The last you’d heard, it was January 3rd, and I was heading to Makassar, Sulawesi. From what we had heard, there were about fourteen other ETAs heading into South Sulawesi on the same day as us or the day after, but we miscalculated by a day. There are two ETAs who live in Makassar, but neither of them was in, so we had to crash at a hotel for the night. Makassar isn’t a very interesting city, but it’s on the ocean and is known throughout Indonesia as having the best seafood in the entire country. Long story short, Makassar is not a bad place to spend 24 hours. We spend most of that time eating amazing seafood and sleeping.
The next day, two ETAs, Chris and Jonthon, flew into the Mak along with Jonthon’s friend Angad, who was visiting from the states. Chris is one of the guys who lives in Makassar, so we chilled at his house for a few hours in sarongs playing board games. Then we headed back into the city to watch the sunset over the water with some drinks and calamari. The calamari was possibly the best I’ve ever had, and it’s still haunting my dreams. The sunset wasn’t bad either.
After a few sundowners, we headed to Lae-Lae for a fish feast. The LP claims that Lae-Lae is one of the top five restaurants in all of Indonesia, and I don’t know that I would go that far, but I wouldn’t ever turn down a Lae-Lae meal. We shared an enormous dinner of ikan rica-rica and kangkung, before heading to the bus station. There were four more ETAs coming in from Java, who were planning on grabbing a night bus to Tana Toraja. Dre and I were going to follow, but at the last minute, Jonthon and Angad invited us to go to Majene for a couple days. Jonthon is stationed in Majene, and he promised we’d have a good time. I was never one to turn down a last minute invitation to a seaside fishing village, so we took that nightbus instead.
Jonthon was a great host, and Majene, although a little out of the way (a 10 hour bus-ride to the middle of nowhere), is as quaint and picturesque as one could imagine. I would be extremely jealous of Jonthon if he wasn’t so far from an airport.
We arrived in Majene at about five o’clock in the morning and passed out. We were supposed to visit Jonthon’s school that day, but none of us wanted to, so we didn’t. We bummed around until lunchtime. Jonthon took us to one of his favorite warungs, and then we did a quick tour of the town. We sat at the town harbour for a little while, and of course, attracted dozens of local kids, who were content to stare at us for an hour. For dinner that night, some of Jonthon’s friends took us north along the coach to the village of Somba for another fish feast. Those Sulawesians love their fish feasts. This time, we were in a shack right in the sand and got to try flying fish – the local specialty. The sunset was beautiful, the fish was good, and we were stuffed on the ride home. It was already a pretty perfect day, but we stopped on the way home to buy some ice cream and coconut biscuits for dessert. Angad passed out, but Jonthon, Dre and I stayed up dipping biscuits in ice cream and singing Rent.
We spent the second day visiting Jonthon’s school, which is so different from my school it’s laughable. There were very few teachers to be seen, no classes in session, and the students were just sort of milling around and hanging out or climbing coconut palms and then drinking coconut milk in the back. I didn’t mind this last part, since I love coconut, and I got more than my fill.
The school is an SMK, which is kind of like a vocational school. This particular SMK specializes in computers and cosmetology, so Dre and I got free facials and then spoke to the girls about beauty. I spent a good twenty minutes explaining why I was brown, and why I’m glad to be brown, and how brown is beautiful in the states. After we left school, Jonthon took us to a beach where we worked on getting even more brown.
We were obligated to go to Jonthon’s headmasters house that evening for dinner – his headmaster was celebrating the birth of his granddaughter. It was as awkward as these things always are. We sat there and let everyone gawk at us, and then we had an absolutely brilliant meal, which always makes up for the freak show they put us through. Almost always. After dinner, Angad caught a bus back to Makassar so he could fly home, and Dre, Jonthon and I slept for a few hours before waking up to catch a bus to Pare-Pare.
Pare-Pare is about halfway between Majene and the city of Rantepao and falls right along the route from Makassar to Rantepao. There were ten more ETAs heading up from Makassar that morning to Tana Toraja. They had rented some cars and agreed to pick us up on their way. It was great to see everyone again, and even better to switch from an unairconditioned commuter bus to a brand new Kijang. It took just short of twelve hours to make the entire trip, but it was well worth it.
Tana Toraja is one of the most interesting places I’ve ever been in the entire world, and is probably my third favorite place in Indonesia. The Torajan people are known for their elaborate funeral ceremonies, and they are more than willing to let tourists come and watch, as long as they bring gifts of sugar and cigarettes.
Wherever you go in Indonesia, you can see really great reenactments or performances of ceremonies and traditional dances, but this is just about the only place where the ceremony is legitimate. They’re not reenacting a funeral or even making the funeral more exciting for tourists. This is a beautiful tradition that is still alive and thriving in Tana Toraja. I can’t really describe just how amazing it was, so check out my pictures to see for yourself. The outfits are beautiful and there were enough animal sacrifices to last me many years.
We spent most of our first day at the funeral and then the second day was spent white-water rafting. For some reason, the best way to get to the river was to drive to the top of a mountain, and then hike down the mountain in lifevests and helmets with paddles in our hands. It was a beautiful hike, past waterfalls and through rice paddies (it sort of looked like Rivendell), but I thought that there had to have been a way that would lead to fewer blisters.
Rafting was great. There were some pretty big rapids and tons of iguanas. I was kind of grumpy for the first ten minutes, because I tried to sit in the front of the raft, but the guide told me that the men had to sit in the front. This made no sense, especially because there were girls sitting in the front of other rafts. I was tempted to break his nose with my paddle, but I didn’t.
We spent our final morning in Toraja visiting cave graves outside the city. After elaborate funeral ceremonies, the dead are laid to rest in family graves in man-made or natural caves. We crawled through some pretty tiny tunnels to visit some of the sites. In one of the tunnels we had to slide through on our stomachs, and there were giant spiders everywhere.
Caves, tunnels and spiders don’t freak me out, even when there are skulls lying everywhere, but the tau-tau that are out in front of the graves are super creepy. To mark the graves, life-size replicas of the deceased are placed outside of the caves. In the case of a large family grave, there may be up to thirty of these tau-tau hanging out in the clothes of the dead. Actually, during the day they look pretty stupid, but I’d imagine at night they would be terrifying.
After the cave sites, we jumped back in our cars and headed back to Makassar. This time it only took about ten hours. We arrived back at Chris and Samson’s house at about one o’clock in the morning, but don’t think we went to bed. Most of us had flights to catch in the morning, so almost everyone just stayed up to hang out. Most of us had been traveling almost constantly for December and January, and we were all pretty reluctant to leave each other’s company. In fact, I was so reluctant, that instead of going back to my school, I went to Borneo.
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