The Road to Togean Islands

When we booked the tickets for the bus to Poso, we were told the bus ride would take around 13 hours.  In reality it took 17 hours and we arrived in Poso at 1am.  By hour 10 I was ready to pull my hair out as the bus was LOADED and there wasn’t any space to stretch your legs.  Every single seat was occupied and the aisle was loaded with different items like grains and baskets and generators, in some places as much as waist high.  The distance to Poso from Rantepao is not that far, it’s the terrain you have to travel through that hampers how quickly you get there.  The first section is comprised of a wild jungle in the mountains, so the road is very windy and curvy, with very steep drops right on the edge of the road.  The jungle is so wild that, according to Andrew, it looks like Jurrasic Park and at any moment you expect a dinosaur to pop its head up from amongst the trees.  The second part is flat land and the bus covers this part fairly quickly, but then you reach the third part, which is exactly like the first part.  High, steep mountains and wild Jungle.  This combined with the bus driver stopping for a ½ hour break every 3 hours, adds to the delay.  It’s funny because a guy at a different agency was trying to tell us yes, the ride takes 13 hours, but Indonesian time, 17 hours.  He didn’t speak any English so it was hard to know what he was saying, but after the 17 hour bus ride, we finally understood.

We stayed at hotel right across the street from where the bus dropped us off.  It wasn’t pretty or even clean but it would do for the night.  The next morning we woke up to find a bus that would take us to Ampana, the second stop on the way to the Togean islands.  We couldn’t find a bus station but we met a guy who said he would take us, and 2 other people for 70,000 Rupiah each.  Roughly $7 per person.  We agreed, packed up the car and filed in.  He started the car and drove across the street and parked.  We waited a couple of minutes and then we asked, “are we going?”  He said yes yes but still we did not go.  Finally another guy told us we needed more tourists to fill the car and then we would go.  We knew this trick from Mount Bromo, but we still allowed ourselves to get annoyed.  Poso is a very small town and we knew there were no other tourists, and the likelihood of more tourists coming was very very slim…closer to none.  This was just a tactic to get us to pay more.  We talked with the other couple and they had met someone else who would take us for the same price so we told them to give us our luggage and that we were leaving.  They were upset and started telling us that we tourists expect “Public bus prices for a chartered car”.  The reality is much different.  He offers us a ride and we ask how much, he gives us the price and we agree.  We agree on the price and want to leave right away.  He does not explain to us if we want to leave right away we will have to charter the whole car at a different price.  If that was the case, we never would have gotten in the car anyway and would have just found the public bus terminal.  That is exactly what they are trying to avoid, but it’s a complete waste of time for the tourists.  Some tourists cave and pay more (which is what they’re hoping you will do) but we’re on a tight budget and we can’t afford to charter a whole car.  It makes me angry because they are basically holding us hostage.  They pack the bags and make you wait, but won’t tell you that until you start asking questions.  Nothing is ever as easy as asking a price and obtaining an answer.  We left the first guy and walked over to the one the other couple had found.

After some negotiations, we agreed on the same price as with the other people, and we would leave right away.  The car wasn’t as good as the first one (no ac, ripped seats) but we weren’t going to complain as long as we got there sooner rather than later.  The road to Ampana from Poso is a mix of bad and terrible.  There aren’t just pot holes, there are sections of missing asphalt, and they just creep up on you with no warning.  This is true in a lot of places in Indonesia however most buses or cars tend to slow down or try to avoid the potholes.  Not our driver.  He was under the impression anything under top speed was unacceptable and (I assume) under the hope our shocks would last the ride.  It was a very very bumpy, rough ride.  After a few hours of this, we decided the car must be stolen.  No one drives their car this way if they want it to arrive at the destination.  This was confirmed when we stopped at a tiny village and we smelled burning oil and saw smoke coming from the engine.  Our driver was not in the car so we thought it was a good idea to evacuate the car, just in case.  There was a lot of smoke coming from the engine.  This was one of those cars that has the engine under the 2 front seats of the car, not outside.  The driver came back with a bottle of water, propped up the 2 front seats and started pouring water on the engine.  This created a lot of steam and the water to explode, just barely missing our driver’s face.  Andrew, who’s happy to participate in any situation where “shit’s happening” (this is a direct quote) kept trying to see what our driver was doing and what was actually wrong with the car.  Our driver was not happy to have a tourist intrude and kept telling him “No problem.  No problem!”  And with every passing minute the “No problem” was more and more forceful.  After looking under the car, but unable to get anywhere with the driver, defeated, Andrew joined the rest of us to watch.  We were pretty sure the car was a write off, so we purchased a couple of cold cokes, and sat down to watch and wait.

While we were sitting and waiting for the driver to figure out the car was dead, the 4 of us chatted about where we had been in Indonesia so far.  We got on the topic of how sick I had been in Yogyakarta and our experience with the Indonesian doctor.  The couple we were travelling with told us she had been sick as well, however in Rantepao.  After 3 days of a high fever they decided to take her to the hospital.  When she arrived, 40 nurses surrounded her and just watched.  She was such a novelty to them, I guest tourists don’t frequent the hospital in Rantepao.  When a doctor finally did arrive, to take some blood work, instead of tying her arm off with a rubber band to help find the vain, he had a nurse come and put her hands around her arm and squeeze.  Not sure if there is a shortage of rubber bands in Indonesia, but there could be a shortage of rubber in general, as apparently the rubber gloves used by the doctors and nurses are washed, dried and re-used.  This too was witnessed by our travelling companions.  Apparently the finger tips of the gloves are brown from the blood they were unable to wash off.  Unfortunately the squeezing of the arm is not as effective as the rubber band, as the doctor still had trouble locating a vain.  She showed me her bruises and I counted at least 5 on one arm.  In the end she stayed in the hospital for 1 day but she thinks she would have gotten better just as quickly on her own.  This is why I try to avoid doctors or hospitals in other countries.  I may be worried about my health, but sometimes the environment I’m in is more sterile than the hospital.

After pouring water on the engine for 20 minutes, our driver was optimistic enough to try and start the car.  Amazingly, it actually worked!  The car started and he told us to climb back in.  I wasn’t very optimistic the car would get very far, but I hopped in.  We weren’t sure how much further we had to go.  The ride is supposed to take 5 hours and we had been travelling for 2 so we assumed we had at least another 3 to go.  I thought the smoky engine might cause our driver to slow down and be careful, but no such luck.  He drove at the same breakneck speed without a care for any potholes, just as he had previously.  This did pay off however, since we arrived in Ampana an hour later.  The ride which was supposed to take us 5 hours ended up taking us 3.  The couple with us were the first to be dropped off at their choice of hotel, and unfortunately for Andrew and I, the car started to smoke again.  We had another 20 minutes where we had to sit through our driver pouring water on the engine.  Again it came back to life.  This car was indestructible!

We asked the driver to drop us off at the ferry terminal, but our driver didn’t really speak English and our Indonesian isn’t any good, so we were dropped off at the bus terminal.  We managed, via hand gestures, to find out the schedule for the ferry, except we later realized it was the bus schedule.  Defeated we went to find a hotel room.  Oasis hotel is recommended in Lonely Planet, however it was extremely difficult to find anyone to help us.  The only person we found was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the office and he seemed stunned that we would wake him up.  After some hand gestures, he took us to a room, which we said we would take once he told us the price.  He couldn’t tell us (no English) but another lady started talking to us and telling us it was 100,000 Rupiah.  We said we saw a sign outside that said 90,000 Rupiah.  She said she didn’t know and that we would need to talk to the manager later.  (Later it turned out she was the manager!)  So we sat outside waiting for the manager, but after an hour we were fed up and found someone to give us another room.

Since we had been on the road for over 24 hours without much food we decided to get something to eat.  After we walked the whole town (literally) we couldn’t find 1 restaurant that was open!  It was Ramadan and the restaurants didn’t open until 6pm.  That meant we had 6 hours of hunger to endure.  We couldn’t even find anyone who sold chips.  Then we remembered the hotel where the couple travelling with us had a restaurant.  We decided to check out of our hotel, take 2 motor taxis and go to that hotel.  We arrived there, checked into a room and went to get food.  Then we were told they have no food and any other restaurant is “far away”.  At this point I was livid.  I wasn’t sure if this was a joke or what?  So after some discussion, Andrew and I took another 2 taxis and went back to our original hotel.  That one was at least in the heart of the city and we knew at 6 pm there would be at least 1 restaurant that would be open.   The people in Oasis hotel must have thought we were crazy, but since they didn’t speak English they couldn’t say anything and just check us back into our room.

Andrew went to get some info on accommodation at the Togean Islands while I showered.  When he came back it was after 6pm and we were able to finally go eat something.  At the foodstall we were eating at we met a few tourists who had just come back from Togeans and they said to ask for a guy name Eddie at the Oasis hotel and that he would help us with accommodation in the Togeans.    After a delicious meal of chicken, rice and veggies, we asked for Eddie.  He arrived and essentially told us what we already knew.  We would find out if accommodation is available once we got there.  He did arrange for transport to the ferry for the next day, however.  This was a good thing because it turned out the ferry leaves 19km from Ampana.

The next morning we shared a car with a couple of girls to the ferry.  One of them kept asking us questions about flights in Indonesia and if it’s easy to book them.  Her friend seemed to reset either her asking us questions or our willingness to help because she made it very clear our help was not wanted.  It was a weird situation.  We arrived at the ferry and purchased “business class” seats for $1 extra.  It turned out to be a small room with some old leather chairs, half of which were broken, with 2 A/C units to cool the air.  Unfortunately 1 of the units didn’t work and 1 of the units was not powerful enough to cool the air in the room, so we baked for 6 hours, in the mid-day sun on the way to the Togean Islands.  Right before we arrived in the town of Wakai, where the ferry stops for the Togeans, we tried to ask one of the staff a question but they pointed their finger at a local girl sitting next to us.  It turned out she was the daughter of the owners of one of the Lestari resort (the cheapest resort on Kadidiri Island) and she said there might be rooms available.  We stuck to her like glue for the remainder of the ferry ride.  Right before we got off a guy approached us and asked if we were going to Lestari and that he was the boat driver for Lestari.  We thanked him and told him we were going with Teteng, the daughter of the owner.  Once off the boat (a feat in itself with all the people pushing and shoving trying to get on and off) she directed us to a smaller boat that would take us to Kadidir Island.  It turned out the guy who had approached us on the boat really was the boat driver for Lestari.  His name was Tommy, and him along with Teteng and her family would be the ones who gave us such great memories of the Togean Islands.

Rantepao – Tana Toraja, Sulawesi

We landed in Makassar early in the morning, but because of the sleepless night we had the night before, we found a hotel room and went straight to sleep.  We didn’t allow ourselves the luxury of sleeping too long because we knew it would mess up our sleeping schedule, if we did.  We went to find something to eat around noon, which probably wasn’t the best idea since the sun was high in the sky and it was blazing hot.  It didn’t help the street names in the Lonely Planet guide were different to the actual street names.  While we were walking we saw a sign “KFC, 5 minutes” with an arrow pointing straight.  We were very excited as for the past month all we had eaten was fried rice or noodles.  We kept walking looking for the KFC.  And walking, walking, walking.  We knew the sign was directed at car traffic rather than pedestrian traffic, so we knew it would take more than 5 minutes, but after 25 minutes we had reached the end of town and we knew KFC was not there.  We started walking back, and then I realized the street we were walking on was one way, in the direction we were heading, which meant the way we had come had been against traffic.  That meant traffic heading that way, must have turned somewhere and that is where KFC must be.  We started walking back, and finding the correct flow of traffic that was supposed to take us to KFC, but after another 15 minutes we still hadn’t found it.  Finally I asked someone, and they pointed us in the right direction, and we finally found it!  Unfortunately the signs directing us to KFC were a little misleading and without having someone tell us how to get there, we never would have found it following those signs.

We had some lunch, and then walked around town.  There wasn’t much to see except a large shipping port.  People were very friendly however, and everyone yelled out hello to us.  Even from passing cars and trucks.  That night we went to bed early and woke early the next day to catch our bus to Rantepao, which is the capital for the Tana Toraja area.

Sulawesi is a large island of Indonesia but it’s not as popular with tourists as other islands of Indonesia.  Mainly due to the distances and how long it takes to cover those distances.  The next morning we had to take 3 different bemo’s to get to the bus station, and once we got there they made us pay 1000 rupiah (around 10 centes) just to enter!  I thought it was crazy that to enter the bus station, we had to pay!   A few men ran at us to try and get our business but the prices they were shouting at us were a lot more than we wanted to pay and the buses weren’t leaving for a few more hours.  My gut feeling told me something was not right, and sure enough, I kept walking and found the public side of the bus station.  It turned out we were on the tourist side.  We walked over to the public side and were able to pay half the price and leave right away.  We settled in for the 9 hour ride.  On the bus we met the only English speaking local, and it turned out he worked for the Sulawesi government with the teachers.  Not really sure what his exact role was, but we think he made sure all the teachers were paying their taxes.  When we stopped to eat he helped us order and spent some time talking with us.  The bus wasn’t full so we were able to spread out and nap.

We arrived in Rantepao and found a hotel room.  The first thing we noticed was how much cooler it was because we were in the mountains.  We ate some food, but mostly we wanted to sleep.  The next day we didn’t get out of bed until 1pm.  We spent the day just hanging around.  The following day we rented a motorbike and went to explore the area.

The area of Tana Toraja is known for their elaborate burial ceremonies as well as the unique way they bury their dead.  The ceremonies are so elaborate and cost so much money sometimes the funeral doesn’t happen until 4-12 months after the person has passed away!  Our goal was to see one of these ceremonies while we were there.   That day however, we went to see the burial sites of the dead.  In the past, the Toraja people used to hide their dead, in their coffins, in the cliffs surrounding the region.  The main reason was to deter people from stealing the burial offerings.  These days it’s a tradition rather than fear of items being stolen.  In addition, life size statues are sometimes built of the person who is buried there to stand and watch over the coffins.  Their families are obligated to change the statues clothes, on a regular basis.  It’s a very eerie feeling when you enter one of these caves.  They’re very accessible and the area is known for this so a lot of the burial sites are marked on a map.  The first thing I noticed when we walked in was all the human skulls and skeletons lying around disintegrating coffins.  Luckily all the deceased were dead for at least 100 years so there was no smell.  You have to walk into the dark cave with a flashlight and everywhere you shine your light you see a coffin squeezed into a small space.  Some of the coffins have the statues standing over them fully dressed, which gives it a more eerie feeling, and others are just crumbling apart with, perhaps, a thigh bone sticking out.  And they coffins are not only on the ground, they are also above you.  I was constantly afraid one of them would fall on top of me.  Andrew went deeper into the cave than I did, as I was very spooked by being in a cave with hundreds of corpses.  And even though this is a big tourist attraction, I still felt as if it was a little disrespectful to gawk at these dead people.

We visited 3 or 4 more of those burial sites that day and each one was filled with disintegrating coffins and each one was just as spooky.  In addition to looking at the different burial sites, we were admiring the architecture that can only be found in Tana Toraja.  The houses are built with the roof shaped like a boat (it’s to resemble the buffalo horns) with the roof rising at each end.  They also always pointed north-south.  These homes are called tongkonan houses, and were traditionally used as 3 room homes.  1^st room was used for cooking, the 2^nd room was used as a living area and the 3^rd room was used as a sleeping area.  The homes were fairly small back then, but the modern houses are built much larger, some with 2 or 3 storeys but all with the boat shaped roof.  They are very beautiful and it’s beautiful to see whole villages with only these types of homes.

We wanted to see one of the elaborate funeral ceremonies which are specific only to Tana Toraja, but because we were trying to get to the Togian Islands in the north, and the ferry schedule is very specific and we would miss the ferry if we stayed for another day, we opted to miss this.  Luckily we would come back through Tana Toraja later and would be able to see one of those ceremonies.  That evening we purchased tickets for the bus ride to Poso, which would be our first stop on the way to the Togian Islands.  We woke up the next day and went to wait on the side of the road by our hotel, for the bus to come and get us.  This is what we were instructed to do at 9am.  At 9:15 we saw the bus and started waiving at it, only for it to ignore us and drive right past us.  We were afraid it would get away so we got an ojek and told him to drive fast.  I guess that the 2 of us with our backpacks weighed a lot more than his motorcycle was used to, and we went very slowly.  I was ready to strangle the driver.  Luckily the bus office was only 2 km away and after a 10 minute drive, we arrived there only to see the bus driving away.  We grabbed our bags and started running after it but it just ignored us and ran away.  I was livid at this point and we stormed into the office telling them the bus didn’t stop to pick us up and now it just drove away.  They all smiled at us pleasantly and told us it was not our bus, but a different bus.  Our bus hadn’t come yet but we could wait at the office for it.  To say we were stunned was an understatement, but I was pissed off.  Mainly because we looked like fools waving at the bus and running after it while the whole time it wasn’t even our bus!  I was also pissed off because all the buses from that company look exactly the same and don’t say the destination anywhere so it’s very easy to assume you’re waving at the right bus.  It would have been nice for them to tell us this when booking the tickets.  Our busy finally did arrive, after 10am.  It was only an hour late.

Yogjakarta

We arrived in Yogjakarta and walked from the train station to find a hotel room.  After being led around by a guy to all the hotels he would get commission from, we told him we would find it on our own and found Merpati hotel.  It was a pretty good hotel near the city centre and it had free wi-fi.  We spent the night walking around and the next morning we rented a motorbike and went to the Immigration office to see if we could get our visa’s extended.  It turned out we could but we needed to have a flight out booked before that could be done.  We said we were taking a boat out and not a plane, so they allowed us to write a letter stating we would be leaving on a boat on a specific date, and then we needed to purchase an official stamp downstairs and attach it to our letters.  Then we gave them our passports along with our letters and were told it would take 3 business days to process.  And since it was Friday, we would have to wait 5 days.  Since we had the motorbike we drove around and found a shopping mall.  We went in and browsed around for a few hours and hand lunch.  We noticed they had a cinema and they were playing Harry Potter 7 part 2 so I made Andrew promise he would take me to the movie in the evening.   We then drove around the town but since it was Ramadan a lot of places and tourist attractions were closed.  After we had dinner Andrew took me to the movies, and we paid $2 each, which is the cheapest movie I had been to since the Rainbow Cinemas in Mississauga in the ‘90’s.  Although the quality of the movie was good, the sound was inconsistent but I guess we couldn’t expect too much for $2.  These prices, however, confirm how overpriced Canadian theaters are.

The next day we were planning on visiting a couple of temples which were out of town, but when we got there they weren’t that impressive and we thought a overpriced.  I guess once you see Angkor Wat in Cambodia, it’s hard for other temples to keep your interest.  We started driving around some back roads and came across a cattle market.  We parked our motorbike and we were able to walk amongst the cows and the farmers.  There was also a smaller goat market next to it.  The locals thought it was really funny to have tourists at their market and kept asking us if we wanted to buy a cow.  We spent the rest of the day exploring the city and made arrangements to go to Borobudur the next day.

Borobudur is a small town about an hour from Yogjakarta that is supposed to have a beautiful temple there.  That is the main tourist attraction and really the only source of income for the town.  We arrived there and checked into Lotus 2, where instead of a room we had a small apartment to ourselves, with a stunning view of the rice paddies.  I was feeling really tired but I just thought it was due to lack of sleep.  We had some lunch, came back to our hotel room, watched a movie and then napped.  We walked a little around town, but I was still tired and was starting to develop a cough so we stopped in a store to buy some cough medicine.  By 6am the next morning I had a fever of 38 degrees Celsius.  We were supposed to go see the temple in the morning, but because of my fever there was no way I was going.  I just wanted to sleep.  I made Andrew go by himself, since I though at least one of us should see the temple, and when he came back he said it was a good idea that I didn’t go because there wasn’t that much to see.  Again, once you’ve been to Angkor Wat, it’s hard to be amazed by smaller temples.  My fever went down after taking some Panadol but it started creeping back up when it started wearing off.  I definitely didn’t want to stay in Borobudur while sick, because I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I wanted to be close to a doctor just in case.  So we found a bus and went back to Yogja to our hotel. 

As soon as we were back, I went straight to sleep.  I was self medicating, and while the drugs were working the fever was down, but as soon as they started wearing off, the fever would spike back up.  In the evening it went the highest yet.  The next morning I wasn’t feeling better at all so I asked Andrew to find me a doctor.  He went to our reception, and they called a doctor who said he can do a home visit for $50US.  We thought that was way overpriced and said no.  So Andrew went to the hospital, but thought it wasn’t very clean so he found another clinic that was willing to see me right away.

He picked me up and took me to the clinic.  The doctor spoke English fairly well, but after she examined me she told me I have the common cold.  I was a little skeptical since I had no energy and I still had a fever, but she told me should prescribe an antibiotic.  We showed her the tamiflu we had from Canada and another antibiotic and asked if I can just take one of those.  But again she said I just had influenza so I didn’t need them.  I was confused because I thought tamiflu is used to treat the flu (influenza).  Then she changed her mind and said I could take the tamiflu for a few days, and if I wasn’t feeling better I could take the other antibiotic.  I was more confused than before and after we purchased the cough syrup she prescribed, I decided to take the tamiflu and take my chances.  It seemed to work because after I started taking it, the next day I felt better.  But we didn’t leave Yogjakarta until the following day because I was still weak and just wanted to stay in bed.  Luckily after 2 days of taking tamiflu I was feeling a lot better and we were able to take a train to Surabaya, from where we would catch a flight to Makassar, in Sulawesi.  We purchased tickets at the counter at the airport, but had to spend there as the flight was at 6am the next morning and we didn’t want to pay for a hotel room.  Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep but at least we didn’t miss our flight!

Probolingo

We arrived in Probolingo and took a bemo (blue public minibus) to the train station to see when the next train was.  It wasn’t until late that night so we opted to stay in Probolingo.  Another bemo, full of school children, picked us up to take us to our hotel.  They were all so curious about us but could not communicate with us because they didn’t speak English.  The driver spoke a little bit of English but he kept talking to the children in Indonesian I had the feeling they were laughing a lot at our expense but all in a good humour.  I couldn’t wait to get to our hotel room to shower and wash all the ash off.  After that we went to get some food and then went for a walk around the town.  We were pretty tired so we didn’t go too far, but right away we experienced the friendliness of the locals.  Everyone was yelling out to us “Hello Mister!!” all the time.  People just wanted to say hello and not sell us anything.   I don’t think they get a lot of tourists there.  The funniest were the kids.  They would come up to us and say “Hello Mister, my name is.”  And we would say “What’s your name?” and they would answer “I don’t speak English”.  Obviously the “my name is” phrase was taught to them without explaining its meaning.  This is something we would come across the rest of Indonesia, and it made us laugh every time.  The next morning we caught a train to Yogjakarta (read: jog-jakarta), and as in the Thai trains, the cockroaches came out and Andrew had to kill them all!  I was grossed out and tried not to think about them.