Tana Toraja and bliss in Bali

Well, it basically took me an entire year to get through all my photos from Papua, Sulawesi, and Bali. Wow.  I guess that is an indication of how much fun we have in life right? And good thing I finished the Indonesia photos because we are about to take off for Cuba on Friday! It should be a a very interesting time to be in Cuba because we will arrive the day before Castro's funeral and be in Havana the day of the funeral (which is not in Havana). Luckily the ban on sales of booze will be lifted three days into our vacation. =)

To try and stay ahead of our vacations (what a terrible problem to have) I wanted to post one last time on our travels in Indonesia. In particular, on Tana Toraja, a remote area in the highlands of Sulawesi that takes 12 hours to get to by bus with a dude sleeping under your feet. What a magical place! I heard about Toraja years ago during our other trips to Indonesia and I've had it high high high on my list of places I wanted to see. Toraja is a really fascinating place because the people here live to die. Death is a celebration....something you and your family save money for your entire life. It was a refreshing perspective to be exposed to, and exposed we were because Torajans are the most lovely hosts - welcoming you to funerals, their houses, and their small villages. We spent five days in Rantepao and the surrounding villages and I must admit, I soaked every minute of this time up. Please note, there is a lot of focus on death in Toraja and therefore my photographs. This shouldn't be disturbing though because you need to remember that they celebrate life through death and they remember their ancestors this way. Right after we got back from Indonesia, National Geographic came out with an article on Toraja that will do a better job of explaining their culture than I will!

Way back when Torajans used to place their deceased relatives on the sides of cliffs. This is one example of a cliff burial, complete with human skulls. We saw a lot of human bones actually, but we didn't find this disturbing because Torajans did not see it that way - they want to have their ancestors around them.

Jay and I were part of the tourist attraction. There are a fair amount of tourists in Toraja, but they were almost all middle class Indonesians who giggled, laughed, and wanted their photo taken with the tall white girl or tall white boy- note the huge tomb behind this family and me.

I loved the art that decorated much of their lives and buildings. This shows a spotted white water buffalo, a sign of wealth to Torajans.

Here we are in front of a traditional village of tongkonans - these are houses or sometimes rice storage areas (if small). I'm not kidding, people do really live in these and we were actually able to go into one; they can be larger than you expect.

Tongkonans and rice terraces with a water buffalo

 Our second full day in Toraja was spent at a huge funeral for a wealthy man. While there were a few (four?) other Western tourists at the funeral they all left within an hour or so. Jay and I stayed with our guide (who invited us to the funeral) the entire day and we are so glad we did. Animal rights activists best not ever go to Toraja or especially to a Torajan funeral. Even though the two of us are really quite accepting of other cultures and traditions, we found it hard to see live pigs tied up and left sitting in the hot sun waiting to be offered to the family of the deceased man. Some of these pigs were killed and used to feed the hundreds of funeral guests. Other pigs were eventually untied and put into a pen for the family to keep for food at a later date. To Torajans, this was just another part of their traditional ceremony. We have Thanksgiving complete with turkeys, Easter with ham, and every other holiday filled with meat. They do too, but their celebration is the funeral and the only difference is that they hold the pig and butcher it right on site. We avoid having to think about that in America.....so it isn't a bad thing to remember where your food comes from. Still, I wish they didn't leave those pigs out in the hot sun. Man.

For someone who delights in taking photographs, Toraja is a dream. People are insulted if you don't take their photo and they always agree and smile when you ask to take their photograph.

The dancing, song, and ceremonies were a wonder to watch. These men would dance their way out while leading part of the family of the deceased to the sound of a man on a bullhorn announcing the different places in Indonesia the family came from for the funeral.

 Women singing to guests at the funeral

 Special men (men of power??) at the funeral

The woman on the left hosted us (we gave her the customary gift of a massive pack of cigarettes) and she insisted on showing us the deceased man. We couldn't say no, it would have been insulting, but we still felt odd as strangers going to pay our respects to this man. He is in the red coffin and to the right is his widow, who has been sleeping near him on the bed to the right of his coffin for months while they prepped for the funeral.

The family built an entire area for the funeral complete with tongkonans, the seating areas where we hung out, and a buffalo fighting arena. Here we are with some of the family members who were pouring us palm wine, which we tried but feared getting sick from. Note the three girls in the background - they followed us all day and eventually got the nerve up to ask Jay to show them some of the buffalo fight videos he took on his phone. After giggling a lot.

Water buffalo can be aggressive? Who knew? These beasts are usually as chill as they come, but I guess they don't like to share grass patches and Torajans take advantage of this for fights at the funerals. Even though it looks like one buffalo is going for a guy, it isn't...it is heading for the other buffalo and the dude is trying to get out of the way.

 Jay and shortest Marlboro Man ever? He called himself "Marlboro Man", it wasn't my idea.

We spent another day riding local transportation and wandering around villages high on the hillsides above the main town of Rantepao. What a gorgeous day of rice terraces and tongkonans!

Loved hitching a ride back into Rantepao after a day up high in the villages.

I was sad to leave Toraja.....but so glad I finally made it there. We ended our trip with three days in Bali. We didn't have enough time to get out to the real Bali to escape the insane touristy areas, but enough time to gorge on amazing food and get some cheap massages. These women were planting rice near our guesthouse in Canggu. I wish I could bottle the scent of Bali and keep it with me forever.

Beaches in south Bali are way too crowded for us....but I had found a website that listed awesome deserted beaches in Bali. It wasn't easy to find this one (picture J&J wandering around on roads on the Bukit Peninsula for at least an hour before finding this sign) but damn, it was worth it.

Aside from the ubiquitous plastic trash, we had this beach to ourselves along with a dude who was determined to sell us some bracelets. We got the "I have five kids to support at home" line to which I always smile and say "no thank you" when I'm really thinking "so wear a condom next time dude".

 Uluwatu Temple and the famous break

Uluwatu's cliffs

Our flight back to Taiwan was on a Hello Kitty plane. Even the toilet paper had Hello Kitty on it. Yup.  

If you are nuts, all our photos from the trip are here:

https://goo.gl/photos/hzK1N7SGXTWSKXbu9

It has been eight years.....

Women in Myanmar

Each presidential election marks a milestone for Jay and me because, after 13 months of traveling abroad, we came back to America the day President Obama was elected. Thus, each November election marks the number of years we have been back and gives us time to pause and reflect on how we have grown and changed during this time in addition to contemplating how our country has changed. Eight years ago, right before leaving South Africa, we threatened to stay abroad if Obama wasn't elected. We had, after all, just been traveling for over a year during the Bush presidency. These were not great years to travel as Americans, but we never hid from the fact we were Americans. We believed, and still do, in the importance of showing other people in the world that Americans are not all close-minded, clueless, or brashly conservative. Boy, did we take some heat while we traveled under the shadow of Bush [Jay explained some of this in January 2008 (https://jj-adventure.blogspot.com/2008/01/america-as-seen-from-kiwi-land.html) and I did as well in September 2008 (https://jj-adventure.blogspot.com/2008/09/foreign-perceptions.html)] but we felt so vindicated and proud to arrive back on the day Obama was elected (https://jj-adventure.blogspot.com/2008/11/yes-yes-yes-obama-yahoo-oh-yeah-and-we.html). Now, eight years later, Jay and I are beyond dismayed to see our country go totally backwards and elect a man who has no business sitting in the White House. I could write a novel about why I can't stand Trump, but I'm still currently grieving for the country, depressed at the thought of a hotter and less hospitable planet, and shocked (but not surprised, if that makes any sense) at how this man has emboldened racists, homophobes, radicals, and religious supremacism, among others. Nothing he stands for represents me or my America.

My America appreciates and celebrates diversity. We are not afraid of immigrants, we wrap blankets of warmth around refugees, we wave pride flags, we understand the importance of our habitat and take care of the planet, we value the scientific method, we are inventive and  progressive, we accept you whether you walk into a mosque, church, synagogue, or forest to pray. We realize that we are not in a bubble and that what our country does impacts other countries and their citizens. We are wiser than those who voted for Trump. As a nod to diversity, I wanted to show you faces of people we met while traveling across the globe for 13 months. I selected a photo of someone from almost every country we visited. Please look at the diversity, the laughter, the excitement, and the acceptance of each person in every photo. We are one world.....not just one country. I will fiercely celebrate that belief until I die.  

It was so expensive to get around the islands of French Polynesia that we took to hitchhiking. On this day we had all of our bags with us as we tried to get to the ferry to take us back to the island of Tahiti. A family stopped in their truck to pick us up, but they were pretty packed themselves and we were worried we would take up too much space. We tried to explain this with lots of smiles and broken French and they eventually nodded, waved, and took off with smiles on their faces. About five minutes later, they came back....refusing to leave us on the side of the road. They stuck Jay, some of their kids, and our bags in the back of the truck. I got to go in the front of the truck where the woman who was driving showered me with local fruits and let me hang with her daughter and puppy. They left us at the ferry terminal with a huge bag of awesome fruits I'd never heard of and a real sense of island kindness.

 

We worked for two months on grape vines with all Kiwi crews in Marlborough, New Zealand. Many of these Kiwis were "uneducated," as many hard laborers in America are.....note that I put "uneducated" in quotes for so many reasons. I fully realize that you don't have to have a college degree to be educated. Many of our wise friends have no college degrees and they know a hell of a lot more than me! Individuals simply have to read, think beyond themselves, know how to fact check, etc. These hard-working Kiwis were smart, sassy, goofy, and really fun to be around on the vineyards. They were, in every sense of the word, well educated. Jay and I took a lot of heat from them about George W. Bush, especially during lunch breaks, but we made it clear we did not represent that half of America. After that was settled we took a lot of heat simply because Kiwis love to joke around and we were easy targets. I loved it. Want to know something else? Us hard laborers were treated like rock stars in New Zealand. Even though we only worked for Montana Brancott (you can buy the Brancott wines in the USA) for two months, we received paid time off for Christmas, Boxing Day, New Years Eve, and New Years Day. They offered us discounts on wine. They gave us T-shirts. We had access to health care (not through this job, but just by being in New Zealand). How may migrant workers in America are treated that well?

 

I love browsing markets in different countries. You can feel the pulse of the people, their habitats, their tastes. Indonesians are such a happy bunch of people.....if you point to strange fruits in markets the vendors will hold them up to you and show you how to pick the best ones out to eat. This woman is responsible for my obsession with mangosteens. I will travel for mangosteens.

I remember this woman like I met her yesterday, not eight and a half years ago in Malaysian Borneo. We were all waiting for a bus and she came right up to us and started talking to us in English because she was learning the language and she wanted to practice. We talked for a long time and she was lovely - studying to be a nurse and one of the few people we met who still wanted to come to America despite the presence of Bush sitting in the White House. I gave her a postcard from the Adirondacks and we talked about what different places in America really look like and had a little geography lesson (no, America is not just New York City and Las Vegas). I wonder where she is today.....

I wrote about this wonderful experience in Thailand in this blog: http://jj-adventure.blogspot.com/2008/06/unh-in-bangkok-and-damnoen-saduak.html

Watching these Cambodian men load huge and heavy blocks of ice over and over again made me feel lazy and out of shape (look at the truck on the right that is loaded with ice blocks). We were waiting at a dock with a bunch of other suckers to take a tiny uncomfortable boat from Siem Reap to Battambang. Turns out that the most interesting part of that uncomfortable day was watching the activity at this little port on Tonlé Sap, a huge lake in Cambodia.

Black H'mong women followed us everywhere we went in Sapa, Vietnam. If we tried to go out for a hike on our own, by the time we finished the hike we would have an entourage of 3-10 women with us as "guides". Some tourists might find this annoying, but I got a kick out of it. These women were smart and sassy entrepreneurs who were pretty good at pushing the sale of their goods and striking up conversations with you. This was ironic because some Vietnamese people, such as our hotel owner in Sapa, would sit and play chess and smoke all day.....and then have the balls to make racist comments about the hill tribe people, calling them "lazy" and "stupid". We saw the opposite....the hill tribes folks were the ones actively seeking connections with tourists, actively learning English, and actively selling their goods. They were fantastic and on it! Jay wrote about this here: http://jj-adventure.blogspot.com/2008/08/sensational-sapa.html

It was hard to pick one photo from Burma, so I picked three (the one at the top of this blog and these two). These Kayan girls live near the town of Nyaungshwe near Inle Lake. They weave amazing fabrics and live on houses over the lake.

We did a three day trek in Myanmar from Kalaw to Inle Lake, wandering through many villages and getting small glimpses into the life of every day Burmese people. We got lucky when we walked past this village because we were able to watch a game of sepak takra (kick volleyball) in action. Imagine playing volleyball with your feet....that is sepak takr. These guys weren't messing around either, this was serious stuff. 

From all of our travels in our lives, we must say that the Burmese people really stand out as some of the kindest people we've ever met. They had far, far, less than the average Southeast Asian (at least in 2008) and yet they seemed richer and happier than most Americans in their huge houses with their huge cars and their paved highways and skyscrapers. http://jj-adventure.blogspot.com/2008/09/before-we-left-for-myanmar-we-called-it.html

Nepal was so different from Myanmar in that tourists had clearly left their mark on this country. Most of the time I asked to take photographs of people in Myanmar, they agreed through giggles and blushing cheeks. In Nepal, I would ask to take a photograph and almost always receive a polite "no" (so I obviously put the camera down). Having traveled in other countries where the locals all want to have their photos taken with me over and over again, I would imagine that might be how the Nepali people living along some of the major trekking routes felt. I was happy to respect their wishes. But this beautiful woman was different, she was shy but content to look right into my camera, asking only for a copy of the photo as payment. I never figured out how to get her a copy..... and that has bothered me for eight years now. Suggestions?

We stayed in Cape Town, South Africa with our dear friends Nickie and Carolé toward the end of our big trip. Nickie taught at a school that happened to be taking some of their students into a South African township for a day of learning and exchange and we were able to tag along. Here is what we wrote in our blog... "we ate lunch in [the] township at a place that a woman opened up to try and make a better life for herself and her family. So by eating a simple meal, we were able to put some money into the pockets of the women employed by this small restaurant. And then we headed to Mamma Amelia's orphanage. This woman started taking orphans into her home and raising them and now her home has expanded to house as many as 100 orphans at a time. She works almost entirely off of donations to feed and dress these children. In addition to our group donating money, we also brought a bunch of veggies to help them cook up some stew for the kids." I took a photo of this baby at the orphanage because he was one of the more mellow and quiet kids (not being a kid person, I gravitate to the quiet ones). I still wonder what they were giving him in the bottle, seems like the wrong color for a kiddo that young..... apple juice?

Swaziland delivered at Hlane Royal National Park with tons of rhinos and some great views of lions, elephants, warthogs, and incredible birds. But it was this amazing dancing performance that really brought home the feeling that we were in a unique, diverse, culturally-rich place. Sure, these were Swazi people performing for a bunch of rich white tourists camping in the national park. I won't deny that. But I am so thankful that they came and were willing to share their dances, songs, music, and laughter with us because it enriched my life while it encouraged a sense pride in their culture (which they may or may not have needed, I fully realize that their pride is probably just as strong without tourists around). Still, look at high high they could kick their legs! It was amazing.

Ahhhhh Mozambique. We sailed on a wooden dhow and camped on this beach that was a highway for women carrying all kinds of amazing things on their heads. Strong, beautiful women.

Our last stop was just a 12 hour layover in the United Arab Eremites, but it produced one of my favorite human photographs from the trip. I love the contrast of new and old here....old customs and religion, new money and shiny jet skis. Smiling men. Covered woman. They are all laughing and having fun and I felt happy for them.....

Celebrate diversity dear readers, if anyone actually does read this blog. As our climate warms and we have to deal with more war over resources, it is incredibly important that we respect and love one another in the global population. That is the only thing that can keep us alive and rich in happiness. Love trumps hate. It always will. 

Family and friend time back east

Beavertail State Park, RI

The end of September and the beginning of October was time for us to reconnect with so many dear old friends and to see our families back east. Our friends Erik and Britton's wedding in Vermont was the reason for the timing and we were thrilled to be in Vermont at the start of fall foliage. All of our trips back east are too short even with just family visits, so it can be hard to sneak in time with friends we care deeply about. But not this trip - this trip was fantastic because we got loads of time with our friends and our families.

 Old URI friends....Christine, Julie Fidler?, Julie Barber?, and Lance

 

Jay, Julie, Julie, Caroline, Tom, and Timmy. The last time we saw Julie Fidler and Tom, Caroline was an infant!

Allison and Jay on the beach in West Falmouth - yes - we swam right at the end of September and it was lovely!

We even managed to sneak in an entire day with our dear friend Tim around Hyannis. We left him at his car dealer to pick up his car at the end of the day where this photo was taken, I promise we did not spend the day at a car dealer. We went to the beach and swam! We ate great food! We sipped lovely cocktails! We spent precious time together catching up on life...... every minute was worth it.

 West Falmouth sunsets are the best sunsets

There is always so much to celebrate at the White household!

We somehow managed to visit Christina, Sara, Henry, and Jackson without getting a single photo of Christina or Sara. =( But we did get a shot of Jay pulling off some serious air guitar on the trampoline with Henry and Jackson.

Things got serious when I was challenged to a game of chess by Henry, who eventually lost interest (I was too slow for him) and Jackson took over. I love the lecture I appear to be getting from Jackson here.

 Jackson, Julie, Henry, and Jay - nephews with their new Slow Loris shirts!

 Boat time on the Hudson with my awesome parents

 The mighty Hudson

 

We finally made it to the popular newish bar in Valatie with my parents. We have only been hearing about this joint for a few years now! They had good beer on tap and it was a cute set-up for little ol' Valatie. I can't get over how Valatie is getting cooler and cooler stuff in town, while historic old Kinderhook has empty storefronts because of a crazy landlord who charges his tenants too much, resulting in empty stores. I hope someday that will change because sweet Kinderhook is such an awesome old town.

And now we are in Vermont crushing apples to make cider for Erik and Britton's wedding.

  Rochester, VT and the view from Erik and Britton's wedding barn

 Old friends - Jane and Jay

We (J&J with the Bradleys) rented a hilarious old house stuck in the late 70s with amazing views and wonderful roads all around. The morning of the wedding saw us playing with our friend's kiddos (memory games that they could beat us at) and going on walks around the wonderful town and property of the rental house.

 Erik and Britton pulled out all the stops....this barn was gorgeous and ready for a party!

 The wonderful couple

 Rhode Island friends

 Prim and proper: J&J, Mike, and Eric

 Better representation of our friendships

 Sad to leave our friends and New England in fall..... but we loved the brunch in a gorgeous area of VT.

 Anacortes beer festival (poor Jay had an awful cold and stayed home).....but Jake, Kat, Liz, and I had fun

Fun with friends continued! Mike D. came to visit from AK and we got to take him on a local walk with our favorite pooch, Denali. This was a pretty funny walk.....I was the gimp with the bad knee, Mike was recovering from the Anacortes beer festival, and Jay had a cold. We didn't make it too far but we had fun!

September photos: https://goo.gl/photos/Ywtz9d1isjSSDkv7A

October photos: https://goo.gl/photos/rAvBYvSVAZkLjTmNA