Spring Break in Toraja and Ambon

We just got back from 9 days of traveling around Indonesia with Greg’s friend Billy from High School. He’s leaving Surabaya today, and Greg is in the final stretch of the school year – the last day is May 30^th and the big swim meet is coming up in two weeks. Time is flying!

As soon as school ended for Spring Break, Greg and I flew to Makassar in South Sulawesi. We met Billy fresh from China in the Makassar airport, and stayed with an older Baha’i lady who’s daughter (and granddaughter) lives in Surabaya. Several members of the very large Baha’I community of Makassar came to visit us. I was able to share the recent happenings in Surabaya (such as the Ruhi party), but didn’t learn much about activities in Makassar. Greg, Billy, and I explored the city a bit and discovered that there’s live music every weekend at the shore, and the city is walkable and nice. Surabaya is undoubtedly our least favorite Indonesian city to date!

From Makassar we took an 8-hour bus trip to the famous Tanah Toraja, stopping along the way to buy rambutans, dukuh, and salak, fruits that are as ordinary to us now as apples and oranges. We met a young Irish woman traveling alone, and ended up staying at the same hotel (a $6 a night place) and touring with her. We hired a tour guide and car to take us to the sights, and it was totally worth it. Tanah Toraja is a really beautiful area in the mountains that reminds me of a tropical Colorado – jagged cliffs, blue skies, rice fields…? The houses all have an inverted-boat-shaped roof which peaks on either end. They’re carved and painted with beautiful designs in the four direction colors (the same everywhere!) which symbolize things thing betel leaf for hospitality, roosters for justice (cock fighting used be the decision-making tool), and a sun motif to symbolize the Great Creator. They’re also decorated with horns from sacrificed buffalo. The Torajan people have a very interesting view of the afterlife – when a person dies, the family keeps the body around and calls the person “sick” for months or years, during which time they prepare for the funeral. Depending on the status of the person, the funeral could mean the sacrifice of hundreds or thousands of water buffalo and pigs, a huge gathering, and a procession that places the body in a cliff with a wooden effigy put outside. That’s pretty simplified, but our guide was very informative. Basically, everything seemed to be about death and burial. We visited a tree that had babies buried into the trunk, too. We also took a terrific hike through rice fields and up a hillside, and got to sample some Torajan food – red rice and chicken cooked inside bamboo with coconut and spices. We returned to Makassar on the night bus (not so enjoyable) and flew to Ambon.

Ambon is, I believe, the capital city of the Molucca islands – the real ‘spice islands’ that all those famous people were after. It has a history of being conquered, and has the Banda islands (the clove islands) to the south-east, and the Molucca’s (the nutmeg islands) to the north-west. As in, there used to be cloves and nutmeg only on those islands. It’s far enough east that the people seem really different from people in Java – they’re tall, dark, have Jewish-looking noses, bushy eyebrows, kinky hair, and are very soft-spoken. As opposed to Javanese who are small, petite, Asian-looking, and generally noisy – a little like Italian is spoken. The Ambonese also apparently think it’s rude to stare at strangers, which was a great change from Surabaya, where it’s totally acceptable for a person of any age to openly gawk and shout insults. That said, Ambon is still recovering from a recent religious conflict. There didn’t seem to be an excess of poverty, but the fishing is done using some pretty unethical methods and all waste is dumped into the bay, which is filthy. I read an account that said that when Wallace was classifying species in Ambon bay it was incredible and hundreds of things he saw were apparently indigenous and are now just gone. Billy was able to dive in the bay, and said there were still some really incredible things in the water, but that it was so dirty he didn’t want to get in – and saw a dead whale. Greg and I dove the first day, and though we did see some cool stuff, it was nothing compared to Bunaken in diversity and color. Plus, our dive guide was pretty useless. Later, Greg and I drove to the other side of the island to meet a Baha’i family. We had a great time with them, walking to a nearby hot spring and eating lots of mangosteens. At lunch time, a Baha’i man came with his son from the neighboring island of Seram, too. There was a lot that we couldn’t understand, but it was a great visit.