Tana Toraja (Or, "The Time I Almost Gave Up Burgers Forever")

I've seen a few bloody things in my life--the Hong Kong horror flick Dream House (If at first the landlord won't give you a good deal, try killing 11 of your prospective neighbors.) and a bull getting castrated (worst school field trip ever)--but watching water buffalo bleed out takes the cake.

Tana Toraja, a region in Sulawesi, Indonesia, is known its colorful culture that has remained more or less intact for centuries. The traditional boat-shaped houses on stilts, varied burial sites (Coffins were everywhere: in caves, hanging off cliffs, and inside hollowed-out trees.), and rice terraces are certainly incentives to make the journey, but the real reason to come is to attend a funeral.

                                                   *Tongkonan, Traditional Torajan Houses

It's the most important ceremony in Toraja, even more significant than weddings (which is saying alot because we got stuck in a 30-minute traffic jam in the middle of nowhere one day because a wedding was being held). Funerals last days, up to 10 if the deceased was wealthy, and are pricey affairs, with the most expensive costing up to US$100K. Temporary huts are built to accommodate the hundreds of people who attend--family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, political figures, and, oh hey, tourists.

It sounds intrusive to show up to a stranger's funeral, but they welcome everyone, especially those that come bearing cigarettes. When we showed up, our guide, Immanuel,* led us to the entrance of the crowded courtyard. There were too many people standing out front to see inside, but they were clearly watching something.

"Oh no," he said. "They already started," Immanuel said, pushing past the throng.

"Oh, that's OK," we assured him.

"No, no," he said insistently. We got to the front. "We missed the buffalo sacrificing."

We stood silently for a moment and took it all in. Nine water buffalo were splayed out on the ground, pools of blood still forming around the 45 degree angles cut into their throats.

One was still standing, its hindquarters facing me, and I thought it had yet to be slaughtered. Oh, Lord. I don't want to watch them hack into this one. Then it grunted and thudded to the ground, where the machete chop already made to its neck became evident. It looked kind of like a tree, the way it fell, knees locked, body stiff. I fully expected someone to yell, "Timber!"

After a moment, Immanuel guided us through the carcasses to one of the temporary houses. "OK. Sit down," he pointed to a blue tarp laid over the floor.

A woman in her 30s dressed in all black came over with a tray loaded with coffee, rice cakes, and biscuits, and set it on the tarp.

"This is the daughter of the dead man," explained our guide. She smiled and nodded.

Josh and I looked at each other. Umm, the mourning daughter is serving US refreshments?

"So, these people, "Josh gestured to a few old women and a middle-aged man in a Malay hat, "are the family?"

"Oh well yes. You are guests of honor, so you sit in the house for the dead people with their family," he stated matter-of-factly.

"The dead people?"

"Up." He pointed directly over our heads. The temporary house we were in was on stilts and, sure enough, when we looked up through the wide slats of the quickly-constructed floor, there were two coffins covered in red cloth. "One an old man. The other one only 28 years old."

Immanuel went on to explain that, before the temporary house is built, the bodies of the dead are kept in the family's homes for a period of time while preparations are made for the funeral. The old man had been dead for three years and the younger man for one. Just hanging out in their family's house, dead.

"Here, eat. Local Torajan snacks," the guide insisted.

I analyzed my situation. Underneath a couple of dead bodies. Surrounded by dead buffalo. Sitting on a tarp covered in hunks of brown stuff that I'm really hoping is just dirt. Surprisingly still super hungry. I shrugged and grabbed a rice cake. "Thanks!"

I turned to look at the buffalo. One was still twitching. A few kids had gathered by another. They were making a mud castle. Like a sand castle, except with blood-soaked dirt.

As the afternoon passed, every kid in the place swarmed the buffaloes, flinging each other with blood mud, climbing over the carcasses, and kicking the hindquarters to make any remaining feces ooze out.

I kept snacking.

                                                              *Checking out a carcass

After the buffalo stopped bleeding, a bunch of young guys came out with knives and started skinning them, dragging the bloody hides out of the courtyard.

I kept snacking.

The guys came back with long machetes and started hacking the skinned buffalo into chunks of meat. One of them came over with a piece and flung it over the railing onto our tarp.

I jumped. One of the old ladies grabbed it and pulled it close to her bag. With her bare hands.



"The buffalo meat is distributed. Every family here gets some," Immanuel explained.

Slowly, as the men kept hacking, the courtyard went from smelling like a livestock yard to a meat market.

I stopped snacking.

While the reality of throwing around raw buffalo chunks was kind of gross, the concept is cool. According to Immanuel, Torajans are wealthier than other Sulawesis, and it's largely due to the buffalo sacrificing ritual. Buffaloes are wildly expensive. One costs about the price of a car. But everyone who attends a funeral, even strangers, gets some meat, which they can either eat or sell at the market for a good price. The wealthier a family is, the more buffaloes they're expected to sacrifice. In a way, it's showing off. The family hangs the horns of the buffaloes they've slaughtered on their house to show how wealthy they are. But it's also a way of redistributing wealth, even to villagers the family doesn't know.

Fortunately, by this point we had been at the funeral for three hours, and Immanuel thought it was time to make our way out. Unfortunately, "make our way out" meant stop to explain a few more things and take a zillion photos, all in a courtyard that had gotten a lot bloodier over the course of three hours. Finally, we were back at the entrance.

"Are you sure you're ready to leave?" Immanuel double-checked.

My exposed, be-Chacoed feet were two inches away from a skinned bull's head. "Yes. Yes, we are."

He held up a heavy-looking plastic bag. My stomach did a flip. "They gave us some buffalo meat. You are so lucky! We stop at a restaurant and cook it."

Believe it or not, I did eat some. And it was delicious. And then I offered the rest to an unsuspecting Brazilian tourist when Immanuel wasn't looking.



*It's not required, but almost everyone hires a local guide to attend a funeral. People don't speak much English, so it was nice to have an interpreter and someone to explain what was happening. Plus, the funeral was in a tiny village far from Rantepao, the main town, and would have been difficult to find. If you're ever lucky enough to find yourself in Toraja, you should use our guide, Immanuel. I gave his card to a fellow traveler, but you can get in touch with him at Riana Homestay. He was super friendly and quoted us one of the cheapest prices of the guides we met.

Island Hopping, Part 2: Apo

Our time in the sunny Philippines is over--already! The three weeks we had wasn't even close to enough time to see all these islands had to offer, but I must admit, I was almost ready to move on. The landscapes were varied and beautiful and the locals friendly, but I was exasperated by what I started calling the White Person Tax. Many locals are under the impression that because you are traveling, you have sufficient funds to pay more than the regular price for things. It wasn't a scam--they were very upfront about it. "Yes, the local price is 25 pesos," one tricycle rider told me when I was arguing over a price for a ride. "But you are a foreigner, so it is 75." And that was that.

My favorite place in the Philippines was Apo Island in the Visayas. Most people pass it over in favor of the more developed Palawan or Boracay, but those people are dumb. There's no running water on the island (Stay with me.) or electricity (Going unplugged is good for you.) or motorized vehicles of any kind (Who needs 'em when you've got a push cart?), and it's all part of the charm.

                                           *The only mode of transportation on the island.

This tiny, 72-hectare island is straight out of a book. There were generator-powered lights on the island from 6:30-9:30 pm, during which time everyone would hang out at the one karaoke bar or crowd around the few TVs in the village (even if that meant standing outside the neighbor's window like a creeper). After that, it was straight to bed so you could tolerate getting up around 4 or 5 with the multitudes of roosters strutting around the island.

Apo is a protected area for sea life, and the sanctuary there is 100% community run, meaning that defending the island from other fishers, etc., is up to the locals. Interestingly, up until 30 years ago, the islanders primarily made money from dynamite fishing. Then a local professor realized that, if the coral and tropical fish that called Apo home were allowed to flourish, the islanders would have a great source of revenue on their hands. He convinced them to make Apo a protected area, and today, tourism brings in more money than fishing ever did.

Because of the sanctuary, Apo is a mecca for divers and snorkelers. In fact, I wasn't a diver when I arrived on Apo, but I was by the time I left.

If you had told me three weeks ago that I would get my diving certification, I would have snorted unattractively at you. I can't snorkel for more than five minutes without getting a nose-full of sea water. But everyone raving about the coral convinced me to do an "introduction to diving" dive. Me being me, I prepared beforehand, reading the manual thoroughly and taking each self-assessment quiz. But, of course, book learning is quite different from real-live experience.

You control where you want to be in the water with your Buoyancy Control Device (BCD), which is a vest you can inflate and deflate with air to go up or down, and basically my learning period with it went like this.

Why isn't this thing deflating? Wait, it is. Whoa, it really is. Inflate! Inflate! Crap, I'm going to crash into the reef, just like the manual said not to because that destroys delicate aquatic life. I hate destroying delicate aquatic life! It goes against everything I believe in! Aaaaaand . . . I'm prostrate on the reef. Oh sure, BCD, now you inflate. I would make a horrible mermaid. That's fine actually. If Ariel is any indication, they are all dipshits. Bleck, this air is making my mouth dry. OK, relax. Look around. That's the point of this ridiculous exercise. OMG! I FOUND NEMO!!!*

From then on, I didn't think about my BCD or the air or the fact that I really had to pee (OK, I thought about that a little bit.). The fish and coral were mind-bogglingly beautiful. There's no way I could describe them, but let's just say I also saw Bloat and Crush and a lot of electric blue starfish.

Our divemaster, Mario Pascobello of Mario's Scuba Diving and Homestay, really added to the experience. He was thorough (He made me practice taking my mask off and putting it back on underwater five times, which is how many times it took for me to quit snorting water up my nose.) but also pretty chill. He was, and continues to be, a key player in making the reef a protected area, and was the captain of the barangay for ten years, so he was an all-around cool person to get to know.

                                                                        *Mario's selfie

This week, we're rocking Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Asia's most glamorous cities with delicious food (I have a food belly already). Then it's off to Indonesia, where more diving awaits us.


*Apparently, all my previous experience with underwater life has been through Disney movies. I even caught myself humming "Under the Sea" into my regulator.

Island Hopping, Part 1: Siquijor

Yesterday was an R&R day. We've been going pretty hard for two weeks now, trekking and caving and jolting around on top of jeepneys. When even your armpits are sore, it's time to take a break. We're currently in Sagada, an idyllic mountain town up in North Luzon, Philippines. With rice terraces, alpine forests, and chilled-out locals, there isn't a better place for an easy day.

                                                     *The view is always better up top!

So, yesterday afternoon, we're lounging in our room at the Sagada Homestay. With pine wood flooring and walls and breath-taking views, it's the nicest place we've stayed in so far. The breeze is gently blowing the curtains back from the open windows, letting in a few sun beams. I glance over at Josh, who looks contemplative.

"What are you thinking about?"

"The Zodiac killer."

"What?"

"I was just reading some TV reviews on The Daily Beast, and there's a new one about serial killers that looks cool. You know they never caught the Zodiac guy?"

I was thinking about the great trip we've been having so far, but to each his own.

We kicked off in Dumaguete, the capital of Negros Oriental. It was a great place to start because you have all the conveniences of a city but can catch ferries to a variety of small islands. The first one we hit was Siquijor. There are some beautiful falls, and the white-sand beaches are gorgeous and almost tourist-free, but rather small. The real thing to do there is see a witch doctor.

Yeah, a witch doctor.

Stupid Lonely Planet acted like it wasn't really worth the effort to see one. Were they ever wrong. It is a bit of a drive--we rented a motorbike and drove up through the mountains to San Antonio, a village about an hour and a half away from the main town. Luckily, once we were in the area, we got flagged down by some guys harvesting coconuts who wanted to offer us some fresh juice. While slurping it right out of the coconut shell, I asked about seeing a healer.

"Annie Ponce," said the oldest guy. "She is the best. Just drive up there and ask--everyone knows her."

Annie lived in a nipa hut with her family, with a little room added on for her to see patients. From the moment we walked in, it was obvious that the practices of this "witch doctor" weren't about sorcery. Instead, they were a funky mix of older, traditional healing and Catholicism, the country's popular religion. Hanging on one of the walls was her assortment of handmade cross necklaces, which she explained could protect from illness, evil spirits, and "people who don't like you." There was also a statue of a saint I didn't recognize, and a small bowl with a handle in the shape of the Virgin Mary.

Annie started our session by asking what she could do for me.

"Uhh," I hesitated. I was doing it out of curiousity, but I'm pretty sure you can't just tell someone who considers herself a doctor that she's a tourist attraction. "I umm, just heard that this was an interesting thing to do."

She looked at me skeptically.

Great. That was probably insulting.

"She has allergies," Josh interjected helpfully.

"Ahh. OK, no problem,"Annie said.

She had me sit in a chair and made a charcoal fire underneath it, which, I must admit, was a bit terrifying. Then she wrapped me in a sheet from the neck down and basically smoked me out. While the smoke was getting thicker and my seat frighteningly warmer, she started crossing me over my head and the back of my neck and chanting prayers. Then she mixed a concoction of coconut oil and herbs in the bowl with the Virgin Mary handle and massaged it into my face, neck, and back, followed up by some more crossing and prayers.

"OK." She removed the sheet and the escaping smoke billowed up to the ceiling. "Don't take a shower today. Also, don't eat chicken, fish, or shrimps anymore."

I nodded obediently. (I definitely broke all those rules within like six hours.)

"How do you feel?" She looked at me expectantly.

Uhh, oily? "Relaxed!"

She nodded resignedly and looked at the unidentifiable saint.

Crap. Another insulting answer.

She said payment was donation only. I paid a lot. It must have been enough for her to overlook my ignorant insults because she sent me home with a coconut oil potion, good for "skin infections, insect bites, and stomachaches."

I have to admit, since my visit with Annie, I've reduced my Zyrtec pills by half. Of course, that could be because I no longer live in my moldy Taiwanese apartment . . .

Byebye Taiwan. Hello SE Asia!

I worked in residence life during college, and once I proudly went on about my wonderful organizational skills in front of my boss. He laughed/snorted and said, "No, Mel, I'm pretty sure that's called being anal retentive." He sugar-coated a lot of things--probably a coping mechanism for living in the same building as 186 college kids--but when it came to my neurosis, he called it like he saw it.

In college classes, this probably worked in my favor. I never lost assignments or forgot exams, and my notes were essentially transcripts with doodles in the margins. But this behavior predated college by about 18 years. As a child, I kept my book series in numerical order and used a ruler to underline things in textbooks (to avoid squiggly lines of course). One Christmas, my gifts were "organization themed." I got an electronic organizer, Mary Engelbreit Post-its, and a markerboard. This might sound like lackluster parenting, but I was delighted by these presents. ("This organizer comes with a stylus?! SCORE!")

There are some upsides to trying to keep life mess-free. I rarely do things I will regret, like drunk text or paint my nails neon orange. And I've never gotten an overdraft fee or choked on poorly-chewed food.

But the downsides suck. I approach everything in life with the same attitude I have about gynecology appointments: "Let's get this over with so I can check it off my list." This has led to me missing out on some key rites of passage, like streaking or dating a bad boy. OK, I don't mind skipping the bad boy drama, but do wish I had run across the soccer field topless with my friends in college that one time. It was only streaking in the strictest sense of the word (It was the middle of the night and no one saw them except each other.), but I opted to sit in the running car and keep a look out for campus security.

It's not that I want to radically change who I am. Structure keeps humanity from imploding. Deadlines keep the world moving forward. Aspirations give people something to work towards.

I just want to stop getting nicknamed "Mom."

I have lightened up over the past few years. Living with another person has required it. Once Josh and I started splitting laundry duty, my once colored-coded underwear drawer turned into a mosh pit of mis-matched socks, men's T-shirts, and other miscellanous items such as plastic bags and ripped mittens, all bouncing out like a bunch of Bieber-crazed teens whenever I opened the drawer.

After about a year of such household mayhem, I realized two things.
1) Spending a few minutes a week searching for matching socks or re-sorting the recycling is not worth an argument.
2) Josh spends half as much time planning his life as I do, yet the vague plans he has in his head work out about as well as the bullet-listed ones I write down on sticky notes.

Since these epiphanies, my life has gotten a lot more relaxed. It started with small steps--mixing darks and lights, leaving the house without mascara, shaving ONLY once a week during winter--and now I've moved to the big leagues: backpacking through Southeast Asia for four months.

Yes, that's right. Josh and I are leaving Taiwan on Monday to traipse through the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam until July (or until we run out of money). We've been planning on this trip for almost a year, and I have been super excited. Until last week, when we went on a two-day trip to a friend's house. I was in the shower one morning trying to figure out which bottle was the shampoo.

This one? No. Facewash.
This one? No. Silky bodywash.
This one? All Chinese. Let's try it.

As I lathered up my hair with the mystery liquid, I thought, "Man, I can't wait to shower in my own shower again. [ Pause. ] On our trip, I won't have my own shower. Our trip is four months long. OMG. FML.*"

I don't miss sleeping in my own bed so much, but there's something about showering in other people's showers that freaks me out. That tile is caked with dirt and sweat and dead skin cells that countless strangers have scrubbed off their body, likely after peeing down the drain first, all sealed in by a thick coat of soap residue and mildew.

Also, I can't see in the shower. I'm pretty near-sighted, so to find the bottle I want, I have to either hold it a few inches from my face to read it or rely on the senses of touch, smell, or taste, which is not ideal.

Even without communal showers, this trip's potential for messiness is HIGH.

We are living out of backpacks.
We are staying with a couchsurfer for the first three days of our trip. After that, we're just rollin' into town / village / island without a plan.
The timeline we have put together ends abruptly on May 27. I typed up a timeline, but it has a lot of question marks. Like, for example, underneath "Return to U.S." Hell, we haven't even decided where we're returning to.
During the next four months, we are just going wherever the wind takes us.

WTF?!?!?!?!

I am terrified. But I'm also excited. I'm excitified.

The anal retentive me would have only felt sheer terror. So, even though I wish I could just be excited, I guess this is--albeit meager--progress.

I am excited for obvious reasons, like new cultures, top-notch snorkeling, and alcoholic concoctions in coconut shells, but I'm also excited for the personal growth this trip should bring. I have long envied the process-oriented, the ones who do for the sake of doing. They are the chalk-street artists, the sky-divers, the casual daters, the ones who do not live in a tiny drab box.

Really, it's the reason this blog is titled what it is--I am not bohemian by nature, but the idea is appealing. It always has been. My grandmother has a picture of my sister and I dressed up in my mom's old clothes when we were kids. My sister is button-cute in my mom's old Brownie dress. And I am dressed in a black sparkly top and a multi-colored tulle skirt. My grandma says I look like a gypsy. I guess part of me has always wanted to be a roamer. I just wasn't ready to embrace it until now.

Now that I think about it, I am brandishing a bejeweled wand in that picture, so I was probably going for princess. But I look like a gypsy. We'll just go with that.



*Yeah, I think in text lingo.

Out with the Old, In with the New

At work yesterday, I was browsing Inc. for reading passage ideas when I came across "6 Things Really Productive People Do." (Yes, the title really emphasizes really.) Normally, I would have scrolled right past this—it doesn’t take an expert to come up with gems like “Pick your priorities,” “Celebrate progress,” or “Lay off the Farmville.” But the tagline caught my attention. “Have you noticed that some people just seem to accomplish tons and still appear happy and relaxed?”

“Yes,” I thought. “And it makes me want to punch them in the face.”

New Year’s always brings out this sentiment in me. Even if I it was a good year, I am plagued by thoughts like:

What was I DOING all year?

I am frittering away my time. I am a fritterer.

I sleep too much. Why can’t I be like Hillary Clinton* or Leslie Knope** or those people that sleep like four hours a night and are still high-functioning machines?

Eventually, the year’s worth of self-loathing passes, and I settle into contemplating the year ahead. I’ve loved making New Year’s resolutions since I was a kid. I have a Rubbermaid container full of old journals, and each contains the resolutions I faithfully set every January 1 of my growing-up years.

When I was 9, I vowed to make that boy in Sunday School who kept putting glue in my hair fall in love with me. When I was 11, I decided to become just like Nancy Drew. In high school and college, my resolutions were run-of-the-mill and easily broken: exercise three times a week, pray before bed, eat salad for lunch. As an adult, I’ve been setting the bar quite a bit lower, like in 2011, when I resolved to try yoga one time at some point or other before the year ended.

And then there was last year, when I was hung over on New Year’s Day and felt that aspirations were worthless, as was life itself, and I would never be able to accomplish anything ever again anyway because I was never going to get out of that bed. So, I grumpily snatched my new 2012 planner off the bedside table and scribbled this on the inside of the cover: Either crap or get off the pot.*** I was stuck with that glorious ambition all year.

For the sake of my resolutions and my liver, I acted with more discretion during the wee hours of 2013. I’ve been mulling over goals since then, and I’ve decided to follow that ridiculous article’s advice after all since, so far, doing my own thing hasn’t been that successful.

I am picking new priorities.

1. End each day with gratitude. Before bed, write down (or at least think to myself before passing out) one good thing that happened. – It is a wonderful life, just like Frank Capra taught us, and it’s time to appreciate it more fully.

2. Read more. Watch TV less. – For feeling so superior about not owning a television, I watch an awful lot of TV. To start the year off right, Josh and I will be abstaining from TV and movies next week. Those seven days will feel like 40 days in the wilderness.

I am celebrating progress I’ve made.

The past year was a year of personal growth and trying new things. I . . .

. . . got a tobacco pipe, regularly went to yoga class, tried meditation, discovered the line between drinking and giving myself a hangover, and participated in like, my first real athletic competition ever (Dragon Boat racing).

. . . decided to be transparent with the people I love. With some, this means being open about my faith. With others, it means not hiding the actions that they think are wrong.

. . . acknowledged that I would probably not find the life of a “career woman” fulfilling, and what I really desire to do is write. I figured this out at a church retreat at the end of this summer. We were having a time of small group discussion, and one of the questions was, “If you could do anything and God guaranteed your success, what would you do?” and I instantly thought, “Write a book. [pause] Oh. So I do know what I want to do with my life.” And then everyone else in my group gave spiritual answers. Fail.

. . . realized that I want to adopt a child, maybe even a few. I also want to garden, bake, refinish secondhand furniture, and other housewifey things.

I am laying off the Farmville.

I’ve never actually played Farmville, but the same principle applies to Gilmore Girls. I’ve seen every season four times. And I’m most likely underestimating with that number.

Wishing you and yours a bright, happy, really productive 2013.




*Obviously excluding this blood clot episode
**Yes, I know she’s a fictional character. That doesn’t make her high energy levels any less inspiring/distressing.
***It’s supposed to be metaphorical, you juvenile dolt.