the Togean islands and Bunaken

I learned how to scuba dive in North Sulawesi. Well, technically I didn't learn to scuba dive in North Sulawesi but on the strings of tiny tropical islands and coral beds that surround it.
I hadn't originally planned to scuba dive up there and only did so as a result of the millions of personal recommendations i received from other travellers. The further north I ventured, the more and more wide eyed people spoke to me of the sub-aquatic wonders as if there were some secret coral lair where Poseidon himself offers personal wisdom to his harem of beautiful water nymphs while an infinite number of rainbow coloured fish dance and swirl around his shimmering tail.

Given that impression, i began to consider leaving Sulawesi without having dived in the same way i might consider murdering all my friends and family. Utterly wrong.
Now I'm glad my overactive conscious drove me beneath the waters, because what I found there was wonderful. The description I gave earlier actually turned out to be quite accurate, with the possible exception of Poseidon himself being present.
The Togean islands, where i completed my PADI course, boast the intriguing claim of every known type of coral in an unusually small area. I personally have enough coral knowledge to identify exactly 0 species of coral other than by my own preschool terms such as "the one that looks a bit like a cabbage" and "the one that looks a bit like a brain"; but the colourful coral gardens teeming with tropical fish were no less astonishing as a result. The other area I dived, around Bunaken island, north of Manado, is rumoured to have been one of Jacques Cousteau's favourite destinations for diving. It might  take another few trips before I have the same level of experience as monsieur Cousteau, but after diving there I'm not at all surprised he enjoyed it.

I was lucky enough to see sharks, rays, lobsters, groupers, baracuda, ghost pipefish, and many more, but my personal favourite underwater inhabitant had to be the snoozing turtles hidden in their coral beds.

This fellow and many others like him weren't always easy to spot, having chosen their resting places hidden in caverns in the coral-wall, but it was extremely exciting when we did. Sometimes they would sense our presence and stir, watching us hazily for a few moments then shaking the lethargy from their plated heads and gliding out between us into the big blue.
One such fellow was the biggest turtle I had ever seen. His shell alone was easily six feet long. Having your breath taken away should be an enchanting experience; but since I had run short on cash and was free diving at the time (just a snorkel and fins) with the closest air source ten metres above my head, the taking away of my breath did nothing but endanger my life.
And when the giant beast finally heaved himself up and began his flight in my direction, it was less like witnessing a magical encounter with nature than standing in the tracks of a living freight train on the approach.
Nevertheless, I made it to the surface live and kicking (albeit kicking furiously). After a huge gulp of fresh air, I peered beneath me and was just in time to watch the slow Goliath of the sea disappear into the abyss.
Free diving is an exhausting activity, but it always seemed a lot easier knowing the place I had to recuperate.

Here, you are always warm and comfortable. Here, the soft breeze brings no sounds except the distant melody of tropical birdsong and the hiss of waves. Here, time seems to move as slowly and peacefully as the fluffy clouds across the blue sky...
Which would be simply lovely if I weren't relentlessly hunted by my own personal cloud of thirsty mosquitoes LIKE EVERYWHERE ELSE IN ASIA.

Tana Toraja

Each person lucky enough to be born in this stunning region saves up for half their life to afford the funeral ceremonies for themselves and their families. In many cases, the funeral takes place up to ten years after the death of a person just so that the family can work and save enough money for the ceremony.

Some of these costs are what you would expect, catering, decoration, travel, etc. But far and away the highest cost for any funeral, is the cost of the sacrificial animals.
Torajans have been sacrificing animals for as long as their animistic history can be traced. It was only in the first part of the 20th century, when they embraced Christianity from the Dutch, that they stopped sacrificing human slaves along with the beasts.
The amount of buffalo slain at a given funeral serves as an indication of the deceased's social standing. Some extremely high profile funerals will see as many as 50 buffalo ritualistically killed, but most entertain the slaughter of a more modest seven or eight. Still, at two thousand euros a pop, that's not cheap for rice farmers in one of the poorest parts of Indonesia.

I stood in the front row at one such funeral and watched the life drain out (literally) of seven huge buffalo. I feel confident in saying that it was the most violent and gruesome thing I've seen in my life. There are usually two or three groups of tourists amongst the crowd. These are visible to an observer not only because of their relative heights and white skin, but also because of their sickened, tortured facial exoressions in contrast to the joyous faces of the locals, who laugh and cheer more and more ecstatically with each of the beast's thrashing, blood-splattering lurch and gurgling moan.
It was an extremely interesting spectacle, but a shocking one, and naturally I felt a little shaken up when the ceremony was over and the seven heaped carcasses were finally still and silent.
Even the exciting buffalo fighting event after the performance failed to soothe my soul. Then again, that probably had something to do with the nature of the fight. One buffalo, defeated and terrified, turned from his oponent and bolted, thundering out of the the enclosure with the victor in furious pursuit and toppling several spectators. The crowd scattered around me as the horns approached, and I managed to jump over a ditch and escape just in time.

I retired to bed that night and fell immediately to sleep, probably one of the normal symptoms of a near-fatal dose of adrenaline. The next day I decided to head to the northern hills for some light hiking, where hopefully my heartbeat could slow to something beneath 300 bpm. Here are some pictures.

As you might expect, the immense sense of nature's presence around me left me feeling calm and peaceful. Little did I know that my mellow psyche was about to be drawn into torment, faced with a dilemma requiring me to draw up all i knew about social protocol, etiquette and parental advice.
What should you do when a male stranger invites you to his house out of nowhere?
Actually, in this case the decision was relatively easy. The man in question couldn't have looked less threatening. I considered his proposition for all of three seconds and after making the conservative estimate that, if necessary, I could probably defend myself against at least four people his height simultaneously, I jumped on his motorbike and we rode down the hill happily to his village.
I spent four days and three nights in Booer's home, the first tourist to stay in Mendetec village ever. He lived there with his wife, his niece, his pregnant sister-in-law and hyperactive yet adorable daughter, Chelsea. I spent the days walking around the village with his extended family whilst acting as a mobile climbing frame for Chelsea, who had worked out rather ingeniously that human hair has a fantastic gripping quality. In the evenings my host would summon his large group of friends from the village for impromptu parties. Very few of them spoke English, but all of them were happy to make up for their linguistic shortcomings and keep their mouths occupied by pouring constant streams of Tuok (palm wine) into them.
Tuok is brewed locally and comes from the sap of palm trees. It is purchased either loose in plastic bags or in grubby 5 litre tanks. It has a sour, acidic, fermented taste. It is not very nice. Of course, I was far too polite to voice my dissatisfaction with the locals drink of choice, and kept up as best i could with the first evening's drinking.

The following night, I admitted that I didn't think it the most pleasant thing in the world, and Booer, my host, gave me some good news. He assured me that the locals had a solution to bad tasting Tuok: just add durian! Yes, the addition of this abundant fruit would surely sweeten the otherwise bitter drink! Wrong. durian is a foul smelling yet sweet tasting fruit, and there is a tendency in Southeast Asia to eat durian as it is turning rotten, a little like the Western fascinaton with blue cheese, i suppose. When the off-white lump of durian flesh is plopped into the concoction, it certainly has an affect on the taste. The Tuok is transformed from a fizzy, sour, acidic, fermented liquid to a fizzy, sour, fermented, lumpy liquid with a pungent smell and an aftertaste of fried onions. Of course, after my first sip of this repugnant fluid I did what any red-blooded, uncowardly Englishman would have done in my position. I smiled and drank the remainder without complaint.
On the third evening, Booer seemed somehow to have sensed that I was keen for a change of drink, and we went out and I brought us all some new and exciting beverages from the local town. Lager beer, local white wine and red wine from Bali! However, I was distraught to find that the local way to consume such drinks is to mix the three in a frothy jug, pop in a few lumps of durian for good measure, and then pass round a single glass to be downed by each victim and then refilled for the next.

This was easily the worse tasting potion of the three days, as any of you who have mixed the above drinks and then added fried onions will testify, and I surprised myself when i opted to return to Tuok.


Booer didn't ask for money in return for his hospitality, and wouldn't accept it when I tried to push it on him. I decided to buy dinner for him and his family instead. After we had visited the farm and personally selected the prime cockrel, my host informed me that the polite thing to do would be to kill the bird myself.
Killing the bird was much more difficult than i had expected, and then the bird was plucked, gutted, butchered, cooked and eaten.
It was truly enlightening to see the bird go from swaggering around the courtyard to steaming on a bed of rice. In the UK most of us never having a passing thought of the animal in the field when we buy our prepacked, preprepared cuts of meat from the supermarket. I stared at the roasted thigh in my hand for a long time thinking how the tasty morsel had gone in under an hour from a flexing, throbbing, lively muscle to an edible snack.

Then I ate it. It was absolutely delicious. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a meat dish again without imagining the animated, dynamic animal it once was a part of... but that doesn't mean I won't be salivating when I do so.