Indonesia (Part 3)

June/July 2001

Arriving back in Bali on Day 591, my budget was four fifths blown. I had spent £11,500 over the last 20 months. It would be a case of finishing Indonesia, get the Philippines under my belt and make some major decisions when I reached Hong Kong.

The 6-hour Geruda flight left and arrived on time. As I walked through to immigration, some of the rich package tourists were getting their own private Balinese dancing outside in sweltering hear of 30+C. I got my own private treatment of the usual Indonesian kind.

After lining up for 50 minutes, the passport officer asked for my outward ticket. I didn't have one because I was intending to get one in Sulawesi. "Then you can't enter Indonesia" he said. "You must go to Geruda and buy an outward ticket". So I found some Geruda staff and explained my problem. "It’s an immigration problem" they said. So I went back to my man who led me to a back office where in bold English on a whiteboard, it was stated that an Indonesian visa would be issued if the person had an onward ticket. I couldn't argue with his request "Go back to Geruda". They suggested I bribe the official - about $20US would crack the nut. Meanwhile they would sell me a ticket, which I could then cancel once I got in - for a charge of $25!

I decided on bribery. I walked back to the front of the line and produced my passport with the cash inside. "What is this?" he asked, eyebrows raised. I told him that Geruda had suggested this move. In the end he let me in with a two month free visa and a lecture on "the next time you come, you know that you need an onward ticket". Whatever Mister, I thought, there won't be a next time. It was the third time I'd failed to bribe an Indonesian official so I have to give them credit for honesty.

So it only took about 2 hours to clear immigration. Jo was waiting outside, looking very bored.("In your own time!"). She also did not have an onward ticket, but had breezed through yesterday without a word or request to see her ticket. Must just be me versus Indonesian bureaucracy. Or maybe she was topless. "Serves you right for flying crappy Geruda and not luxurious Quantas" she smirked.

We stayed, once again, at Cockroach Central, with only 5 roaches during our stay. The owner laughed at my rather fatter, podgy white body (Thanks Australia - you did a fine job). When I had last seen him in January, I was a tanned slim travelling machine. He almost didn't recognise 'Mr Bob'. The resident gecko lizard nearby, would croak intermittently, while a couple of English girlies next door, would round up their loud posse around midnight to hit the clubs and return rather bedraggled around 5am when I was getting up.

I can quickly sum up 12 days in Kuta which all seemed very familiar. Getting organised. I spent over 70 hours on the cheap Internet (30p an hour), filing all those dull Aussie updates (one friend reported that my Aussie tales totalled 80,000 words - about 1.6 words per kilometre driven he calculated. Another friend, getting the 'Final Stretch', just emailed with "Kill me. Kill me now".) I also had 70 films developed from the last 6 months, wrote a travel article on my experiences in West Timor, sent off the organised photos and souvenirs from the post office etc etc. The days seemed to fly past. Going to the Internet café was like going to the office everyday. It was strange to lock myself away from the constant Kuta bustle outside and hoards of tourists. It was the beginning of the high season and Bali continued to pull in its 3 million tourists a year.

To think that in 3 visits to Bali totalling nearly a month, I never swam at Kuta Beach which is why most people come. I did try one day, but 20 hustlers between me and the sea about 100ft away was enough to drive me away again.

Jo did a 3-day Batik course with my man - Heru, and produced a lovely batik headscarf of a horse. It was her first taste of Indonesia and Bali is one of the more civilised places to get used to it. She couldn't believe how cheap everything was. The 'Rame' contemporary life of Bali (boisterous, crowded, animated) gave her a taste of the traffic gridlock, screaming smoking mopeds, and the holes in the pavements. One night, she slipped and her foot got trapped beneath a paving stone, which left her limping for days with bruised toes. Admittedly I was standing on the guilty paving asking her if she was ok while she stood there completely trapped.

We became regulars at my cafe devouring the cheap pepper steaks, chips, salads and er, Bintang beer for less than £2 a head. Here, I bumped into the 68-year-old English Merchant seaman whom I'd met in Borneo months before. He had now married his young Thai wife still in her twenties, who continued to give him a hard time. Some people never learn.

As a respite from Kuta, I took Jo up to Ubud for a couple of days to experience some of the 'culture'. We stayed at my previous losmen where the owner also remembered me. I covered Ubud in my previous Bali instalment.

Since Bali was so very familiar to me, and I feel too lazy to pad out the details, I enclose a few lengthy extracts from Jo's online diary (in between mine) who saw it fresh faced and as you will see, captured it all much better than I ever could. Skip my parts and read hers. The best stuff starts with 'Jo wrote':

Jo wrote: "We jumped on the 10am bus to Ubud. Heading northeast through the outskirts of Denpasar, the little courtyards of houses ran in unbroken lines for miles, then there’d be a couple of neat paddy fields, then more courtyards. The road was narrow and we often had to pull over to allow traffic to pass in the opposite direction. Every square inch of space is used or filled in Bali. If there isn't a shop or a house on it, there's an ancient mottled brick temple or a pond or a green field that doubles as a bullock grazing and football pitch. If it's too small for any of these, they put a stone statue or a spirit house or a shrine on it, and these country suburbs of the capital are the place to come to buy one. Sculpted Buddhas and fearsome gargoyles, spirit houses like bird tables, water-spouting and water-pouring nymphs, in all sizes, stone or wooden, sit in their hundreds outside workshops.

There's a mish-mash of religions here - Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Animism. Hence the petals and rice and knotted banana leaf ribbon offerings in the cartons on the pavement, the spirit houses and wooden shrines like small bookshelves nailed to trees in the streets, the Muslim call to prayer on TV that blares from wooden-barred house windows, and the cross-legged Buddha statues All seem to coexist quite peacefully, and bits of each seem to have been superimposed on all the others to form a completely different religion.

The cabinet-makers were busy chiselling and planing and sanding the heavy wooden furniture beloved by Indonesians; stout bedsteads, squat tables, overly ornate carved wardrobes, solid sofas and giant carved picture frames guaranteed to overwhelm anything displayed in them.

Ubud is the fine arts cultural centre of Bali. Batik, weaving, painting, music and dance are taught and practised here. We went to the market, where it had rained recently, turning the walkways into mud and making the tiled stairways slippers, and make the all-pervading pungent stench of chickens almost unbearable. I don't like markets like this at the best of times; you never know what you're going to tread in next. Bob had his favourite jelly-bean and chocolate sauce milkshake at a stall, and it tasted just as awful as it looked ?bright pink and purple blobs of jelly floating in milk and ice, which as well as making it very sweet also lent it a very unpleasant texture. Trying not to think about the chicken feather smell, we tried the chicken soup at the stall next door, and it was really very good indeed ?glass noodles sprinkled with chopped greens, tomato, parsley, chilli and boiled egg, then boiling broth scooped over the top - excellent!

Leaving the market we went to Ubud Palace Courtyards where, quite by chance, we happened upon the preparations for a school ceremony. One with a difference, though; at about six years old, the kids were about to leave kindergarten and start the next stage of their education. Today they would stage a traditional Balinese dance show for parents in the old open-air palace theatre next door.

The courtyards were alive with children, the boys in bright pink, red and purple Geruda costumes with gold belts and scabbards, the girls in yellow and orange and gold, long hair-pieces knotted and falling loose, headdresses of gold prongs and fresh flowers. Some of the children wore helmets with wings (there's a hole for their ears to poke through), and boys as well as girls were fully made up - boys with black sideburns, thin moustaches, arched eyebrows and red lips; girls with painted hair lines, eyebrows that parted to accommodate white dots or jewels at the temple, and of course the full red lips.

Of course it was pandemonium, children being dressed and heads being pushed into helmets, hair pinned into place, folds adjusted in the yards of material wound and tucked to become trousers and skirts, mums and sisters all helping. Then the proud parents took photos of their darlings, who obliged by striking the most winsome poses with their bouquets (girls) or aggressive hand and leg postures (boys). They weren't very good at keeping their balance, but were delighted to be photographed time and again by parents and of course by the tourists who had come to watch. They posed and pouted and smiled and never once complained. Parents were delighted with the tourist interest, and made the kids do it all over again, against the gold temple doors, by the green shrubs, holding hands on the steps. Everyone was laughing and smiling - I hate kids, but I was quite enchanted by this lot, how quietly they stood and obediently they posed in what can't have been the most comfortable costumes.

After an hour or so, the last of the children were being dressed and the excitement of the new outfits was beginning to wear off for those who'd been ready for ages. The smiles wore off and although none actually refused to pose for a snap, some had to be pushed up the steps, have trainers and sandals removed, be told to stand up straight; and as soon as the camera clicked they'd dash off to play with their friends.

Across the road, the theatre has a central stage with wooden supports holding up a thatched false roof that covers the stage and the orchestra wings on either side. Along the rafters were strung hundreds of carved wooden shapes. On stage, there was a central stone stairway leading to backstage, down which actors (in this case the children) would make their entrance between two carved pillars to tread the curling and rucked pieces of old red carpet. The audience sat on white plastic chairs in the open-sided auditorium. The scabby local dogs have used the concrete floor as a lavatory, so we trod somewhat carefully.

Chaos reigned; children running amok on stage, costumes pulled awry, teasing and tag and a few fights. Mothers held their dressed-up daughters safely on their knees. Younger siblings, some in their best flowered frocks, bored already, tugged at the skirts of bosomy grandmothers who were to a woman dressed for the occasion in lacy long-sleeved jackets, decorated cummerbunds and long flower-print sarong skirts. Music blared from a loudspeaker, lively songs wailed at full volume by a female vocalist - reminiscent of Hindi films. Food vendors arrived: the man selling scoop ice-cream from a battered polystyrene box; miniature spring rolls and gravy, served on sheets of brown paper and eaten with the fingers; sweets, peanuts, crisps, fruit; tiny hard-boiled quails' eggs, eight to a plastic bag, carried in two wire cages on a rough-hewn wooden yoke. In no time at all, the floor was littered in sweet wrappers, brown-paper-and-gravy, melted ice cream, half-eaten soggy cornets, eggshells and peanut husks.

The performance started, and each child danced in a small group dressed similarly. Some of the boys were given spear sticks with fearsome sharp points, and they marched onto the stage like an army. They formed two columns for a mock battle in which the spears were thrust and repelled in moves not unlike those of a Morris Dance, but to a rather more stirring beat. How eyes were not lost I shall never know, since the little lads were looking all around them instead of at each other and their spears.

The girls had some simple head and hand moves and eye gestures to make, supposedly all at the same time, but on the day anything goes, so there was much ad-lib eye-rolling and head-wobbling whenever anyone remembered to do it. Some of them hadn't learned the dance very well, and had to look across the stage to follow what their opposite number was doing. Most stood tall (as tall and a six-year-old can) and solemnly went through the movements. A few swayed around rather dreamily, watching their audience or looking up at the ceiling.

As soon as a group had finished performing, they ran around to their families and were stripped down to vests and underpants amongst the plastic chairs and dressed again in T-shirts and dresses. The yards of bright gold-edged silk, sparkling belts, towering headdresses and ankle wings were stuffed into plastic bags for another day. I have no idea whether the costumes are bought, hired or made for the day. Some of the kids couldn't wait for mothers to undress them before they were diving into packets of crisps and peanuts in a very un-prince- or princess-like fashion.

We returned to the Widiana Guest House, in a long courtyard of low thatched rooms and magnificent tropical vegetation. Like that in Vanuatu, it's not all green, but deep red, brown and yellow leaves brighten the lush background of fan palms, begonia-like creepers and maidenhair ferns. Our room is simple; two beds (with foam mattresses!) a table, some shelves and mossie nets (not that we'll need them). In the bathroom is a one-tap basin, cold-water shower, western loo and tank for flushing/bucket showering. It came complete with cockroaches and a lingering stench of stale urine. Still, the sheets are clean and we have a covered terrace with comfy chairs and a table. Bob stayed here last time, so the price stayed the same as six months ago - £2 a night between us. And that includes breakfast!

In the evening we returned to the Palace for a Balinese Gabor dance-drama. These dances, for which there are several formats, have evolved from sacred rituals and are usually performed at religious events and festivals. Most Balinese boys and girls are taught to dance, the best being chosen to perform at village functions, but there are very few professional dancers and most have a normal day job. The dance relies for the most part on a vocabulary of controlled, angular movements of the fingers, wrists, arms, neck and of course the rolling of the eyes. Each gesture comes from a movement observed in the natural, rather than the human, world.

Tonight the Panca Artha Troupe, all from Ubud, presented a mixed programme. The auditorium had been swept, the plastic chairs arranged in neat lines, and the stone pillars on stage given two stone gargoyles. These gargoyles are seen at all gateways, temple entrances, courtyard steps, at the corners of courtyard walls - anywhere that evil spirits might enter or lurk. They are crouching or seated monstrous animals, with potbellies and ugly faces, and are often given an evil-repelling boost by the addition of a black-and-white gingham sarong (look closely at Balinese paintings and you'll find the "goodies" wearing a chequered skirt or scarf for the same reason).

The stage itself was flooded with bright golden light, and at either side the Gamelan players in navy jackets and long printed sarongs, took up their positions seated on the floor at on low wooden seats at their instruments.

First dance was Jauk (ja-ook), a sole masked performer portraying a demon enjoying himself in the jungle. Balinese dance masks are sacred, being carved and painted with reverence to the spirits, and the dancer is said to become possessed by the spirit of the mask he is wearing. The Jauk demon's mask is red (the traditional Balinese colour for uncontrolled passion or aggression), with huge bulging eyes. The flamboyant red and gold costume includes 30-cm-long (plastic) fingernails! The demon leaps mischievously through the forest and pounced on unsuspecting villagers - in this case the front row of the audience, tickling their shins and beckoning them up onto the stage to frolic with him (nobody did!) One mother had to pacify her small daughter when his eyeballs and fingernails came a bit too close. Next up was a group of girls, all in bright sunshine yellow, with small antlers in their headdresses. They pretended to be deer, prancing and then herding together in fright.

Topeng Tua - apparently a favourite with the Balinese - the old man with shaky arthritic limbs and an itchy scalp of long white hair jerked on next. This was also a masked performance, and so good that I really could imagine his tears of disappointment when the little girl in the front row refused to take his hand.

Then came "The Ballet of Bimaniu", the main drama of the evening. Briefly, Bimaniu, the prince of the story, searches for and finds the beautiful Princess Siti Sunari. It's love at first sight, but the palace guard intervenes and tries to kill Bimaniu. The prince flees the palace and falls asleep (rather stupidly) in a graveyard, where various evil spirits try to eat him alive; but not even Druga the Goddess of Death can devour him. Bimaniu dances to prove to Druga who he is, and he is allowed to continue on his way. It was a bit like watching an isolated episode of a soap opera - and indeed it's an extract from one of the Indonesian epics. There was some monotone singing from the men in this one, and some fabulous dancing and eye rolling from the prince and princess. The evil spirits, some in truly fearsome masks, proved too much for the kid in the front row, though, and as we were standing at the side of the stage to get good photos, her mother offered us their seats as she was dragged past by her terrified offspring. The front row afforded us uninterrupted action shots and close-ups of faces. Nobody seems to mind having flash photos taken of them when they're performing.

Throughout, the Gamelan band hammered on their steel xylophones with wooden or horn picks (rather like a geologist's rock hammer), the drummers sat cross-legged on the stage with the drums in their laps, pounding the broken rhythms with their hands at either end, the gongs were bonged and the cymbals crashed and brushed to keep a tinny time. There is no conductor; the players know the set pieces so well that they don't need one, timing their hammerings instead by watching each other. Sometimes it was fast and furious, the dancers shaking and rolling their eyes; at other times it was slower and quieter, but always metallic, like a dozen wind chimes on a breezy day; a haunting, relentless minor key melody with light and shade, passion and quietude, more of a noise to appeal to the senses than an actual tune." (That's enough Jo diary - ed: you might get hooked)

The other Barong Dance featured the most spectacular costumes of all Balinese dances. 'Bapang' who dominated the proceedings was a huge comical monster (like a white haired yetti Chinese dragon) operated by two men. He looked like the Sugar Puff's "Honey Monster" on four legs. Another story, much of which took place in darkness had an evil looking widow-witch called 'Rangda' with her posse of 'Sisya', (black magic pupils) taking on another magical character who had to prove his powers and show them who was boss. It was great to sit on the floor right next to the Gamelan orchestra and take in the action right in our faces.

When we visited the Pura Saraswati temple, which was a delightful temple complex of water gardens and blossoming pink/white lotus flowers, we saw a troop of young boys who were trainee Gamelan players going through their paces. Dressed in white tunics and headbands, and prompted by a conductor, they were drilled in 15 minutes pieces. There is good money to be made in this, especially if they get to tour the world, demonstrating Indonesian music and I'd recommend that you try and catch one if they are ever touring in your country. Haunting music, which will always remind me of Indonesia. I'd also say that Ubud is unmissable should you ever come to Bali.

After two weeks in Bali and fully organised, it was time to roll for the final Indonesian chapter. Jo may have loved Bali, but now it was time to get my own back in Sulawesi. Let’s get back to real Indonesia.

It was time to leave Bali with fashion delights such as 'Mr Bob's F**ken Good Leather Shop' and restaurant inventions like 'Gordon Blue' (Cordon Bleu?) on the menus. The 8.30am, 80 minute, Geruda flight to Ujang Pandang (UP), Sulawesi, left and arrived on time. En route, we flew over Lombok island with a clear, magnificent view of Mt Rinjani, the tallest volcano that dominates the island and which I'd climbed in December. Before we left, the Bouraq Airlines staff told us that flights to the Philippines had been suspended, which could really bugger up my trip.

At the quiet Hasanuddin Airport, there was a new vehicle outside - the 'pete-pete'. This was like a Vietnamese rickshaw with a cyclist at the back of the wooden, canvas covered passenger carriage with room for 2 passengers. But it was too far to pedal into town. A local got us on a standard bemo (minibus) which took us to Terminal Panaikang, 12 km away and still 13 km from the centre of UP. The bus station looked chaotic - scruffy, dusty and many small boys sticking bottles of ice cold water in our faces. We were led to a Toyota 4WD headed for Parepare, 3 hours north. 9 of us were crushed into the jeep along with the driver.

Sulawesi, 'The Land of Heavenly Kings' was isolated from the rest of the world until the early 1900s. It "sprawls in the centre of the Indonesian archipelago, its bizarre outline a foretaste of the many peculiarities that make up one of the country's most compelling regions" (Rough Guide). The island is a 1000km-letter K shape with the upright arm sweeping eastwards. Nowhere is more than 100km from the sea. There are three divisions: southern - with flat coastal fringes and small scale limestone hills, home to most of Sulawesi's 15 million population and the energetic port of UP as its capital. The southern plains rise to the mountains of the Tanah Toreja, home of the ethnic groups. Sulawesi Utara in the north is a volcanic trail of land covered in coconut plantations and thick rainforest. Manado is the main centre in the far north.

First impressions: A strange pair of white concrete statues. One man holding a bow, and firing off an arrow, which was caught by the other statue 100ft away. Another village statue was of huge green bamboo stalks. The houses were wooden with corrugated iron roofs and built on stilts next to fields filled with water. The impressive limestone cliffs appeared - rather like the ones I'd seen in southern Thailand and Laos. One stretch of road was a kilometre-long continuous collection of stalls, selling hundreds of huge yellow, soccer ball sized yellow grapefruit. Another section sold ceramic tiled gravestones.

We got out at Prepare, 150km north of UP, a sleepy port where no one spoke English. Asking around I ascertained that there was a bus heading for Rantepao at 5pm. The central region of Tanah Toraja was our destination. The bus rolled in and we rolled out. 5 hours later, after a twisty but surfaced road, we were dropped right outside our chosen hotel in Rantepao at 10pm. A nice empty guesthouse with gas powered hot showers. Senu, the friendly, 28 year old owner, tried to sell us 'funeral tours' and showed us his secretly home-grown ganga in the garden. Rantepao, a prosperous market town (as indicated by the large numbers of satellite dishes beside wooden shacks) was the main centre of the Tanah Toraja region and we based ourselves there for four nights to explore the area.

Tanah Toraja, 250km north of UP, is a gorgeous spread of hills and valleys where fat buffalo wallow beside lush green paddy fields and which contains one of Indonesia's most confident and vivid cultures. Ostensibly Christian, the trappings of the old religion are still an integral part of Torajan life - which revolves around the exuberant funeral ceremonies involving pig and buffalo sacrifice and hanging graves.

The Torajans believe that their ancestors descended from heaven in boats via a stone staircase, which was later destroyed by their, rather pissed off, god called Puang Matua after his laws were broken (no drinking after 11pm, incest with animals etc). Their houses (Tongkonan), and rice storage barns (Alang), have straw/bamboo roofs designed in the shapes of these boats (though buffalo horns may be another influence on the shapes). These laws still provide the foundation of Torajan society which divides worlds into opposites associated with directions: north for gods, south for humanity, east for life and west for death. Class still remains an important element within their culture.

The tourist selling point is the funerals. You pay an 'official guide' who takes you to a funeral where you present the family with a gift (usually a carton of cigarettes), who will allow you to watch the guests arriving with their presents - buffaloes and pigs. These funerals can go on for days and are pretty much a status show rather than a religious rite. We ducked out of the Middleclass funeral and over the days, we would be offered other funerals, turn them down and finally be offered an Upper Class funeral. But our feeling was that whatever funeral we went to would be a farce. We didn't need to pay to see a funeral to experience the culture. I'm sure other tourists who pay to see them would disagree, but I got a deja feeling of visiting hill tribes in Borneo. As long as tourists are willing to pay, they'll put on a show. Not that tourists were exactly overwhelming. I counted 15 in 4 days.

On our first day, we visited the central market, which was awash with mud. We waded through an ankle deep quagmire to take in the sights. Everything imaginable was for sale. The locals wore conical bamboo hats, and squatted amongst piles of vegetables and chillies. Fish flapped around in baskets. The coffee grinders were interesting. Locally grown Aradica coffee beans were dumped in a large funnel and grounded by powerful Honda engines - like huge lawnmowers.

In a separate section, the livestock was on show. Piebald 'Tedong' - pink and black spotted water buffalo were on show. The owners washed them down in a field and polished their horns with lemon juice. These prime specimens (especially for funeral sacrifices) could command prices of £750. But the pigs were something else. Tied down on bamboo platforms, these squealing black hairy hogs were lined up in vast numbers - 12 rows wide by 12 rows deep in each section. I had never seen so many pigs for sale. Trade was brisk and pigs would be continually carted off by pairs of men carrying a pig hung from a pole on their shoulders. We even saw a pig being transported on a wheelbarrow across a vast muddy pond.

Local palm wine 'balok' stood in dustbins in stalls, and the farmers were carrying off 5 litre jerry cans of the stuff. It is sold, frothing in tall bamboo tubes and tasted "somewhere between lager and Alka-Seltzer"(Rough Guide). I settled in at a stall. You held your palms out and the latest brew was ladled into your hands for a tasting. Satisfied, you'd get a foot long filled bamboo shot of the stuff. Very fair at 13p a pop. Then they upped the anti and tried the stronger stuff out. It tasted like poison. The other locals laughed at my facial expressions. For my next draft I had my usual with a shot of poison in it. I could have happily spent the rest of the day at the market getting slowly sozzled. Alas, I was dragged away. There is an excellent bemo service from Rantepao that will take you to any nearby village so we just hopped aboard and went exploring.

The Torajans, like the Egyptians, believed in sending off the departed with plenty of goods for the afterlife. But inevitably the tombs were raided, so they adopted a technique of carving out tombs high up in the limestone cliffs. As an extra precaution, fashioned wooden 'tau-taus' - real life effigies of the deceased, stand in boxes outside the tunnelled graves, high up on the cliffs to protect them. Each village costs about 40p to enter.

The village of Lemo, has the best remaining collection. I counted 49 effigies, 30 metres up on a flat cliff face. Mutely expressive, they looked over the fields with arms outstretched. Behind them, dozens of square doored mausoleums had been bored straight into the cliff face behind them (who got them up there and how?). They overlooked locals drying rice by the side of eye burning, bright green paddy fields and buffalo grazing.

On the stiff climb to see more remnants at Londa, we passed a wedding. A 4WD had been covered in bamboo decorations as the lead car. The giggling and rather young couple, sat in a decorated alcove of carved bamboo and batik hangings, while dozens of guests sat across the road tucking into whatever was on the wedding menu. Which seemed to be mostly rice.

Londa, set in a bright green basin of fields, surrounded by grey limestone cliffs, had an impressive balcony collection of two dozen tau-taus, obviously upper class. At one end stood the dignitaries, then family and at the other end were a group of old women with very expressive faces. There were also lines of wooden coffins lying on wooden planks that stuck out of the cliffs. Skulls were slotted in amongst them. A couple of nearby caves had dozens of skulls and bones inside.

Every village was full of Tongkonan houses with their up-curved roofs like buffalo horns. They face north so the front door is a gate between human and divine worlds and are aligned north-south, defining a borderline between life and death. Carved panels of geometric patterns, cockerels, buffalo, horses and birds all had their own symbolism, as did the red, black, white and yellow colours used. Carved, real size, wooden buffalo heads protruded from the front panels like gargoyles. These buildings were very similar to the ones that I'd seen in Sumatra, Indonesia. (There must have been an Indonesian construction franchise equivalent to Barrett Homes in days gone by).

Kete Kesu was an impressive 'protected' village of about 20 tightly packed, Tongkonan and rice barn houses, all constructed in two parallel lines. If you ever see a photo/postcard of Sulawesi, this is the shot. En route, we passed a white painted concrete statue of a buffalo being led by a man, who had a facial expression that indicated that he had just had his feet stood on by the buffalo. Mouth open, eyes bulging and hair rising. The tongkonans had lines of secured buffalo horns down the main front beam - up to 30 sets of horns. We visited a local woodcarver who had just started another piece. On the flat, thin piece of local wood, painted black, he drew the outline in pencil and used sharp knives to cut out the template. Scenes of tongkonans, black buffalo and locals with conical hats in paddy fields were the popular fashion. We sat and watched, had a look around the studio and started haggling. It took him a week to complete a basic carving and for less than £10, I secured a 1.5 ft x 1 ft ordinary carving and a 1ft square more detailed, coloured piece.

Behind the village were cliffs full of hanging graves. The wooden coffins had rotted over the years so that skulls and bones poked out of the gaps. Some coffins were designed as buffalo, with the horns sticking out, or pig heads with snout noses. Human bones and skulls lined the stone staircase. At night, this place must have looked like 'The Return of the Living Dead (Part 2)'. In a cave, behind iron bars, stood a number of wooden effigies all dressed in beautiful traditional costumes. Together with Lemo and Londa, Kete Kesu is the most popular tourist destination in the area. We had all three sights to ourselves.

A bumpy bemo ride north of Rantepao took us to Sadan, a weaving centre of the Torah Torajan area. En route, a local 15 year old girl on her way back from school, chatted in English, while her mates laughed at the rather revealing split in my shorts. I now know Indonesian for "big balls".

In the sleepy, empty village of Sadan, old women sat around hand driven looms weaving traditional patterns. It almost seemed an insult to haggle for a 1.5ft wide x 10ft multicoloured piece for under £4. Two weeks work we were told. But if you are the only tourists, they'll take whatever you offer. I'm sure most of it is produced in a factory somewhere and the looms are for show. But it was beautiful material. You could make a lot of money if you could export this stuff in bulk. Local men led their buffalo along the track and were very pleased to have their photos taken.

On the return ride, the skies opened and a torrential rainstorm started which flooded the unsealed roads. This didn't stop Indonesia's Michael Schmaker from handling his bemo like it was his last ride. He revved up every gear up to maximum, overtook everything in sight (6 inches of water in the road? No sweat!) and flew back into Rantepao as if we were on water skies. I could have strangled the bugger.

Jo was suffering from a terrible cold and we holed up for an extra day. There were problems ahead. Poso, a day north, was in the middle of a Muslim/Christian civil war (like much of Indonesia). Five Christians were killed there on the day we left Rantepao. It must have been serious because all bus routes were avoiding the place like the plague. To get past it, buses had re-routed south and up by the west coast along an unsealed road. It was a bus journey from hell.

Our 'Executive' bus (in your dreams) and 'expert' driver left 3 hours late (what's 3 hours on top of a 30 hour bus ride?). It was a bog standard bus, no a/c and the cramped reclining seats were worn so thin that the framework poked out against my body. We left at midday and by 2.30pm had already made two foodstops totalling 45 minutes. We rolled south back through the valleys that we had missed in the dark previously heading north. It was fast and twisty enough to have locals throwing up into plastic bags. Spectacular stuff - looming limestone mountains with sheer white cliff faces, covered in forests. The scenery was like Nepal, the narrow road hugging the edge of a valley with long drops below and views across the expanse in-between the cliffs. It took us 5 hours to cover 120km and reach Polewali by the coast!

The villages consisted of wooden shacks built on stilts with palm tree leaf or corrugated iron roofs. Herds of goats and cows milled around the roads. Dogs sat in the dust or fought between themselves. Thick lush green vegetation, locals in paddy fields thrashing rice or drying it out. We drove without a break for six hours, while our driver revved every gear but would stop at the drop of a hat for any other bus/truck/pete-pete/moped/buffalo/dog/goat/child/pothole in the way. I had imprints of the seat framework in front on my knees by the end of this section. But at this point the road was still sealed.

Somewhere in the early evening we passed though a village where a wedding was in progress. A stage had been set up with vast speakers lining the main drag, and a portly Indonesian girl was giving it her Madonna-all with a microphone while two accompanying boys did Michael Jackson dances. It was eardrum bleeding loud yet the street was filled with locals. Our optimism rose. Maybe the very recently built, 10-year-old track up the coast had also been sealed.

Wrong! A new driver took over before midnight and the road turned into a muddy, gravelled, potholed surface. Unbearably uncomfortable, we ground along in first gear, stopping to climb over small piles of dirt or negotiate vast potholes, which covered the road. Some were so deep that the bus lurched through at 50% angles. It was impossible to sleep and just too rough. It was the roughest road we'd tackled since Cambodia and that was saying something. It was one of those journeys where you felt that five hours had passed and when you looked at your watch, realised that only 20 minutes had trickled by.

Dawn arose. We had no idea where we were or how long we had to go. The bus stopped in the middle of nowhere, and everyone went to sleep for two hours. A man climbed aboard and told us that we would reach Palu at 5pm. Oh great, only another 11 hours to go. The road was also full of buses coming from Manado in the north. If they were lucky, the whole trip would take them 100 hours to reach UP in the south. Don't you love civil wars?

If we covered 10 miles an hour we were doing well. A non stop-start judder over the track which was no longer a track, just a series of potholes. We crossed a series of rickety old wooden, two plank wide, jerry built bridges, where the locals had got wise and erected bamboo barriers to extract toll money from the buses - also a first since Cambodia. They knew this was the only way through to the north/south avoiding Poso and were cashing in.

It was too rough to read and the tropical scenery remained unchanged. Around 1pm we made a final foodstop. Someone climbed aboard with a small puppy tied up in a sack. The scared dog would whine and whimper. I wanted to do the same. The heat inside the bus was ferocious, not that it stopped half the male passengers from chain smoking.

The sleepy port of Donggala was the light at the end of the tunnel. The guidebook recommended it for its beaches (a little generous!) and "the perfect place to unwind for a few days". I'd have gone nuts after 20 minutes. The road resealed itself and 40km later we finally arrived at Palu. One of the worst 29 hours we have spent on this world trip. Jo concluded "I'm not getting on another f**king bus in this country!"

Palu was as much fun as itching powder in your wetsuit. We found a cheap hotel, where I was later told by an ex-pat Aussie that the dead father-owner who had died three years earlier haunted our room. Jo was not getting on another bus, even if I paid her, and booked a flight to Manado. The next day I left her to the ghost and climbed on another bus for another 30-hour marathon bus ride from hell. I love it! I really do!

So the midday ride eventually left around 2pm (as you do). Normal crappy bus. Roof filled with crap, moped hanging off the back of the bus. The bus designed to hold 20 probably had 40 on board, but as the only 'honoured' tourist, I had a seat in front of the side door. Nice one, I ignorantly thought. Plenty of space to stretch my legs. But of course, sacks of rice were strewn across the steps in front of me, the mechanics/luggage loaders moved in and I was scrunged up as per normal. I sat next to a man who chain-smoked his way through the journey. The back of the bus was full of huge packages and the aisles were also full of kids sleeping on the rice bags. The driver only had 3 tapes of appalling disco 'covers' . These were bad impressions of the original dreadful music of some of the worst songs you have ever heard. So you have the picture.

So three hours later, we rolled into one a horse town where a bloke was standing at the, er, bus terminal with the world's worth of luggage. He had the full Monty - a full BBQ kit. We are talking half-cut oil drum, massive BBQ grid, huge spit and he had two dogs tightly penned in a bamboo cage!. The bus was already overloaded. The driver looked at him as if to say "you must be taking the piss". Everyone got out of the bus while this one was sorted. Cows, goats and geese nibbled at the nearby vegetation. After negotiations, it took 4 people from below and 3 on the bus roof to hoist all this stuff aboard. There goes another hour. No matter, what's another hour to the 30-hour ride. And don't worry about the dogs. They didn't see a drop of water for the next 26 hours.

I couldn't sleep. Too cramped. Too rough. Endless bloody palm trees. An Indonesian soldier in full khaki gear hung his 1 ft dagger from a sheath off the interior bull bar (at least I felt safe, he'd come prepared). His lovely wife who never stopped smiling (“Fancy a 30 hour bus ride to see the in-laws love”) accompanied him. She was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed on my trip - to put up with so much shit for so long, bring the young kids as well who sleep in your laps or on the rice sacks, but still keep a smile on your face. You really appreciate how lucky you are when so you see families going through this. Their two small girls never complained either. If it had been an English kid, they'd be whinging big time.

On through the night. We passed by another wedding in a village. This one was serious. The whole village was involved and it took ages for the bus to get through the crowds. The happy couple sat in pristine white clothes on a platform while the village revolved around them. Dawn arose. Pairs of white buffalo with wooden yokes pulled wooden carts. Dwellings were wooden shacks with tiny gardens - swept dirt floors, blooming red flowers, endless coconut trees.

Around midday the following day, we had a foodstop. 45 minutes. Then the mechanics decided that they had to change a bald tyre - another 45 minutes. I hated to suggest to them that they could have done this during the original food break and save 45 minutes but oh no, they ate and then dealt with it. Geese, goats, and dogs picked at the debris at the desolate road stop. When I attempted to climb aboard the bus, I nearly stepped on two, very recently strangled chickens which lay next to the bus door.

The fun came when unloading the passengers. We trekked around some piss-ant villages and finally had to drop off Mr BBQ. Naturally, he lived in a village with low hanging electrical/telephone wires hanging across the road, and inevitably, his BBQ stuck up too high off the bus roof. So we hit the village and, er, destroyed said low electrical wiring, care of the BBQ on roof. It took about 6 people to unload the stuff (including 2 very dehydrated dogs in their cage) and another two people to reassemble the telegraph poles.

To add to the comedy, our bus driver could not find the reverse gear, which had died on him. We ended up doing a U-turn in a field and struggling all the way to Manado. As it got dark again (the start of a second night), he got confident and it was Formula 1 all the way.

In Manado, I finally found Miss "I haven't just spent 30 hours on a shitty bus" Ballard, looking rather smug with herself. The following day, I got my own back. My last experience of Indonesian bureaucracy and it was unreal.

This is the scenario: I wanted to fly to the Philippines for 3 weeks, but I didn’t have an inward/outward ticket there. The good news was that Bouraq were still flying to the Philippines as long as you had an outward ticket - which was the bad news. You couldn’t book outward Philippine tickets in Sulawesi!

So we visited the Philippine Embassy (not a short walk in 35'C temperatures). They assured me that I could still fly there and get an outward ticket at the airport. They even called up Davao immigration where I was arriving and talked to the Immigration officer to let him know I was arriving in a few days. Did I need a written statement? No. Any problems with Bouraq, I was to get them to call the Embassy.

The travel agent called the Embassy but was still not happy with the arrangement and called Bouraq HQ who asked us to visit them. By now I was getting a little bored of repeating the story. They tried to contact the head man at the airport so we sat around until word came back - Bouraq would not issue a ticket without a statement from the Philippine Embassy. Meanwhile, Jo was intending to fly to Singapore but could not book her ticket until I was assured that I could go to Philippines, because the only other alternative would be to fly to Singapore with her. I left her in the a/c Silk Air office ("I just going out. I may be some time") and tramped back to the Embassy where the staff were at lunch.

I started to explain the story to another receptionist, when the Consulate General strolled up, said "get him a glass of water" and told me that he understood my problem. He had a statement typed up with his signature and told me to go to another travel agent. They liked the statement, but I didn’t like their exchange rate and haggled. In the end I got the ticket issued at a good price. It had only taken 7 hours! Jo booked a flight to Singapore and all was well.

Our comfortable Victory Inn had some strange rules:
"Every guest can not do prostitution. Free sex and amoral practice in Victory Inn area".
"Do not bringing, using or circulating any illegal things as illegal drugs, narcotic alcohol and any dangerous weapon".
"Do not damage, take something without permission or get lost everything has been propertied by Victory Inn".
"After read this house of rule, every guest could be take consideration to be understood and agree to follow all chapter on this house of rule".
Which all seemed pretty straightforward. Not.

One hour's boat ride, northwest of Manado is Bunaken Island, promoted as Indonesia's prime scuba diving site. It is a "75 sq. km patch of sea sectioned off as Bunaken Marine Reserve, where coral reefs around the islands drop to a 40m shelf before falling to depths of over 200m and creating stupendous reef walls abounding with so much life that at times you hardly know where to start looking" (Rough Guide). I fancied some of this over the weekend before flying out.

Yet again, there were a few problems. You have to stay on the main island to dive and the dive schools were full. There was also no public boat to the island, and you rely on lodge owners on the island who come to Manado to pick up supplies to get a ride. It took a little organising, but I was told that someone was coming over. I could get a lift with him, and get the last single room at his full lodge and squeeze in 2 dives just within the mandatory regulation of 'no diving allowed 24 hours before a plane flight' (nitrogen narcosis is not fun at altitude).

The owner had brought his wife and his sick young daughter owner to visit the doctor. I sat around the fish market waiting while youths in pirated English Football shirts made basic conversation. The tide had dropped and we had to lower ourselves 6ft off the jetty wall into the motorised canoe and pass the shopping and daughter down to the boat. We motored out in lovely sunshine, but the harbour was full of plastic bags and bottles and other debris which the latest storms had churned up. It was millstone calm on the water. At the other end, the tide was out and we had to wade 200ft through the water carrying the supplies/daughter to reach the beach.

The 'Panoramic' homestay was a peaceful, quiet and relaxed compound of wooden shacks and communal open air dining area, on the cliff overlooking the sea. For less than £2, I got a single room with fan and mandi (basic toilet/cold shower) and all meals, which were large splendid affairs of home cooked fresh fish, vegetables, rice, fruit etc. A large black pot bellied Vietnamese pig hoovered up all the left overs. 15 western travellers were there. I hadn't seen this many since leaving Bali.

The 'Sulawesi Dive School' was right next door and I made an afternoon dive and another the following morning dropping to 25 metres along the coral cliff edge. The coral was magnificent - multicoloured and various. Species spotted included bumpheaded parrot fish, barracuda, silver travelly, tuna, white tipped reef sharks, turtles, camouflaged scorpionfish, mantis shrimps with razor sharp forelegs and black and silver striped sea snakes. On my second dive, I was underwater for 75 minutes. It would be a great place to hang out for a week and take in dozens of sites but alas, I had to get going. The flights only ran twice a week.

The 90-minute Bouraq flight was something else. The small plane was half full with 20 passengers. There were no seatbelt demonstrations by the airhostesses. We just took off with seats reclined and no seatbelts fastened. We flew over Bunaken Island and I could see where I had dived. Passengers were allowed to smoke. We got a plastic lunch in a cardboard box and nothing was collected up. When we landed in Davao in the southern Philippines, my tray was still down with my lunch, people were still smoking and all seatbelts remained undone. The most casual flight I've ever been on.

Last Impressions: Sulawesi is a lovely part of Indonesia. Rural mountainous scenery, both as scenic and terrible, transportation wise, as Flores (which I visited last December) but with some unique culture. The locals were very friendly. They smiled and said hello and left it at that. No hard sell and no dual pricing for the tourists. Because, er, there were no tourists. Few tried to overcharge us anywhere.

Like India, everyone should visit Indonesia once in their lifetimes. But as with India, you may come away wondering if the overall experience was enjoyable or pure hell.

Road kill update: One flattened frog.

Travel - £153.32
Accommodation - £32.90
Food - £43.51
Other - £297.60
Total - £527.33
Grand Total - £12,004.40