddies.Bunaken, Sulawesi:
I fly with local Garuda Air from Denpasar via Makassar (Sulawesi's capital in the south of Sulawesi) to Manado (a city in the north of Sulawesi) where unexpectedly (I had only sent them an e-mail the day before) somebody from Two Fish Divers is waiting for me to transport me to the harbor (a 30 minutes drive). There I meet up with a group of 7 very nice French people (they did a volcano tour on Java before coming to Sulawesi for diving) and after waiting around 2 hours for high tide, we can finally board a boat to Bunaken (another 30 minutes). As the accommodation at the diving school is fully booked, I rent a lovely basic beach bungalow with Ita and Bartho (the accommodation is named ´Lorenzo 1´ and was built by Ita´s brother Lorenzo who is now running a more recently built place called ´Lorenzo 2´). I feel very comfortable and very much at home with Ita and her family. The island reminds me a bit of the Maledives, there is not much more than a couple of dive centers and accommodations along the beach, some of them within walking distance from each other, others only to be reached by boat. Due to this remote location most accommodations offer full board. At Lorenzo 1, we enjoy our three meals sitting altogether at a large table on the beach, lunch and dinner mostly being fish (depending on Bartho´s luck we are served home-caught fish - unfortunately, he is not very lucky), veggies and rice
02 Sulawesi: city of Manado
. As dessert we are mostly served mangoes from a tree in 'our' garden. Diving is of course fantastic, the French group I am sharing the boat with is good fun and our local dive guides are excellent, they know all the beautiful locations by heart and can show us the tiniest fish. The whole atmosphere on Bunaken is relaxed, easy-going and quiet. There is nothing much to do than diving, snorkeling and relaxing on the beach. It gets dark between 6:00 and 7:00 pm and the evenings are very quiet. Your options are: chatting, reading, sleeping or taking your torch and finding your way to the closest dive bar where locals play guitar and sing wonderful romantic songs under a sky full of stars ... these are the evenings I could die for ....
One day, Ita invites us to attend a wedding of a relative of hers in the village. It is boiling hot that day, we dress up as much as we can, fill up an envelope with some money and walk the 20 minutes on the dirt road to the village. We spare out the ceremony in the church but walk straight to the wedding tent, where several long tables are already covered with tons of food. We are seated on one of the benches inside the tent, are being served some sweets and something to drink and wait for the wedding couple and its entourage who arrive soon after from the church
03 Bunaken: Two Fish Divers
. After some speeches, dancing and singing performances, the buffet is opened and, as everywhere in the world, people rush there and soon the tables look like a battlefield. The food is delicious, this time it´s not made for tourists, the dishes are really spicy, some dishes I can´t identify but Ita ascertains us later that we didn´t eat any dog. After around two hours, the lunch event is finished and everybody returns home to relax, we take the chance for a nice cool swim before meeting again in the evening for dancing. I get the opportunity to dance twice, it definetly is different to our dancing at home, drinking is not allowed at the wedding and we soon leave the party and ask Bartho to show us to a bar where we can enjoy a cool beer. Soon, the small bar seems to be busier than the wedding tent (well, just a little bit exaggerated), after two beers and close to midnight we switch on our torches and head home.Toraja, Sulawesi:
I fly back from Manado to Makassar in the south of Sulawesi. At the airport, tour guides from Toraja are waiting for tourists ready to assist them with tours to their home. I initially refuse to take such a tour as I know that I can manage cheaper on my own. But the guys at the airport are very nice, they explain the difficult situation of Torajan tourism this year due to some false information about riots in Sulawesi (actually only happening in one hot spot called Poso north of Toraja) and they finally offer me a fair price which I can´t refuse anymore
04 Bunaken: practising for the evening
. I spend almost 3 hours at the airport working on my tour until it gets dark, Julius organizes me a nearby hotel which is also close to the bus station from where my bus leaves the next morning to Rantepao. Rantepao is the tourist center in Toraja, starting point for hikes into the surrounding countryside and for tours to historical sights.When I arrive in Rantepao the next day in the evening after an eight hours bus ride, Yusuf, my guide for the next three days is already waiting for me (greetings to Yusuf!). After a nice hot shower (it´s rainy and a bit chilly up here in the mountains), we go to a local bar, where Yusuf and another guide are playing guitar and singing beautiful local songs .... what a perfect start for my stay here in Toraja.
The next day, we visit Toraja by motorbike and I learn a lot about the Torajan culture: about the mountainous and rocky land Torajan people are living on, about the hard work to flaten the rocky surface and prepare for rice fields and about the wisdom of former generations not to spoil any valuable land for graveyards but instead think of other methods to bury their deads: to either dig holes into rocks which can accomodate up to 15 dead bodies wrapped in cotton sheets (this tradition is still alive, I could see the preparation of such new graves); to place coffins in already existing caves or to hang the coffins on steep rock walls
05 Bunaken: my home at Lorenzo´s
. Graves of people belonging to Toraja´s high cast would have Tao-Tao´s outside their graves: wooden figures resembling and symbolizing the spirit of the dead person.Other than that, the most spectacular sight for me in Toraja is it´s extraordinary wooden houses: they are built on stilts, the living area on the first floor being separated into 3 rooms on slightly different levels, the room on the highest level being the parents´ room, the second highest the room for the girls and the middle room being used as kitchen and as bedroom for the boys. The most fascinating about these houses though is the shape of its roof which looks like a boat, apparently as a reminder of how the first Torajan people arrived to the island of Sulawesi. Unfortunately, concrete houses are slowly replacing the traditional wooden houses. We end the day again in a bar, the local guides singing and playing guitar, I enjoy an excellent traditional dinner called pa-piong (meat slowly cooked in bamboo).
The next day, we hike up a mountain, picnic between rice paddies where locals are in the middle of harvesting and enjoy a wonderful panorama of mountains.
And finally, on the third day, I get the incredible opportunity to visit a Torajan funeral - not just as a tourist from aside but as part of the family - the funeral is for a member of Yusuf´s family: it takes place in a village in the mountains, I get to put on a black skirt, walk with the family and hundreds of other guests in one line into the center of town, we are seated and welcomed with cigarets (for men) and bettle-nut (for women; at that moment I feel like I would prefer being a man), furthermore we are offered coffee/tea and cake
06 Bunaken: lazy beach at Lorenzo´s
. After we are finished eating and drinking, we make space for the next incoming guests and walk a couple of meters to another side of the village to sit down again and this time are offered lunch. In the center of the village, locals are singing and dancing, a moderator is constantly announcing the complicated procedure through a loudspeaker, and the stream of guests marching in seems endless. According to the status/cast of the dead person in Torajan society, a certain number of buffaloes and pigs have to be offered to the gods at the funeral. These buffaloes and pigs have to be provided by the dead person's family as well as each guest family. As these animals are very expensive and families sometimes have to save money over a long time to be able to afford an adequate number or size of animals, a funeral can sometimes be delayed up to 2 years. During this time and until the funeral, the dead body is kept at home, preserved with Formaldehyd, its spirit is considered to be living with the family and the body is served regular meals.I am fascinated by Torajan traditions and by their will to not forget about these traditions and to pass them on from one generation to the next. This is a big challenge, as influence from outside (TV, tourists ...) is creating dreams in Torajan people that life and lifestyle outside Toraja might be more interesting ....
Gili Air, Lombok:
From Rantepao I take the night bus back to Makassar, fly back to Denpasar the next morning, spend a night on famous Kuta beach in Bali (nice beach, many shops and restaurants) and leave again the next morning with Merpati Airlines to Lombok
07 Bunaken: sunrise at Lorenzo´s
. From the airport, I take a public bemo to Pemesan, walk the 1km stretch to the little harbor of Bangsal where I board a public boat to Gili Air. There, I walk the 5 minutes to Salabose cottages at the quiet side of the island. I get a very good price for a nice basic bungalow at the beach. Other than me, there is only a crazy Australian and a nice English guy who are just helping the owner to set up a bar. As I forgot to get cash from an ATM at the airport, I am very limited with my funds (of course, I could always change some of my emergency US$, but I see it as a challenge) and try to survive with as little money as I have. That means, other than my cheap accommodation including breakfast, I can only afford a small local meal a day (i.e. gado-gado - a big rice-cracker filled with cooked rice, spinach, soja-beans and some delicious dressing which the English guy recommends to me and which we buy every afternoon from a local woman at the football field) and 2 bottles of water. During the day, I enjoy the beach, walk around the island, chat, read and go to bed early. After one week I am very relaxed, leave Gili Air for Lombok where I spend my last night at Senggigi, a small tourist spot along a beautiful stretch of beach. I stay in a funny place recommended to my by a local guide I met on Gili Air, in the evening I sit together with him and his friends, they play guitar, sing, drink rice wine and unfortunately consume a lot of drugs, some of them really hard stuff. I feel very sorry for these young and friendly young people and I am glad that drugs haven´t yet made it to Sulawesi and hope it will stay that way.Summa summarum: I can only repeat myself, I had a very warm welcome and wonderful time in Indonesia and can only recommend it to everybody. Both Sulawesi as well as Lombok are suffering this year from a huge decrease of tourists and I very much hope for the local people that the situation will change again. But ... as I just heard, there were some bombings in Bali a week ago (on 4 October 2005) ... another draw-back for Indonesia´s tourism.
