Mr Beem's Asian Journal
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Toraja the place of the dead |
I rolled into town just ahead of the storm and desperate not to get drenched at the finish line I had a quick blatt around town looking for somewhere to stay. I spotted a little wooden sign out side an ordinary looking home. The sign translated to Beautiful Place – the house didn’t. On the up side it was remarkable cheap about two U.S dollars and the back veranda overlooked the fast moving muddy river…lovely. Some places are a false economy regardless of how cheap they are, and this was one of those places. It was depressing. The bed was wafer thin and bowed in the middle, the room was dark and musty with a twenty watt light bulb…no shade off course. The little bathroom had seven different styles off tiles and they looked as if they had been stuck on by a two year old.
I started wondering how I had ended up here…it was guilt. I didn’t have the heart to tell the little old lady who showed me the room that it was a complete shit-hole and that she should be ashamed of herself for offering this, as a place fit for human habitation. So now I was suffering for my unwillingness to hurt someone else’s feelings…that’s what you get for trying to be a nice guy.
I went out to have a look around town and get my bearing. No Pubs or Bars, very few restaurants and heaps of travel agents, the place seemed geared towards tourism but there were no tourist. I had a walk along the footpath down the Main Street, lots of little shops and stalls selling all things tourist. They were obviously feeling the pinch, they opening gambit was “Fifty percent off” and that was before you had even pick up the first carving for examination. No doubt about it Toraja Tourism was in a slump. I suppose that it was understandable, America had just invaded Iraq, and there was a travel alert out about Indonesia, so things weren’t really in their favour.
There wasn’t much happening around town so I bought some noodles at a roadside stall and went back to the ‘Poverty Pack Hotel’ and sat looking at the walls for half an hour. I tried to go to sleep but the Mosquitoes started to attach by the squadron so I went over to the landladies house and asked for some Mossy spray. She looked at me incredulously as if she couldn’t believe that she had Mosquitoes in her fine establishment and begrudgingly gave me a can of Mortein with strict instructions to bring it back once I had used it. So I gave the room a dousing with the spray and then brought the can back, I gave it five minutes for the spay to clear and then went back in to do the body count – twenty six – I swept them into a little pile with the intention of showing the lady of the house in the morning.. Then I thought ‘what’s the point’ and just left the little pyre of dead insects in the middle of the room...there was a good chance the bodies wouldn’t be discovered for months.
Next morning I was up early in search of breakfast and somewhere decent to live. For a smallish Market town it was as busy as hell, and manoeuvring the mighty Jailing around in those tight spaces was something of a challenge…but we both emerged completely unscathed. I found a beautiful café that was more like an Art Gallery than a food vendor. It was imaginatively named “New Café’ I had a lovely big English breakfast, and sent a couple of e-mails. I got chatting with one off the waitresses and she asked me where I was staying. I told her about the ‘Hell Hotel’ and asked if she had any good recommendations, she said that she used to work at a nice little hotel just down the road and that I should check it out…so I did. It was perfect, clean bright rooms, big queen sized beds, air conditioning, hot shower and western style toilet… however it was three time the price off the other joint…six dollars.
I went back to share a tearful farewell with my old landlady, and then left a strip of rubber on her drive way in my haste to be gone. It’s amazing how having somewhere pleasant to sleep and hang out can bolster your spirits. The hotel owner’s son brought me my complimentary welcome drink and told me that he was desperate to leave Indonesia…which I thought was a bit heavy for our first meeting. I asked him why, he had all the usual reasons; trapped in a circle of poverty, no opportunities to get ahead, cramped living conditions, unstable government, the rich get richer the poor get poorer and corruption is everywhere. Then came the one really big reason – he was Christian, and he was convinced that one day Toraja would be over-run and all the Christians would be slaughtered by their Muslim neighbours. Toraja and Monado are the only two predominantly Christian areas in the whole of Suluwesi. Monado is on the northern tip of the Island mostly surrounded by sea. Toraja is in the middle off the Island mostly surrounded by Muslims, I don’t know if the threat was real but his fear definitely was.
He had already been sent back from Singapore where he tried to sneak in illegally. He was very interested to hear about Papua New Guinea especially it boarders with Australia. I told him that I wanted to hear about his immediate family. He had a wife and three children. He was planning on leaving them behind and then coming back in a few years with his fortune made and everything would be lovely from there on in. I pointed out a few possible flaws in his line of reasoning, and we both agreed that it might be best if he stay at home and take care of the things that really matter to him and wait and see how life unfolds – and this coming from me.
Having spent a couple of hours sorting his life out he offered to return the favour by having the kitchen prepare a real Torajan meal for me. Pork, black rice, and some local vegetables all to be washed down with some local Palm wine….Beautiful. Unfortunately not …but the thought was there.
To get the taste of the palm wine out off my mouth I invited him out for a few beers at the New Café. I fired up the Chairman’s Revenge (my other name for Hardly) and headed off through the rainy night to Toraja’s newest hotspot. It really was a classy little place, straight out of Double Bay or Knightsbridge and the service was bordering on the excessive, every time the rain would stop one of the waitresses would go out and wipe off the bike – a little over the top I thought, but very nice anyway. We played some pool, drank a few beers, and chatted with the American owner, all in all a good night out.
In the morning I headed out in search of the real Torajan Culture. The whole area is like a series of post cards. Every time you ride over a hill or round a bend there’s another postcard view. Thank God that digital photos are cheap.
I ended up at a village, which is very popular with tourist...or would have been if there had been any tourists. They had village guides, which are well worth the few dollars they cost who take you around and explain the culture that is so important to the people of this area. Most of it seems to revolve around dead people. To me it seemed that all their lives they skimp and save, so that once they are dead they can spend a fortune. That might not be a culturally sensitive way to describe it, but that’s pretty much the bottom line. I will let the photos tell the rest of the story.
I spent five day in the Toraja area, visiting caves, waterfalls, burial sites, coffin makers wood carvers and all manner off interesting things all set in picturesque mountain and valley scenery. Five days is probably a little too long but four days is a little too short.
The trip back to the coast and Pare-Pare was quite a bit quicker as I managed not to take any wrong turns and Hardly defiantly goes faster going down hill.
