August 6 - September 2, 2001

Kuching to Denpasar

Our Indonesian part of the world didn't go exactly as we would have hoped. we really didn't have a good plan as to where we wanted to go except for Sulawesi and a stop off in Bali. this sounds easy when talking over a Lonely Planet or a Indo map, but in reality the country is incredible huge, spread out and difficult to travel where and when you want. In many ways it sums up all the worst in SE Asian travel experinces we've had so far. There were some gems but over all I think we were just too traveled out to really get a better picture of the country.

We started off travelling by bus from Kuching to Pontianak in Kalimantan. Pontianak was for a lack of a better word a bombed out stinking hot sewer of a place that really didn't have anything good too do in. We did rent out a boat to go up the river for a few clicks to explore the wooden mosque and then back down pass all the rusting boat hulls to the equator monument. This is probaly about the only interesting thing to say you have seen there! later we found some padang restuarants that made up some excellent rice and tempe dishes. we had a interesting chat with a local who worked in a gold mine and did remote treks up the rivers to meet the Dayak tribes who lived there.

From Pontianak there was only two ways out, one was to go by a once monthly boat to Jakarta or to catch a flight in a couple days time that would bring us to jakarta and then from there we flew on to Makassar in Sulawesi. Needless to say we opted for the latter option.

In Makkasar, another 'bombed out sprawl' but with a bit less of the "Hey Mister" we hooked up with "captian bruce" who had a locally built 2-masted schooner that we sailed up the west coast of Sulawesi in. This was probaly the highlight of our trip. We ended up pulling the anchor up, raising the sails, slept out on deck under the stars and waking up to the call to pray in the early morning hours...this part was unforgetable. later we folled and watched the local 'sandek' races that were great to see as they zipped passed our boat on there way down the coast in their small boats.

We got droppped off in Polwali on the central west coast and caught a bus from there up to Tana Toraja country, which was just beautiful to be in. loads of terraced rice fields, funky peaked curved houses on stilts and their famous funeral ceremonies. We went to one of these in which over a period of several days they slaughter 10-20 water buffalo and pigs and have buffalo fights and parade the deceased around in a brightly painted coffin. men sing in closed circles around the coffin while loads of tourists jump for the best position to watch the slaughter. a bit too much after a day but this goes on for days and days!.

Unfortunatly there was trouble up in the northern part of Sulawesi between muslim and chrstian villagers, so we wern't able to really get up there as we had orginally planned. instead we ended up flying from makkasar to surabaya and getting a overnight bus from there to denpasar. We really didn't enjoy Bali as much as everyone else seems too. For one we arrived minus our video camera, thanks to some crafty night thieves on the bus. This was sort of the last straw for us as Bali just seemed to us one big tourist trap after that. Stayed up in Ubud which we liked but got shakened up by the police when we rented a moter bike one day to go explore the Northeast coast... much less touristy up there but we had to pay off the police to get there! It was all starting to turn out like something in a bad '80's B-movie.