TRAVELS WITH MY TEXT BOOKS 6

I think I might live in the most beautiful country in the world. I also think that you only truly appreciate something when you start running out of time with it. It's in the last four months that I've progressed from really, really liking to loving Indonesia. One of the standard questions that locals ask me is 'do you like Indonesia?' and they seem to find it utterly hilarious when I launch into a five minute spiel on how passionate I am about this country.

The other favourite questions to ask a bule (white foreigner) are 'where are you going?' 'where are you from?' 'how long have you been in Indonesia?' and 'are you married?' The correct response to the latter is always 'yes' or 'not yet'. There is never an option to say no, since in Indonesia it is always expected that, at some point, you will get married. I truly suspect that even if you were homosexual, married to God, ninety years old, covered in scales or all of the above, the correct answer would still be 'not yet'. Even when you open up a bank account or fill in a medical form, there are no boxes for the 'no' option. On Sulawesi, an X-shaped island east of Java, locals also ask your religion; and if it happens to be the same as theirs, their reaction is similar to gaining a new best friend. But atheism or agnosticism is generally not comprehended and the boxes for these options simply do not exist, both mentally and physically.

Sulawesi was my first big solo trip during my time in Indonesia, and it felt both exciting and daunting to pile my life into a backpack again and see another corner of this vast country. I flew into Makassar, in the south west; and once I'd installed myself in a hotel, went to sample the fresh seafood on a terrace near the port so I could see the stars. Let me stress here that Jakarta is probably one of the most polluted cities in the world and we never see any stars, so even to see a handful was exciting, especially when accompanied by fresh calamari. I've long grown to accept that the world of travellers and bule in Asia in general is fairly small, so it was unsurprising that the people I started talking to there worked for the same company as me and it was interesting to swap teaching tactics and stories.

I wanted to explore the countryside so after seeing the Dutch fort, which is really all Makassar has to offer in terms of tourist attractions, I left as soon as possible. On the recommendation of some friends, I went to Tana Toraja, an eight hour bus ride north. Tana Toraja is an extremely famous and culturally important area of Sulawesi, known for its elaborate funerals. I planned to spend three days there and after two bus ticket changes, eventually spent six. Well known among my friends as nonsensically cheap when it comes to travel costs, I was eventually coerced into taking a more comfortable bus for the overnight journey. I finally realised that it was worth paying the extra £2 for the extended level of comfort, if you ignore that fact that 50 per cent of the journey was accompanied by blasting music and videos of an ageing bule man with a guitar singing about how much he liked Asian girls. After approximately five minutes, I was ready to write a strongly worded email to the musician responsible.

It was in Tana Toraja that I had what may have been my most enjoyable time in Indonesia to date. The landscape is phenomenally beautiful, with miles of green rice terraces, winding mountain roads and spectacular views. Walking, biking or driving around allows you to see children playing, old ladies carrying baskets and logs on their heads, chickens and goats wandering around freely, the first pigs I have seen since I arrived in Indonesia, and men washing their much loved buffalos - creatures which have huge significance in Tana Toraja. Many of the buildings are built in traditional Tana Toraja style and brightly painted. The area is also principally Christian, and it was strange to see so many churches and to hear so many church services after months in predominantly Muslim Java.

The main purpose of visiting Tana Toraja is to view burial sites. These can range from graves hanging in the cliff face, trees filled with baby graves, or caves surrounded outside and in with skulls and bones - which are hidden within the rock, or on display with bottles of water and cigarettes. It is a unique and haunting experience to creep around these caves in the dark, while they're full of spiders and bats, and stumble across skulls; and although the idea of coffins being built into the rock face sounds morbid, in reality it's actually very beautiful.

The only downside to the area is the influx of guides, who are hell-bent on recruiting you into a tour and refuse to tell you where the funerals are held until you hand over your money. The guides insist on attacking you in restaurants and slide their way into conversation by asking you if you are having a nice meal. But the guides aside, the locals are incredibly friendly and once they had finished laughing at my apparently Javanese dialect, were keen to give me lifts on their ojek (motorbikes). One thing I have never quite mastered in Indonesia is how to establish whether someone on an ojek is a driver or if they are just standing on the side of the road with their friends, who all happen to own an ojek too. I'm fairly sure that some innocent passersby have given me lifts simply because they were too embarrassed to tell me the truth.

Another means of transport are angkot, which look like rundown minibuses, are often missing dashboards and play very loud music depending on the drivers' taste. They work on almost the same principle as a bus except that you can stop them at any point, and their route can vary slightly depending on your destination. They can comfortably fit eight passengers. Of course, this generally means they contain at least thirteen passengers and the driver will refuse to move until the angkot is so full that people are practically falling out of the windows. My most amusing and crowded angkot drive involved two sacks of rice and seventeen other people who seemed to be in the midst of a birthday party, complete with balloons and cake.

However, rather than taking the more sensible option of public transport or the knowledge of locals, I decided to motorbike around the area with three travellers I met there. We rented two motorbikes between us, which gave us the freedom of time and allowed us to see some beautiful places rarely frequented by travellers. One road we were taking changed from a fairly stony path to a completely off-road red dirt track balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff. With darkness quickly approaching, gathering storm clouds and several bumps and bruises from veering off the track, this was definitely a moment when I began to wonder if I was actually going to make it back in one piece. Since Naomi and I seemed to be hindering the boys' progress (and balance), they rode off to 'find help' and we followed on foot. 'Help' came in the form of an open backed truck, onto which we loaded firstly the motorbikes and secondly ourselves. As it began to rain and we clung onto the edge of the truck to keep from falling out, I made the absolutely dire mistake of looking over the edge of the truck, confirming my fears that the road definitely wasn't wide enough. We felt that we had definitely earned our evening beers after that experience.

Our second motorbike excursion was distinctly less risky, but still eventful. Driving for hours, we got caught in a torrential downpour and had to shelter in a wooden hut on the side of the road. An hour later, cold, wet and miserable, we attracted the attention of an old man who invited us to scramble down a muddy embankment to shelter in his house and drink coffee with his family. Help like this is extremely characteristic of Indonesians and illustrates just how generous they can be to strangers.

Since Tana Toraja's funerals are meant to be a truly unique experience, it seemed compulsory to track one down. First, we had to visit the market to bring the family and chief of the village presents, which typically consist of coffee, sugar and cigarettes. The market was a bustling mass of people manoeuvring pigs tied to wheelbarrows; and stalls selling strange fruits, vegetables, cloth, homemade jewellery, colourful chillies, fresh coffee, betel nut, fresh and dried fish, and enormous slabs of meat. There was even a dentist, who presented me with a bowl of freshly pulled teeth as an incentive to use his services. We also saw a vast buffalo market swarming with people trading and presenting their buffalos and, rather distressingly, an area set up for cock fighting.

Once we had purchased our presents, we drove to a village where we had heard rumours of a funeral. The first thing we saw was a group of men casually expelling the contents of some pig intestines. Hearing the squeals of several other pigs as we approached the funeral party, it seemed fairly likely that more of them were about to meet a similar fate. The basic principle of Tana Torajan funerals is that the more important you are, the larger your funeral and the greater the number of pigs and buffalos slaughtered. The guests were seated in wooden structures set up expressively for the funeral. These surrounded an open area where a pile of carcasses lay and men with machetes and axes hacked up pieces of meat. Almost all of the guests were casually holding large slabs of meat and various entrails and limbs lay around the area. Two buffalo tethered to a nearby tree shifted uncomfortably. However, despite this apparently gory scene, the funeral party was lively and cheerful, with people drinking coffee and rice wine, smoking, laughing and exchanging stories, even casually perching on top of the frothing pigs before they were sacrificed. A large set of speakers blasted out announcements and music and it was clear that this was a time of celebration rather than of mourning. Once we had presented our gifts, we were awarded with our own cups of coffee and were free to watch the proceedings and explore the area at our leisure.

For my last day, we decided to abandon the motorbikes and instead rent our own bentor, which is basically a carriage for two people leashed to the front of a motorbike. This particular mode of transport is not generally taken onto the mountain roads, which are steep and winding. This and the fact that the bentor was being driven by Nigel, a bule, meant that we received looks ranging from absolute bemusement to amusement. Our efforts were rewarded with an astonishing view over miles of paddy fields, once again reminding me of just how beautiful Indonesia can be.