So, I didn't make my goal of finishing up with Indonesia before leaving Myanmar. Because I'm writing this from a youth hostel in Bangkok. You think you're going to go back to the guesthouse and blog at the end of the day, as you should, and then you just feel so tired. And then you're lazy and check Facebook, and play Angry Birds for 10 minutes, and fall asleep. But you don't need to hear my excuses. Only thing to do is just continue on writing. And continue on I shall. I'm still not quite done with our time in Tana Toraja, in Central Sulawesi, so I'll just keep going from there.
The last grave stop of the day was to a cave with "hanging graves." Graves are suspended and/or carefully placed in rock shelves of caves, the better to protect them from thieves. The coffins do fall down over time and the bones that spill out are placed in big piles with other skeletal odds and ends, giving the cave a look like a prehistoric burial site or a forensic goldmine of bones. I loved it. Yes, it was morbid and somber, but, treating the skulls and bones with proper respect in mind and heart (they were once living, breathing people after all,) it was fascinating to wander through that cave. Anthropology, both cultural and physical, is my secret passion. On the physical anthropology side of things, I love bones, skulls, forensics, paleoanthropology, all of it; I really enjoyed the chance to look at those bones, identify the arm bones from the leg bones, ponder the skulls, examine the sutures between skull plates (and thereby make a guess about age)... in general wonder about who I was looking at and what sort of life they had led. For my travel mates, it was, perhaps, a little too macabre; but for me it was really intriguing.
After lunch that day, we embarked on another rice paddy trek on narrow, grassy paths by beautiful fields of green and very muddy water buffalo. Not too long into our trek it began to rain. We picked up the pace and got into an area covered by trees, but we were quickly getting soaked. With just a bit of time to spare, Yulius led us around to the back entrance of funeral arena. We ducked under the shelter of a wooden pavilion and right away a loud, lamenting soundtrack played through a loudspeaker system greeted us; that, and an overpowering smell of raw meat and blood. It was, after all, a typical funeral.
Yulius knew the family holding the funeral. They were relatives from his father's side as it turned out. This funeral had a much different feel from the first one we visited. Whereas the first one was full of pomp, circumstance, ceremony, bright costumes, this one seemed rather low-key. I suspect the deceased was of a lower caste than the woman whose funeral we attended on our first day, and as a result, the whole thing was smaller in scale. As it was raining, many people had already left for the day, and things were winding down. A good number of family member still occupied a few pavilion sections and we were invited to have palm wine and buffalo satay with the family, which we humbly accepted. In the corner of the adjoining section, a huge haunch of buffalo leg sat by itself, reeking of rawness and laced with blood and fat. Blinders on, blinders on, just don't look over that way...
I enjoyed that funeral because it was spontaneous and had a more down-to-earth feel than the first one. What I did not enjoy was the sight and smell of meat everywhere. It was so... gruesome. Hunks of raw meat passed hands casually, both inside and outside the cooking area; cuts of buffalo and pig sat idly on the ground or in the pavilion area; large pools of blood were all over the muddy ground. Somehow it was even more intense than the first funeral; I think it was the smells and stenches. This is where an understanding of what "cultural relativity" means is more than passing useful.
After a visiting with our hosts for a respectful amount of time, and waiting for the rain to pass, we met up with our van again and headed back to the hotel. That was the end of our three days with Yulius, and those three days really contained some intense, fascinating, morbid, and truly memorable experiences.
The next day was our last in Tana Toraja. We rented three motorbikes and took off to explore Rantepao on our own. Our first stop was at the market where Matt bought a Torajan sword/machete thing. Wrapped in newspaper, Scott ended up carrying it strapped onto his backpack, which made for a comical sight. (That combined with the fact that he was just too tall for his motorbike; Southeast Asia is not designed for those well over 6 feet tall.)
Matthew and Scott had been particularly looking forward to the motorbikes in Indonesia, not just riding them, but driving them, so they enjoyed themselves immensely. Nicole doesn't like driving motorbikes, so she was Matthew's passenger. I do like driving them, mostly because, well, they're fun, so I had one to myself. I only ride motorbikes on vacation and then I usually cruise along at a leisurely 30, 40 kmph (maybe 50 if I hit a nice, clear stretch of good road.) Matthew and Scott had other ideas, however. 50 kmph was usually our minimum and we sometimes pushed to 80. I had no choice but to keep up, and I'm glad to say I did so adeptly. (80 kmph on a highway is nothing of course, but on twisting and narrow, often potholed Indonesian roads, it's quite a different matter.) We didn't have much of a course, just took turns leading a winding exploration down different country roads. I had to have my visor down, otherwise the wind tended to try blow my helmet off, but I would have had it up to enjoy the beautiful green scenery we passed. I think the only way I handled the traffic, schoolchildren, and potholes along the roads was two years of having experienced Indonesian driving, not infrequently from the back of a motorbike myself. I'm not sure how Matthew and Scott handled it, but you know the sort of self-assuredness guys in their 20s have (which is why they're generally not allowed to rent a car.) But all in all, it was a ton of fun, and I'm glad we did it. (You know, it's funny, at home I don't like passing other cars when it means going into the oncoming traffic lane; I avoid it at all costs. In Indonesia on a motorbike, however, I blithely overtake other motorbikes, cars, vans and big, lumbering trucks and find myself following the philosophy of the road that has vehicles flowing like water into all available spaces in the current of traffic. When in Rome...)
We returned from our motorbike excursion around 2 PM, and left soon thereafter in the car we hired to take us north to the town of Tentena. The roads were slow-going and tumultuously mountainous. If it wasn't hairpin turn after hairpin turn, then it was giant, gaping potholes, uneven roads, or completely washed out segments. Apparently you can take a bus from Rantepao to Tentena, but I don't think I would dare. I'm really not sure how they do it. Not without delays and stomach-turning maneuvers, I think.
We arrived at our hotel in Tentena at 1 AM, which wasn't so bad, all in all. (Part of travelling, whether it's in Indonesia, Myanmar, or anywhere, is spending hellishly long amounts of time sitting in vans and buses, watching the hours tick by as you slowly reach your destination. Freeways and interstates, such as we have in North America don't really exist, so even when you feel like you're going along at a good pace, it's still takes a long time.)
On our last full day together as a group of four, we once again rented motorbikes and set off in search of a nearby waterfall and Poso Lake, which is one of the largest in Indonesia. We almost missed the turnoff for the watefall, but some locals, anticipating where we were going, flagged us down to point out the way. The waterfall turned out to be much more beautiful, and less crowded, than the one we visited near Makassar. There was no one else there save a handful of other tourists whom we had seen frequently in Tana Toraja and who had come to Tentena at the same time as us. The water was freezing cold, a shock to the system, but it also felt nice once you got acclimated to it. We found that we could duck under the waterfall itself, which was awesome. There wasn't much room, maybe a foot of depth behind the pummeling curtain of water, which made it feel cozy, cramped, and cold, all at the same time. And the rush of water was deafening of course! We hid out underneath the waterfall for a minute or two, enjoying this unexpectedly delightful discovery, and then ambled over other rocks and up to another section of the waterfall. It was an enchanting place and lots of fun, and felt all the more special because we were mostly alone there.
When we had had our fill of the waterfall, we tried an interesting experiment to see if we could fit all four of us on a motorbike. Turns out, we could! Of all things, Scott sat in the very front (still not sure where all of his limbs went,) Matthew drove, and Nicole and I sat on the back. We putted along at about, oh, 5/10 kmph down the road for a few meters and made an entire family turn their heads and bulge their eyes as we passed their house. Having successfully answered this pressing question of physics, we headed for the lake.
En route to Lake Poso I was Matthew's passenger (remember, only two motorbikes that day.) He was "coming in hot" (as he put it) with his philosophy of "if you treat it like a racecar, it is a racecar." Just as we were coming to the lake road, we hit a spot where we had to quickly slide between a pothole and pile of gravel, and... we just didn't make it. Down went the bike, with Matthew on top of it and me on top of him. I didn't really crush him though, because my hand had come out to brace the fall. We were both in a bit of shock: "Are you okay?" "Yes. Are you okay?" "Yes." And this being established we got the bike up and waited for Nicole and Scott.
They later told me that they had never seen me looking quite so pissed off as when they pulled up and I asked Nicole if she wanted to take Matthew back (as I had been Scott's passenger beforehand.) Well, Matthew was definitely shaken up too, so we proceeded with more caution and made it to the lake with no problems. In the end, we were both fine: the most we suffered was a scrapped knee for me and a scrapped ankle for Matthew, for which I'm thankful. I still have a bit of a scar from that, about penny-sized. Just one more battle wound / parting present from Indonesia. (I'd like it known that I've never gotten into any accidents when driving myself or riding with other BBS teachers or other Indonesians; just 24-year old American males.) Still, at the end of the day, I get a story for my blog out of it and the chance to point to my knee and say, "That? Oh, that's from a motorbike accident," which, you know, is a tiny bit badass. (That, or just incredibly stupid; I'm not quite sure which.) The knee was only sore for about a week. It wouldn't have been a problem if it wasn't for having to use squatter toilets at our next guesthouse; my knee did not appreciate all that squatting! The other consequence is that I have now marked off all 20 items on our commemorative "I survived Jakarta / BBS" t-shirts which the expat staff made at the end of our two year contract. (We called it the EOC - End of Contract - Assessment.) Up to this point, I only had 19 out of 20. Now I get to check off "fell off a motorbike" as well as "rode" and "drove."
Lake Poso was very nice, though not quite as charming as the waterfall. Still, nice for relaxing before heading back to the hotel. Rain clouds were gathering, so we knew we had to head back before the rain trapped us. We made it back in time and only got sort of wet.
So, that wraps up Tana Toraja and Tentena. At our next destination - the Togean Islands in the northern part of Sulawesi - we did almost nothing but laze around, so hopefully that will be a shorter blog.
As I said earlier, I'm in Bangkok at the moment. Nicole and I are spending two days with our new friend from Myanmar, Jenna, before departing northward for the Laos border. It was almost two years ago (October 2012) that I was in Thailand last, and this time it's... well, "same same but different." The sameness comes from the fact that we are once again spending two days in Bangkok before heading north to the town of Chiang Mai. The differences are... For one, I'm not a novice traveler anymore. October '12 seems like an age ago! Second of all, Chiang Mai is not the final destination this time, but just a stop on our way to northern Laos. Third, whereas last time we rushed between the major sights during our two days, this time we're taking it easy and seeing Bangkok from quite a different perspective. Nicole, Jenna and I went to the mall today. We wanted to exchange money and Nicole and Jenna were in pursuit of new notebooks. I ended up buying new Keens (sports sandals) because my old ones were truly worn out after 2 1/2 years (they got a superglue repair job at Inle Lake.) We bought gourmet popcorn and perused the other gourmet specialties. And now I'm relaxing with a beer and blogging. No rushing, no sightseeing, no particularly touristy activities. Walking around the mall today made me feel like I was having regular old weekend in Jakarta. I felt just like an expat again and not a backpacker. It was nice, actually.
Tomorrow it's off to Chiang Mai, and hopefully across the Laos border into Huay Xai. That leaves me with quite a bit more blogging to do... But, with these lovely desktop computers with real keyboards at the hostel, perhaps I can even cover Togean Islands tomorrow. (Maybe... don't hold me to any promises!)
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