'Hello Mister'

Only on my last day in Manado (North Sulawesi), as I made my regular walk between the hotel and the area with the shopping malls and eateries I thought I should really have counted the 'hello mister's one day. One young girl had just called a shy and early one when the two boys sitting next to her noticed me too and started running frantically towards then alongside me, screaming it out: 'hello misteeeer!' (emphasizing the last syllable as Southeast Asians always tend to put the emphasis on the last syllable of English words), then bumping into each other and falling down on the street, leaving one crying. Always an expression of genuine friendliness, I encountered 'hello mister's in other countries I visited as well, but Indonesia was the first country on this trip where it was so consistent I really was inclined to think they must learn this in school!

Not on Bali though, where instead the ubiquitous phrase is 'need transport?' I left you on the ferry from Java to Bali last time. I was actually surprised that it took about 3 hours by bus after setting foot on Bali before we arrived in Denpasar. Bali was bigger than I expected (it looks like such a tiny dot on the map). I must say my expectations of this paradisical holiday destination were not particularly high, Bali of course being a holiday destination more than a travel destination, and thinking that mass tourism would almost certainly have taken its toll. On the other hand, after a very busy travel period on Java, I was quite looking forward to relax a bit for the next two weeks, so I set out to explore some of the tourist destinations.

I started in Kuta, the infamous beach of Aussies, cool surfer dudes, too many men wearing sleeveless shirts, too many shops selling sleeveless shirts, pounding night clubs, still known also for the Bali bombings of course, but generally not distinguishable from a Spanish or probably Greek vacation resort. Part of contemporary culture here, though, so a must-see for a day or two. Yet next day I already spent mostly in Seminyak, the up-market destination north of Kuta. To Seminyak I could go back for a lazy beach holiday with friends: a nice white-sand beach, very good restaurants and trendy bars. I spent my evening drinking a sunset cocktail at the famous Ku De Ta bar, then some good Italian food and actually dancing salsa (!) in a salsa cafe where a Dutch au pair just freshly out of De Bilt functioned as 'public relations manager' (i.e., she would chat with customers).

I went to Sanur to get a perspective from a more quiet beach town, but Sanur turns out to be largely populated with 65+ Dutch people, so this was actually the other extreme compared to Kuta. It was a good place though to rent a motorcycle for a day and tour the southern Bukit peninsula. I visited the Tanah Lot and Uluwatu Hindu-Balinese temples, marvelled at the beautiful steep cliffs surrounding Ulawatu Bay and attended a traditional kecak-dance. Here, while driving through the streets of first Denpasar and then the surrounding villages, the traditional Indonesian friendliness, which is hard to find in the touristy parts of Bali, surfaced again, which was nice. In the touristed areas, I actually didn't like the Balinese too much.

The police on Bali is also well-known for its attitude towards foreigners. When renting a motorcycle, the shop reminds you that you have to have an International Driver's License, because the police will stop and fine you if you haven't. I actually got one with me (B-only, but I guessed that might suffice). Of course nowhere else in Southeast Asia is this ever necessary to rent a motorcycle, but in Bali it is. Moreover, the police is also known to fine foreigners whenever they can, so the shop told me to be careful and not make any mistakes while driving.

I was leaving the motorcycle shop looking for a gas station first (the tank is usually empty) and at the very first corner it was bingo. I was taking a left turn and normally you can make left turns if the traffic light is red (they drive on the left here). This time, because I did not want to make any potential mistake, I stopped for the red light, just to be sure. There was no sign that going left was permitted, but I missed a very small light attached to the traffic light that seemingly did indicate this. When a bus came behind me and clearly wanted to go left anyway, honking its horn, I did the same, as apparently it was allowed. After the turn there they were: the police stopped me and asked me for my license, which I happened to have. Then they said: alright, fair enough, but you made one small mistake, indicating the situation with the small light in their book. You stopped for a red light, where you should have continued, so that's 200.000 rupiah! This is only about 16-17 euro, but according to Indonesian standards this is a large amount. I was a bit angry this happening at the very first corner that I was taking and recalcitrantly I was about to tell them to take me back to the bureau, but I also wanted to continue my trip, so pragmatism set in (going to the bureau for 'justice' being a very Western thought in a country plagued by endemic corruption). I was thinking 50.000 rupiah would probably be enough for them to at least make a small profit and for me to have the idea that I paid a 'reasonable price' settling the matter. After 5 minutes of negotiation, they accepted it.

Then I went to Ubud for a couple of days, the most popular non-beach destination in Bali, well-known for its traditional Balinese culture and arts scene and made even more famous by the book and then last year's blockbuster movie "Eat, Pray, Love". Widely touted as the cultural heart of Bali, spiritual and beautiful, Ubud is still really nice; it was pretty quiet at the time I was there because of the low season and as I was feeling tired from my travels in Java I mostly relaxed in the guesthouse with swimming pool, attended a few traditional Balinese dance performances and took some walks in the hilly area surrounding Ubud, where beautiful rice fields, forests, rivers, various art shops in the countryside, a coffee place in the midst of rice fields where I could read the New York Times, made for a very relaxed (though not particularly spiritual) experience. In the evening I would smoke a sheesha in a lounge bar with Buddha-bar music.

As I made my way towards Lombok I stopped for two additional nights in Padang Bai, a small coastal town in the east of Bali with some really quiet beaches, and I took a dive trip to Tulamben up north, where the US cargo ship USAT Liberty was torpedoed by the Japanese during WWII and sank. I had never done a wreck dive, so this was very interesting: the wreck really fully overgrown with corals and an abundance of fish, even big barracudas hanging silently in the water, impressive!

The ferry to Lombok takes four hours. It's a small distance, only 35km, but it's actually an important geological and biological line running between Bali and Lombok. The Wallace Line, as it is called, separates Asian from Australian flora and fauna: during the last ice age, the Sunda Shelf connected Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Borneo to the Asian mainland, but the Lombok Strait, this seemingly small sea lane between Bali and Lombok is actually more than 250m deep (much deeper than the Strait of Malacca), was never a land bridge to Australia, and actually conveys much of the Indonesian Throughflow exchanging water between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Oh well, I guess for me at least these facts make the otherwise quite dull traverse more interesting. :)

At the ferry I met two German girls and one Dutch guy and from the port we went to the town of Senggigi together. Next morning they were planning to go to the popular Gili islands, three very small islands just off the northwest coast of Lombok and having no firm plans I decided to go with them. We went to Gili Trawangan first, the main island, which is normally supposed to be really busy and a bit of a party-island, but now it was relatively quiet and very relaxed, because, again, it was low season. It was fun, we rented bicycles on the island, celebrated the birthday of one of the girls, but low season also meant that it (still) rained a lot (also on Bali it had), so two days on the unexpectedly quiet island was actually already enough and we went back to the mainland, leaving the other Gili islands for what they were. I spent one more day with Koen, the Dutch guy, renting a motorbike to tour some villages around Mataram, but then, also considering the time left on my visa, I left Lombok for Bali again and took a flight to Makassar, Sulawesi.

Sulawesi has had quite some Dutch presence in the past as it's near the original Spice Islands (the Moluccas). In Makassar the main sight is Fort Rotterdam, which used to guard the harbour for the Dutch. In many other parts of Sulawesi, people are actually Christian, not Muslim, and churches abound. In Manado in the north in particular, one local told me, some people even have Dutch names. Central Sulawesi, where Christians and Muslims co-exist now, was inaccessible till a few years ago because of armed (religious) conflict for a long time, but peace has been restored and my plan was to go trans-Sulawesi through the mountains and valleys from Makassar to Manado.

Apart from Fort Rotterdam and (finally!) a beautiful sunset without rain, Makassar has very little to offer, so I started my Sulawesi journey going 8 hours north to Rantepao. Rantepao is the main city in the Tana Toraja valley, a valley enclosed by mountains with its people, the Torajans, still largely maintaining their elaborate animistic cultural ceremonies. As places are spread out across the valley and you need knowledge of where the ceremonies are, I hired a local Torajan guide, Manda, for a couple of days to show me around. We would just use local transport to get to the places, a variety of minibuses and jeeps to get to rougher terrain and she really was an invaluable source of information about the local culture, which is simply amazing.

First day I still went by myself to a water buffalo market to see the most valuable of animals in this region being traded. Another day we visited Toraja's famous rice terraces, because the valley is not only known for its unique and colourful culture, but also for its beautiful surroundings. We walked for almost the entire day, along rice terraces strudded with big boulders, farmers tending to their fields or their buffalos, small villages with these typical elaborately painted Torajan houses with huge boat-shaped roofs. Fortunately, for once the weather was perfect.

One day Manda took me to a so-called red house ceremony, which signifies the opening of a new such traditional family house. It quickly became apparent that this was not just a housewarming party: the ceremony would last for 4 or 5 days and the day we were there it was packed: hundreds of people. Bamboo platforms had been set up for everyone to sit on, facing the square. I had brought a big pack of cigarettes as a gift, which automatically allowed me to partake in the elaborate lunch that was presented. Both before and after lunch the village square was the theatre of an almost continuous traditional dance performance, the dance mostly by women in beautiful colourful Torajan attire, with men playing the drums and other traditional instruments. At the end, in supposedly a special last dance, even the village men danced, singing and taking the lead one by one. I sat there for hours and watched and walked around; it was fascinating.

Most famous here, however, are the Torajan funeral ceremonies. I had seen many types of graves in the landscape already when walking through the rice fields earlier and I would see even more the subsequent days as the Torajans appear to have numerous ways to bury their dead: house graves, hanging graves, stone graves (graves dug in holes in the various huge boulders just lying around in the landscape), and multiple graves put together in caves for the poorer people. For the Torajans, death is the most important 'rite de passsage' and the ceremonies surrounding it are unsurpassed. A funeral takes 4 or 5 days as well. The dead person has usually been dead for a couple of months already and is injected with formalin or some similar substance for preservation. In the mean time, notice is given to the entire family, some of which may have moved to islands as far as Papua to find better work opportunities, and all preparations for the funeral are performed, requiring setting up bamboo structures to host guests, etc.

When festivities start, it was explained to me, there's one day of buffalo fighting, at least one day of officially receiving guests, who all bring generous presents including pigs and buffalos for the family; then there's one day of sacrificing buffalos, and finally a day bringing the dead person to the grave. Manda took me to a rich man's funeral on the day of buffalo sacrifices. We needed to be early because we didn't know the exact time 'festivities' would start. As I entered the scene after taking a public jeep from Rantepao and walking along a dirt path for half an hour, it was still early morning and quiet: some villagers walking around on their daily routine; some remaining guests just hanging around. In the middle of the square I saw some palm leaves covered with blood when an intense smell suddenly reached my nose. I had heard that about 80 pigs had already been slaughtered the day before and the village men brought a couple of pigs blackened by fire to a corner of the square, put them on fresh palm leaves and started to cut them open. Apparently some additional pigs had been slaughtered early this morning and after burning the hairs off the skin on a fire the village men were now skillfully cutting the pigs into big chunks, removing intestines, then smaller chunks and then into even smaller chunks of meat finally being tied together by some palm or bamboo string as a package for the guests to take home later.

At around 10, villagers and guests had assembled in their bamboo structures and I was invited to sit with one family on their platform directly looking out over the square. The next two hours would be a scene that I will not soon forget: one by one the water buffalos would be led onto the square, one leg loosely being rope-tied to a wooden stick hauled in the ground. One of the men would approach the surprisingly calm buffalo (unlike the deafening screams coming from pigs as they are slaughtered), tilt its head up, the neck exposed, then reach for his long machete-style knife and heaving his arm backwards first to increase momentum, hit the knife straight into the neck, making a deep cut. If successful the main artery was directly hit, blood immediately and vehemently gushing out from the opening below the beast's head, the buffalo now choking, trying to maintain its balance for 10 seconds or so, but then falling to the ground and left to bleed to death. Sometimes the man appointed to kill the buffalo was not successful on first hit (maybe scared, or inexperienced) and a large cut in the neck would not result in bleeding. The buffalo, always surprisingly calm even if it would be led onto the square with already a few dead buffalos lying there, would then panic and try to run away, only being stopped by the rope tied to the wooden pole in the ground. It now became more difficult for the man to make additional cuts in the already wide open cut in the neck and it would turn ugly. Two buffalos even managed to draw the wooden pole out of the ground in this situation, walking freely now and mad, instigating some fear in the public, as I too moved to the back of the bamboo structure I was sitting.

It was pretty intense. There were two other tourists and I noticed the girl looked through her fingers, ready to remove the sight temporarily from her eyes. I could just sit and watch with my head resting on my hands at the balcony, sometimes slightly averting my head and swallowing if I thought the scene became particularly ugly. The village children, it should be noted, were on the other hand merrily, though silently, watching the festivities. At the end, 10 dead buffalos lay spread out over the square, blood all around them, after which a tent was erected and the men started to take the skins off, then chop them up, again to be taken as food for the guests later. I didn't need to watch that whole process, so we left and went for lunch. I had chicken.

After Tana Toraja, it was a long way up north through winding mountain roads, beautiful vistas over forested mountains, small villages into the former warring area, some towns Christian, some Muslim, which still sees few tourists. I stopped for a one-day break in Tentena, where I rented a motorbike again to tour the area for a day and dipped myself for a cool refreshment in the huge Lake Poso. The next day, I continued my journey up north to Poso which has a bus station (normally so frantic in Asia) so desolate that it was hard to imagine Poso is actually the only interconnection point in this area. After a few hours waiting with two other backpackers, we got a minibus to Ampana, where next day we could take a 6-hour ferry to the Togean Islands.

The Togeans are notoriously difficult to reach, but a real unspoilt, quiet paradisical beach archipelago. Superior palm-lined white-sand beaches, a mostly impenetrable jungle interior, with some small villages on some of the islands and only a few resorts or guesthouses on other islands, some people stay here for weeks or even months to unwind and relax. There is no internet; mobile phones don't work. On Kadidiri, the most popular island where I stayed, there is no village and no shops, so meals are provided by the guesthouse 3 times daily. There's very nice snorkeling and diving, you could do some island hopping, and for the rest there's nothing to do except reading a book and lie in your hammock in your wooden hut on the rocks looking out over the turquoise sea. Because of the very peculiar shape of Sulawesi, this remote location is actually a good way to reach Manado in the north, because the road to Manado might take even longer.

It was paradisical indeed, but next time (?) I guess I would stay on an island where there's a village as well or do some island hopping, because after a while I felt kind of trapped always having to eat the provided meals at fixed times and not getting anywhere else. Now, after a couple of days of relaxing, I took the 15-hour ferry up north to Gorontalo, followed by a surprising (because of the very small stretch of Sulawesi land on the map) 10 hour drive to Manado.

Manado has little to see in itself, except if you're looking for 'hello mister's I guess :) but it is the central point for some good sights nearby. Going into the final week of my 2-month visa I first went to the Tangkoko National Park, where a guide showed me and two German girls around the forest, in the early morning finding and actually walking with (apparently used to it, but not coming too close) a large group of black macaques coming down the trees to roam the forest to find 'breakfast' and in the evening, as it was getting dark, to sight tarsiers, little creatures with huge eyes that cannot even move within their sockets (therefore they can turn their heads about 360 degrees). They sleep in trees and come out at nightfall. We also found tarantulas in trees, etc.

The other major tourist destination near Manado is the island of Bunaken, a well-recognized superb snorkeling and diver's spot because of the deep nutrient-rich waters surrounding it. With gorgeous 90 degree dropoffs into dark oblivion only a 100m or so offshore and an enormous diversity of colorful corals and fish, it is magnificent diving indeed. I did a total of 5 dives there with a very good and likeable German diving instructor who owned a small guesthouse on the island with his wife from Manado. They used the same formula as the guesthouses on the Togeans, with 3 daily meals provided where all guests would eat at the same time. It was quiet and very relaxed, the other guests also backpackers who went snorkeling and/or diving every day, and I really enjoyed.

My next destination, after Indonesia, was to be Miri, on Malaysian Borneo, to meet my Dutch friends Derek and Katelien who now live there. There are no flights from Sulawesi to Malaysian Borneo, but I originally thought I might fly or boat from Sulawesi to Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) and then make my way up to Malaysian Borneo overland. Yet this would take at least a couple of days of traveling, even without taking in any sights, and when I reached Manado I knew that if I wanted to still see Bunaken and Tangkoko I wouldn't have the time left on my visa.

The best alternative option was to go via Kuala Lumpur again. Thus, on the last day of my visa, after two months in this wonderful diverse country with such friendly people, I left Indonesia flying first back to Makassar, then Kuala Lumpur, to go to Miri a few days later.

I was to get to Kalimantan after all, though quite somewhere else, but I didn't know that then.

All the best and enjoy your spring!

Arnoud.