Enormously Long Post Below!!
After I got back from the trip to Ijen Crater with Nina and Ellen, I headed off the following Thursday for "work". I really shouldn't put work in quotation marks because it makes me look bad, but...it certainly didn't feel like work!
Kendari
First, I flew from Surabaya to Kendari, a pretty small town located in southern Sulawesi (Eastern Indonesia). I was headed there to be a counselor at a camp for the Access camp there, similar to the one I did back in November, but scaled down, since we were only putting it on for the kids at that school--16 in all! And we ended up with about 10 Americans on hand, as it turned out. So, other than leading the workshop I'd planned for about an hour, I didn't have too much to do. Which made for a lot of quality time catching up with the other Americans, happily enough.
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| The site was right on the beach. |
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| Jackie brushes her teeth right next to the jungle. |
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| Adorable baby goat (kid, I guess) and cat chillin' under a car. |
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| Hermit crabs! |
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| Deirdre and Autumn looking for hermit crabs. |
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| Enjoying the beauty. |
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| "My group" (the girls who were assigned to me) and their entry for the sand castle competition. Pretty nice, huh? It's actually modeled after a temple in Jogjakarta, Prambanan. |
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| Mid-day relaxing under one of the cabana-like structures. |
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| Making balloon dogs and balloon hats! Aren't they adorable? |
Tana Toraja
After the camp finished on Sunday, we took a short flight to Makassar, the biggest city in Sulawesi, and spent the free afternoon getting cream baths (eight of us at one time!) and eating dinner at a nice restaurant recommended by one of the Fellows who lives there, Ron.
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| Cream bath action shot. (Jackie, Deirdre, and Christen) |
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| Pre-head massage. |
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| View from our dinner spot. |
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| The group at dinner. (Deirdre, Jen, Liz) |
After dinner, we rushed back to catch our night bus to Tana Toraja. The bus left at 10pm, and arrived in Tana Toraja, a remote region in north Sulawesi, at 6am. We had tried to purchase VIP tickets, but they were apparently sold out, so we had to go with the regular price. We didn't think it would be too big a deal until we saw our seats...crawling with little cockroaches! You're allowed to eat on the night bus, and apparently all the dropped food led to a minor cockroach infestation. Gross. So since we had 8 hours to drive, and attempt to sleep, we did the best we could, putting on coats and trying to cover our faces in case they crawled on us. I actually managed to sleep quite well, thanks to the nice reclining chairs, and I didn't wake up at all to bugs crawling across my face!
We arrived to Tana Toraja at 6am, and were promptly picked up and taken to our hotel, where we were thankfully able to check in immediately and shower. We decided we weren't too exhausted, so after getting breakfast, we hired a guide to take us around to all of the cool spots, and also to see a funeral.
So now a little background on Tana Toraja. It's a pretty cool area. Actually, that's an understatement. It's REALLY cool. So according to Wikipedia (yeah), Torajans are an indigenous group that has really unique, ancient funeral and burial traditions. Basically, as Lonely Planet says, the Torajans' lives revolve around death. So the big things to see there are funerals and burial sites. February is not the high season for funerals, so we were lucky (I guess? I'll explain why later.) to get the chance to attend one.
The first place we visited was a site that felt like Disneyland. I don't know why, but it just did. Maybe the pictures can show why we felt that way. I'm honestly not really sure what it was; maybe it was just set up for tourists to see the traditional Torajan houses. But in any case, it was really pretty.
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| Our cute hotel, Hotel Indra. (That's Christen waving across the way.) |
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| In front of Disneyland. |
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| Beautiful intricate carving on the front of the houses. Yes, people actually live in there! |
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| Craftsman working at the gift shop. We all got suckered into buying stuff. It was so cool! |
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| There are almost always roosters carved at the top of the houses (see picture above). Roosters are a big deal, I guess! |
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| One of many water buffalo we saw. |
We walked to another area, where we could see some of the burial sites of the richest people in the community. Apparently they are buried above ground, since they have such elevated status. They also have wooden effigies carved of the people who died, which are typically painted and dressed to look like the deceased person.
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| Recent effigies (finished three months ago, according to our guide.) |
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| Wooden grave sites. |
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| Graves hung on a cliff. The graves periodically fall down, once the wood gets too old, so there are lots of human skeleton bones lying around! |
When we were walking back from this site, a human skull rolled by us, bouncing down the steps. We didn't know where it came from, and thought at first our guide might have thrown it to creep us out (he was kind of odd), but Jon was behind the guide, and didn't see him do it. So that was a pretty macabre event!
After leaving this site, we stopped to buy a carton of cigarettes ($12) to give to the family whose funeral we were visiting. We then drove to the funeral, which was being held for someone who had died three years ago. Because it takes so much money to hold a funeral (multiple water buffalo (each costing about $5,000, according to our guide) and pigs are slaughtered, a new funeral site has to be built especially for the occasion), they aren't usually held until years after the person has died.
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| I think was the members of the family walking up to their seating area. |
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| View from where we were sitting for the slaughtering. |
Yup. We saw animal get slaughtered. Well, I say "saw," but really, I just covered my eyes and my ears and looked away, and a few of the others did that as well. First they just brought out the pigs and a water buffalo. Our guide told us that they wouldn't be killing any animals till after, in a different area. And we told him we didn't want to see any animals sacrificed. But, wait--here comes a guy with a big machete! It looks like he's gonna slaughter them... yep... OK! Cover your eyes!!
Going on minimal sleep, a few of us shed some tears. It was so surreal. Right after the killing was completed, we left. I'm not sure what we missed of the rest of the ceremony, since we didn't see all that much, but I was just happy to get out of there and see something else.
Next up: Baby graves! Much more uplifting!
Actually, it was pretty interesting. If a baby dies before it has any teeth, the parents dig a hole in this tree (or another tree, but I guess this is the traditional one), and put it in the hole, standing upright.
Finally, we saw a few more interesting grave sites.
One in a big cave:
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| A big cave with human skulls. Smile! |
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| View looking out from the cave. |
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| Walking to the cave. |
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| Wooden effigies inside the cave. |
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| Hanging grave sites. |
So yeah. A pretty great day to say the least. We were able to admire it even through our half-awake state.
The next day, we just hung around the town, going out to lunch at a local Chinese food restaurant, and then shopping around a little for local fabrics.
On our third and last day, we hired a driver to take us part of the way up a mountain to a little coffee stand, and then we walked the rest of the way along a road up to a nice hotel/lunch restaurant, where we could look out at the view a bit more.
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| Beautiful views of rice terraces. |
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| Had to leave a mark that I was there. Can you spot it? |
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| Drinking tea while looking at the view. (Holly, Jackie, Deirdre, Christen, and Jon) |
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| Hilarious English on the menu. I always expect my food to be coodled. |
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| Vicious (yet cute, of course) kittens waiting for table scraps. No really, if you even put your hand down there, you got clawed. They were desperate for food. |
At the end of the third day, we took the night bus back to Makassar, directly to the airport. No cockroaches this time! Hooray! We got dropped off at the airport at 5am, where we made a beeline for the Starbucks and immediately set up camp, piling up the luggage belonging to all seven of us, since it was too early to check in. From there, I flew with Jackie and Jon to....
Ambon
Last leg of my trip. I arrived to Ambon at around 1pm, and immediately found out from my ETA host, May May, that the class I was supposed to teach tomorrow (in order to use my program allowance for the trip) was cancelled, because she had just been told there was no class that day! Despite us planning this three weeks in advance, and telling all the staff there, no one decided to let us know there wasn't school until the day before. Ah well, so it goes.
Thankfully, another opportunity came up: another ETA, Ben, on an island nearby, needed another judge for his Words competition (an English speech contest). I could do that and it would still count as work (hopefully!).
So I stayed for the night in the house of May May and Leah, two very sweet girls. They live RIGHT on the water. With an amazing view from their patio:
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| Leah standing on the porch of their house. |
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| View of the sunset from the porch. |
I should probably add a little information about Ambon. Ambon is pretty freakin' far east in Indonesia. It's the farthest east I'll get to go, since Papua isn't safe, and we're not allowed to go there. Ambon is part of the Maluku islands, which were the original islands colonized by the Dutch. These islands were the original Spice Islands, since nutmeg, cloves, and mace all originally came from here. These islands have also had a lot of civil unrest recently, since the Malukus don't actually want to be part of Indonesia anymore (similar to a lot of Indonesian islands, actually, like Papua and Banda Aceh). But right now, it's apparently safe enough to station four ETAs there to teach English.
Anyway, the next day, I took an hour-and-a-half ferry ride from Ambon to the city of Masohi on the island Seram, where Ben lived, to spend the night before judging his Words competition the next day.
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| View out of the side door of the ferry (they wouldn't let us on top). |
Masohi is a very small town, despite its being the biggest town on the island. You can walk or take a becak (pedicab) anywhere in the town. As Ben said, pretty much the only thing to do is go to the internet cafe or drink sopi (the local alcohol) on your stoop. Yes, alcohol is acceptable there! Crazy.
The English teachers at Ben's school wanted to welcome me and Leah, so they were kind enough to invite us over to one of the teacher's houses, where we had a traditional Malukan meal. The highlight (I suppose one could call it that) was papeda, which is the white-ish substance that looks kind of like porridge at the top of the table in this picture:
There's a much clearer, and more unappetizing, picture of it on
Wikipedia if you're interested. Anyway, it's this glutenous stuff that they scoop up onto your plate, and you put
colo-colo, a pretty good, vinegary spicy sauce on it, and slurp it all up, ideally without using utensils or even your hands. Thankfully, because I was the foreign guest, I was allowed to use a spoon to eat it. Sorry, no photos of that!
After dinner, Leah and I went to Ben's house to try sopi. I was so amazed that we were allowed to drink it in public, with all his neighbors around! It thought it was pretty gross. But I was still excited to do it!
After spending the night at a hotel, since no women are allowed in Ben's house, we walked to his school in the morning to judge. It was a lot of fun. There were thirteen contestants, who were all supposed to speak on the topic of "What can Indonesian Youth Teach the World?"
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| Leah and me being Important Judges. |
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| The winner. He made a tear-inducing tower of "Indonesia's Dreamers," with him and his classmates at the top. |
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| Ben took all the contestants out to lunch afterwards. Delicious fresh fish! |
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| Ben's school, with one of the more camera-loving students illustrating. |
I had to take the ferry back by myself, since I had to had back to fly home the next day. I took an ojek (motorbike you jump on the back of) all by myself! Don't worry Mom, I wore a helmet. Most of the times. But man, traveling by motorcycle is a pretty great way to see the sights. You can look all around.
The last evening, May May and I took an angkot (a little public van) to the local beach, where we got fresh rujak and coconut juice. Rujak is essentially fruit salad (pineapple, starfruit, mango) covered with a spicy, sweet peanut sauce. SO GOOD.
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| Lady making the rujak. |
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| Howbout another beach shot? |
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| May May eating the rujak. |
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| And why not a couple more beach shots? |
The next day, I flew back to Surabaya. And with that, my trip around the islands of eastern Indonesia ended. Looking back, I'm pretty amazed at how much I managed to do in the span of little more than a week. And how lucky I am to have this job!
