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Published: October 7th 2009
In keeping with tradition our journey from Flores to Sulawesi was.. err.. interesting to put it mildly. Like we said in our last blog we'd decided to make use of the Pelni Ferries that travel all across Indonesia to get between the 2 destinations. We had no ideas on what it would be like but when the ship pulled up we got quite excited. We'd joked about it being like a cruise liner and it really was... well the ship was... the journey itself was probably as far away from a cruise as you could be without being on dry land! Although there is the option of 1st - 4th class on these boats there was no way we could afford 1st class (around $US80 a ticket) and the 2nd - 4th classes are separate sexes so we could only get economy tickets... or cattle class as it is rightly called!
We should had seen what was coming when we went to board the ship along with Tamil and Marusha from Slovinia who would be our travel friends for the coming weeks. There were so many people at the port all crushing each other to get on all at once,
and this was while people were trying to get off too and all out one small door and one single ramp. Once we got on the boat we followed the tide of people going up and up the internal stairs whilst trying to avoid the hundreds of people who were already laying and sitting on them. Finally we reached the very top deck which was empty and we found a place at the edge just hoping it wouldn't rain that evening. It only took about 10 minutes before the top deck was also full up with bodies all over the floor and at that point we started to think about moving around.. how was it going to be possible?! We'd lost Tamil & Marusha in the crush but chances of finding them now were slim so we thought we'd wait until we got going then go and have a look.
We moved places a couple of times on the ship to stay with the other Westeners of which there were only 6 of us.. not that it was scary or anything but in case we needed to go to the loo or anything there were people to look after
our things. One place we chose to sit was awful. We should have realised that the huge space behind the chimney was empty for a reason, that reason being the floor was covered in oil and you got choked from the diesel fumes so we moved from there to find somewhere to try and sleep. We spotted a place just one deck down below us so Dale jumped down and the bags were passed to him. Sophie didn't want to jump (as she's a big girl!) so decided to walk down which seemed easy enough in principle but was anything but! A kind boy helped her get down there which was a good job becuase the floor on every deck and every staircase.. in fact every surface in the boat including the life rafts and areas outside the safety barriers was covered in people. You literally couldn't walk anywhere without having to wake and move people out the way. Added to that it was like a maze to get to our designated sleeping spot and every turn we took was a dead end or the wrong way. In the end it took the best part of an hour to go
Fallen graves
Lots of them have fallen exposing the skeletons & skulls all over the floordown what we thought would be one flight of steps!
We got a few hours sleep on the dirty floor with the cockroaches to keep us company along with the men who decided to play their guitar all night.. and the other man who decided to sing the call to prayers at 3am for all those Muslims on board. When the sun came up it made moving around the boat slightly easier but only for the reason that everyone moved to one side of the boat (the side the sun wasn't on). There were so many people on this boat that if you looked at the horizon we were actually going along at a severe angle from the weight of everyone on the one side! We found a map of the ship showing that there should have been a maximum of 1,000 economy passengers on board but from the amount of people we thought that there must have been around 5,000 or more, it was just crazy not to mention dangerous should anything happen.. did people not learn from Titanic!? To make things worse, when they check the tickets they lock all the doors on the lower inside decks
to stop people moving around, this meant that if you happened to be in the toilet at this point you got locked in that floor until they'd finished which took about 1 hour. We were so shocked that they did this, the dangers involved should anything happen are unthinkable and we can't believe that this kind of thing is allowed Indonesia or not.
Also on the boat we were constantly surrounded by young boys all keen to practise their English with us. Of couse we don't mind this at all but on this occasion things got a little tedious. There was one boy in particular who was very polite and so proud that he knew a bit of English and wanted to impress his brother and sister with his skills. We were happy to chat to him but after around 3 hours of him repeating the same phrases over and over again we couldn't stand it any more and Dale had to politely hint that we were feeling quite tired and wanted to get some rest for a bit. He seemed to understand and would be quiet for a few minutes but then would start up again, in the
end we really had had enough and we both had to make it obvious we could stand it no more by reading our books to ignore him so he'd get the message. We felt awful but sometimes you have to be brutal!
For our last few hours we couldn't stand the searing sun, the choking fumes and the soot that was now pumping from the chimney any longer so we went to find refuge elsewhere. This was found outside some 1st class cabins on a nice carpeted floor in an air con corridor which we were sure had been locked before, we even had a peek in a 1st class cabin and restaurant and were predictable jealous of the beds, showers and tv in each cabin not to mention the nice seats and food they were eating!
At 3pm and after 18 hours on the boat we docked in Makassar, Sulawesi just glad the ordeal was over! To be fair to Pelni the ships are actually quite nice and do have good facilities if you get to use them, but the amount of people on this boat was a joke, even the Indonesians we spoke to were quite
shocked and said it was not normal that it was this full. We think it was because of the upcoming Idul Fitri holiday and so many people travelling around that caused this and just hoped our 2nd Pelni journey would be a bit better.
Makassar was just a stop off for us to catch our breath before heading North to Tana Toraja area. We did manage to sample some of the famous fresh fish here though in the highly acclaimed Lae Lae restaurant. This was a fantastic restaurant where you got to pick out your fish from the huge ice boxes, have it cooked in their marinade on the BBQ then you sit down at huge shared tables and tuck in with your hands (no knife & fork here!). Best of all it's super cheap and for just $US8 we enjoyed a huge fish each along with of course rice and vegetables.. great! It's not just the restaurants who do good fish because the following night Lae Lae was jam packed so we went to one of the roadside Warungs (basic cafe) and again enjoyed the same quality fresh fish and rice meal... it's lucky we like fish as
it's pretty much all we ate from this point onwards in Indonesia!
Tana Toraja
One of the highlights and main tourist attractions in Sulawesi is the beautiful Tana Toraja area with the main influx of people arriving between May and August for the funeral season. Funerals here are a big business, not only for the amount of tourists who come to see these rituals but for the locals too because they are a 4 day event when family return from all over Indonesia to attend. For us it was a little strange to get our heads around their way of seeing off the dead becuase it's so far away from what we are used to but again we found the events very entertaining and an interesting if brutal way to say goodbye to loved ones.
The funerals generally take place over 4 days with various events happening on each day. These funerals do not take place immediately after the person has passed away though, they can be anything up to a year afterwards with the dead body staying in the family home until this big event. Like the funeral we attended, families can also wait until partners
have died so they can have a joint funeral for both parents. The reason for this is twofold, one is that they have to wait for funeral season when the harvest is over, and two because they have to save up the money. This is a huge cost to bear for a family when you factor in the sacrificial buffalo at around $US500 - $US3000 each (the more important the person the more buffalo you have to have), the event itself, digging the tomb, the tau tau at $US400 etc, the costs would be about the same if not more than a funeral in the UK.
After the funerals the bodies are buried into rock faces or boulders that are found all across the area. These tombs are dug out by hand with one tomb costing upwards of $US3000 to create, each tomb can hold anything between 1 and 12 coffins with one tomb per family. Inside the tombs the dead are left with items from their everyday lives which they might need in the afterlife, we spotted combs, knives and various clothes items in the ones we saw. The 'ordinary' people tend to get buried in boulders while
tau tau at Ke'te Kesu
It's like standing in front of an audience the huge rock faces like those at Londa and Ke'te Kesu (see below) are reserved for the upper classes. Here at these huge burial grounds you will find the tau tau's
which are huge wooden dolls carved from Jackfruit Trees and are meant to represent the deceased. These overlook the area all with their arms outstretched to greet you and are dressed in the deads clothes which are apparently changed regularly to keep them looking fresh. These tau tau's are very sought after by collectors but we really couldn't understand why anyone would want to own something that was so spooky looking.. not to mention the bad karma you would receive if you stole one!
We actually thought we'd missed the funeral season arriving at this time but when we found out there was a few going on that week we were really pleased. Along with Tamil & Marusha and Fleur & Sten we booked a guide and a 4x4 for a day trip around the area and a visit to a funeral. We had all thought about doing it on our own on bikes but it would have been very difficult to rock up at a private funeral
speaking virtually no Indonesian and tagging along.. we would have felt very awkward to put it mildly. There is also an etiquette to visiting the funeral where you have to take gifts for the family, cigarettes & sugar (very healthy!) in our case and wear the right clothes too, black or dark colours are best.
There were 2 funerals going on the day we went on our guide, one was a reception day where the extended family join the celebrations after the sacrifices and the other was the main animal sacrifice day. With 2 strict vegetarians in our group and none of us being that keen to see the killing of many animals we chose the former option. During the sacrifice day any number of buffalo can be killed from one upwards depending on the status of the person or people who have died and it's in the obvious way of slitting their necks so very noisy and messy too. When we turned up we were glad we'd opted for this day because this alone was enough to churn all our stomachs.. veggie or not with the scene in front of us resenbling a massacre.. which in a way
it was!
The funeral we attended was a mother & father who had died 1 year apart, the children had wanted to bury them together and with 2 people of a fairly high status a total of 20 buffalo along with some pigs were killed, what we saw were the gruesome remains of this and it wasn't something we were totally prepared for! The floor where the animals had been killed was a swamp of blood & guts, around this were the hides of the buffalo all arranged neatly on the floor and spread even further around were piles and piles of meat all being carved up by groups of men. We were expecting a terrible smell but it wasn't actually that bad as we made our way to our seating area being careful not to slip on the blood puddles and trying to keep our breakfast down. Once there the sons & daughters were brought over to us by our guide and we offered our gifts to them which were gratefully received.
We were a little uneasy about attending the funeral of someone we didn't know, especially as tourists, but when we asked the family if they
Fallen graves
these have fallen out from their hangings minded they said they were always happy to have others celebrating the lives of their relatives so didn't see it as a problem. We were glad that we'd decided to go with a guide because none of us would have felt comfortable just walking in on such an event we have no knowledge about. To be honest it wasn't the most exciting of days to go as we only got to see the giving out of the meat, we were told the other days are more about music & celebration but we all found it quite fascinating anyway to see something so far removed from what we are used to back at home. After this day they take the bodies away to the cave graves on foot and we were invited back to take part but we all felt that this day was probably a more intimate day just for the family and we wouldn't want to intrude so we left them to enjoy their celebration after a few hours. First though we had to say goodbye to the deceased... In Toraja tradition when someone has passed away and is still in your presence you must involve them as you
would a living person so you have to ask permission to leave and say goodbye.. all quite strange but we went along with it as if it was normal. To be honest we expected to walk up to the coffins and have the family laugh at us like it was some candid camera moment where they tricked stupid tourists but it didn't happen and we each took it in turns to say goodbye doing our best to keep a straight face!
As we said our day also consisted of a visit to some of the prime Toraja culture sites in the area. Again these provided a fascinating insight into the way of life out here. These are some of the other things we saw...
Londa - this was our first stop of the day and a real dive into the deep end view of how they do things round here! Londa is a 300 year old family burial site with hundreds of coffins either suspended above the caves, dug into the caves or placed inside. Many of the hanging coffins have fallen down exposing the remains of the dead and the whole place has a really eerie feel
to it.. definately not somewhere you'd want to come in the dark! Inside the caves are more coffins, some new and some very old and rotten with skulls and bones everywhere so you have to be careful where you stand. It really isn't something you see every day and with death and the dead being quite taboo in England it's quite shocking to see it so openly here. There are lots of tau tau's here overlooking everything and we found it felt like they really were watching over us as we explored the area.
Ke'te Kesu - another burial site but quite different from Londa. Here the graves are carved into the rockface with little wooden doors at each one. Again there were lots of tau tau's, probably because this area is famous for the carvers who make them with each one taking months to create. This is quite a pretty area to walk around with panoramic views across the rice paddies and out towards the mountains so we enjoyed a little walk here taking in the scenery.
Kambira Baby Grave Tree - this was probably the most moving of all the burial sites we visited, not for
the reason it was just for babies but it seemed such a nice idea to all of us. Around Tana Toraja there are certain trees that are used for the sole purpose of burying babies that do not yet have teeth, any older than this and they are buried in the traditional way as above. With the babies they are placed into holes cut out of the tree in a standing position. Doors are put over the holes and as the tree grows the baby is effectively enveloped in the tree as it grows around it leaving just a small niche to show where it used to be. We were told that there are around 200 babies in the tree we saw with it having been used for many many years.
The following day we decided to go out again to see a little more under our own steam so hired out some motos and took to the hills to see some of the beautiful scenery. As we went higher and higher we got panoramic views of the terraced landscape in front of us, saw many more burial sites with lots more being carved as we passed and got
hellos all the way. This really is a beautiful area and if we saw it as a bonus that we got to experience one of their main events with them, it really is worth the trip here just to meet them and check out the sights. Although a little messy the funerals are something that we would never have thought still happened when sitting back at our desks in the UK.. we're not sure we'd have believed someone if they came back and told us they'd seen 20 buffalo slaughtered, skulls in caves and babies in trees but it really does happen out here and their way of life is totally fascinating to see for yourself, along with that they are such friendly people and we thoroughly enjoyed our time here and would encourage anyone to come and see it for themselves!
But enough of the blood.. we needed to wash ourselves clean and the best place to do this is in the sea so our next stop is one of Sulawesi's top island retreats.. Kadadiri Island in the Togeans.. promising pure white sand, crystal clear waters, snorkelling and even the largest crabs in the world!
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All that blood and gore is giving me the creeps. :( Hopefully, they give enough warning, so there is time to escape the area before it starts.