...J&J's Excellent Adventure: 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".