Cultures of Indonesia: From Sea Gypsies to cannibals and more

by Justin Delaney on

Indonesia is a sprawling island nation with a rich cultural heritage. From the temples in Bali to the unique street food, it’s easy to immerse yourself in all the aspects of Indonesia. If you’ve ever wanted to know about the culture, scene and surroundings of one of the world’s most intriguing destinations, read on…

Sea Gypsies
From the Burma Banks in Myanmar to Eastern Indonesia, the Sea Gypsies stretch across an extremely vast and diverse region. These seafarers survive completely from the ocean’s bounty, hunting for fish and mollusks with only their hands and spears. They live in boats or in houses on stilts. A Swedish researcher tested the eyesight of sea gypsy children and compared the results with youngsters from Europe visiting the same geographical area. The results showed that the Europeans saw half as well underwater. Sea Gypsy children possess several eye functions that Western children simply do not, like an ability to constrict their pupils to 1.5mm in diameter. This helps them to see the tiny pearls that they later use to barter. During the fierce tsunami of 2004, their unique understanding of the ocean tipped them off to the approaching danger. They fled for higher ground several days before the waves struck, and as result, waited out the carnage safely in the hills.

The most accessible place to view Sea Gyspies is Phang Nga Bay near Phuket, Thailand. The most culturally preserved place to view the seafarers is the Mergui Archipelago in Myanmar. A great Indonesian place for gypsies is in north Sulawesi. Their sea huts are common in the coastal areas, and you can ponder how little you have in common while you cruise by in a motorboat. You can fly into Manado on Silk Air from Singapore, and combine a visit to the sea gypsies with Tangkoko Nature Reserve. Full of nature’s oddities like Tarsiers and massive hornbills, Tangkoko is not to be missed. All of this can be arranged in Manado or through your guesthouse. Stay at Pulisan Jungle Beach Resort on the fringe of Tangkoko for a perfect home base to explore the region. You can arrange fishing with the locals for a few dollars.

Batak of Sumatra
Sumatra is a dense, jungled sliver of Western Indonesia home to orangutans, tigers, great waves, and the Batak tribe. While their proximity to tourist-heavy Lake Toba has left them open to the influence of modernity, many of their customs and rituals remain intact. In the age of discovery, many explorers visited Sumatra and observed a strange phenomenon among the Batak people — cannibalism. They seemed to have a serious taste for human flesh. Due to the influence of Islam and Christianity, this part of their culture died out around the turn of the 20th century. Rest assured, if you go to view their unique customs and sublime tropical architecture, you will not end up in some kind of elaborate jungle stew.

Flying into Medan and taking a bus to Lake Toba is the ideal plan for checking out the Batak tribes. Medan can be reached by Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Lake Toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world, is home to several Batak villages. You can take a boat ride to gorgeous Samosir Island in the middle of the lake to check out the Batak. Arrangements can be made with a local guide or through a prepackaged tour in Medan.

Baliem Valley Tribes of West Papua
Getting to the The Baliem Valley in West Papua involves iffy connections and white-knuckled flights. For those who brave the ride though, cultural treasures await. More languages exist than swimming pools in West Papua, which is a fine ratio for the intrepid. Aside from an occasional Nike-capped native reminding you of consumerism’s astonishing imperial reach, the preservation of Stone Age culture remains intact. Discovered by the West in the 1930s, Baliem hosts several tribes like the Dani. They wear bird of paradise headdresses, gauge success in terms of pigs slaughtered, and are famous headhunters.

To arrange a trip into the Baliem Valley, Jakarta is a great starting point serviced by numerous international cities. From there, book a flight on Indonesia’s safest domestic airline, Garuda, to Jayapura in West Papua. In Jayapura, you need to obtain a permit (easy and cheap) to visit the interior of the island. Since no roads lead into the valley, you must again fly, this time to Wamena. Wamena is the jumping off point for treks into the valley and hiring a guide is a necessity. It is possible to volunteer with local mission groups to reach the villages, but this can be difficult to arrange in advance.

Tana Toraja in central Sulawesi
More accessible than West Papua, Tana Toraja in the misty central highlands of Sulawesi also offers a portal into the past. Aside from rich indigenous customs, architecture — and allegedly the best coffee in the world — the main draw is the epic funeral ceremony. Like the tribal equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster, the ceremony includes elaborate dances, buffalo fights, chanting through the streets, and a full buffet of animal slaughter. All of this goes on for one week. Some families take years to raise the funds for the funeral procession, with the body presumably just standing by for his or her big day.

The cheapest way to fly into Sulawesi is on Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur to Makassar (Ujung Padang). From Makassar, arrange a driver or take a bus to Torajaland. The ride through dense rain forest will take about 8 hours. Cost is around $10 for a bus and close to $100 for a private taxi. Best time to visit is in the late summer and early fall, which is funeral season.

Hindus of Bali
Bali has a reputation for being an idyllic beach paradise, but the real draw is its exceedingly rich and pervasive culture. Reminders of the Hindu faith enrich the Balinese experience in such a ubiquitous manner that you feel part of something divine throughout your visit. Little offering trays top nearly every surface — even mopeds. Every village has a village temple and every home has its own small home temple. Unlike many places in the world, where the contemporary use of historic sites serves the tourist function more than their original intention, famous temples in Bali still play a significant role in daily religious life. As a result, you are part of an experience more than an exercise in aesthetic appreciation. It is not uncommon to stumble upon a traditional dance or funeral procession while passing through the open corridors of rich Balinese history.

Bali is the most accessible island in Indonesia, and the cheapest way to get there is on Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. It is possible to get the flight for around $100 roundtrip. Ubud in central Bali provides a great base of operations for cultural endeavors. My favorite places to stay in Ubud are Tegal Sari, Greenfields, and Tepi Sawah. Be sure to book early and get a rice paddy view. For a great show, check out the Kecak dance near Ulu Watu temple. The performance is based on the Ramayana and takes place just as the sun sets beyond the cliffs of south Bali.

Dayak Tribes of Borneo
The Dayak tribes of Borneo live in unique community longhouses in the interior of maybe the wildest island on the planet. They hunt animals by blow dart, practice shamanism, and were once feared headhunters. Their headhunting practice resurfaced briefly in the early 21st century, during an unfortunate ethnic war with the Madurese from northeastern Java. Unlike most bros on Spring Break, the Datak have spiritual meaning behind their tribal tattoos. Many youth commemorate their first hunting kill with a tattoo, and animal tattoos are routinely used to draw power from the represented animal spirit. Today, Christianity or Islam has replaced much of their animist heritage, a theme common in Indonesia.

It is possible to visit The Dayak in both Indonesian (South) and Malaysian (North) Borneo. For the wildest experience, fly to Balikpapan in Indonesia, which is serviced from Jakarta on Garuda. Arrange a river cruise down the Mahakam River with a local guide agency to view Datak river life. You can also plan a multi-day package tour if you really want to go deep into the jungle of Borneo.

Seed contributor Justin Delaney prefers to live out of his backpack, and has taken more than 30 flights in the last 2 months. Check out his adventures at Goboogo.

Rare, really smelly Sumatran “Corpse Flower” to bloom at Houston museum

by Laurel Miller on

The botanical world is a fascinating thing, but fans of “Little Shop of Horrors” will be especially excited about the eminent blooming of the endangered Amorphophallus titanum, at the Cockrell Butterfly Center at Houston’s Museum of Natural Science. Nicknamed the “Corpse Flower” for the unholy stench it emits in bloom, the phallic-looking plant is one of the largest, rarest flowers in the world. Native to parts of Indonesia (I’ve seen Raffelsia, a similar flower from a different family, on a trek in Thailand’s stunning Khao Sok National Park) these suckers can reach up to 10 feet in height, with a diameter of up to six feet. Early explorers in Sumatra actually believed the flower was a man-eating plant.

“Lois,” Cockrell’s resident Corpse Flower, is about to bloom for the first time, and visitors can check it out for themselves in person, or via webcam. Lois even has her own blog, and Twitter account (not affiliated with the museum). Says Dr. Nancy Greig, director of the Center, “The Corpse Flower is unique because it’s totally unpredictable. No one really knows what triggers a given plant to flower, and [it may] flower once in its lifetime. We’ve had ours for six years and this is the first time it has bloomed-we’re very lucky. It may be the largest, smelliest flower in the world, but its beauty is unparalleled.” Lois is one of perhaps only 30 cultivated Corpse Flowers to ever bloom in the U.S..

If you want to see (and smell) Lois for yourself, she’s due to flower at any second; the museum is open 24 hours until she does. Check her blog for updates.

[Photo credit: Flickr user lornagrl]

12 Amazing Crater Lakes

by Kraig Becker on

Environmental Graffiti, the same website that brought us those amazing views from the tops of the Seven Summits last week, returns with even more great images. The subject of their latest story is the 12 Most Incredible Crater Lakes on Earth. These amazing natural wonders are created not from the impact of a meteorite, but instead they are formed when the collapsed cone of a volcano fills up with water over time.

Some of the amazing places that make the list include Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, which was formed more than 84,000 years ago. The lake remains largely unexplored even now, and stretches to more than 340 meters (1115 feet) in depth. Its shores are lined with mountains, and there is still a great deal of volcanic activity in the area that was once home to the Mayan civilization.

Half-way round the globe from Lake Atitlan in the heart of Turkey, is another unique crater lake that sits atop a dormant volcano called Nemrut. The caldera of this mountain contains not one, but two very distinct lakes, one a cold body of water reaching 155 meters (508 feet) in depth, while a very short distance away is another lake that reaches more than 100 meters (328 feet) into the ground. That second lake has a constant temperature of near 140º Faherenheit, making for quite a contrast to it’s companion.

The other crater lakes on the list span the globe from Alaska to Australia and a number of points inbetween. They each are unique and wonderful, offering visitors some of the most amazing scenery on the planet.

Catching the travel bug: Attack of the killer mosqitoes

by Jerry Guo on

Welcome to Catching the Travel Bug, Gadling’s mini-series on getting sick on the road, prevailing and loving travel throughout. Five of our bloggers will be telling their stories from around the globe for the next five weeks. Submit your best story about catching the travel bug in the comments and we’ll publish our favorite few at the end of the series.

The swamp here could be the stuff of nightmares. Because this happens to be the rainy season, which lasts from October to March, the trails are meant to be waded, not walked. Yet I am utterly stuck, knee-deep in pungent red mud with stagnant water up to my waist. Ellen Meulman, a PhD student from the University of Zurich, doubles back to pull me out of the quagmire. It takes a few hard yanks. “Be careful,” she says. “You can disappear in these waters.” Thoughts of leeches and king cobras vanish, replaced by a more immediate fear.

We’ve been slogging and hacking through the Sumatran jungle for nearly three hours, on our way to rendezvous with today’s observation team. The field staff hustles day in and out to arrive at the nest-site before dawn and do not return until after dark. In between, they track the individual behaviors of the orangutan in excruciating detail.

But for now, I’m too busy worrying about myself. Asides from the immediate danger of disappearing into the quicksand-like mud and trying to balance on a crude plank trail that’s submerged in water, I’m being absolutely devoured by mosquitos. Before embarking on this afternoon trek through the jungle, I dumped half a bottle of herbal mosquito repellent all over my body, but that has made no difference. At one point, the constant biting and buzzing and circling drive me nearly to tears. Alas I’m too tired to cry.
That night, after returning to camp and getting deleeched (a complicated process that involved me screeching in a high pitch voice, “get them off; get them off”, to my driver), I noticed a patch of mosquito bites around my ankle. I started scratching them and soon enough, a half dozen bumps turned into a dozen.

My flight back to the states was set to depart in a couple days, and this swamp was something like 1,000 miles away from Jakarta airport. So I had to leave the very next day, up a winding river and then through the heart of Sumatra on a 10-hour overnight drive back to Medan. From there, I flew to Jakarta and left right away for New York.

Here the story stalls for about a week. I kept scratching my bites and they kept festering and oozing and doing all the other nasty stuff that I’ll just leave to your imagination. What was somewhat worrisome at this point was that these bites weren’t getting any less itchy–and keep in mind that a week has passed by now. Even worse, they started melding together into a few superbumps.

Then all of a sudden, I started walking with a limp. I immediately thought of the worst case scenario: I had contracted some type of flesh eating bacteria (and made the mistake of Googling the images … don’t). I ran down to my school’s health services, where something happened that you never, ever want to happen in a doctor’s office, which is to have the doctor say “hmm, that’s interesting.” He subsequently disappeared, and a few minutes later, came back with three or four of his colleagues. They proceeded to collectively give a “hmm, that’s interesting”. I could see the pity in their eyes. The end was going to come in only a matter of days.

And being the unlucky guy I was, this happened on a Friday afternoon. The nurses and doctors had no idea what I had, although they feared it was contagious. So they basically held me prisoner as an inpatient for the entire weekend. The following Monday, a dermatologist came to see me and declared that I had a “hypoallergic” reaction to the mosquitoes, which is to say that my immune system just went berserk from the utter number of bites I received.

Two weeks of heavy-duty antibiotics and a course of cortisteroids later, the scary rash that was climbing up my leg had abated. Looking back, would I have trekked out there if I knew that it would land me in the emergency room for the better part of a week? Probably!

Yo see, the orangutans in this part of Sumatra are pretty damn special. They’ve learned some remarkable tricks, such as how to fashion a seed-extraction stick to crack open the prickly shell of the Neesia fruit. The theory goes that this rather complicated skill developed from simpler abilities to use tools to dig for honey, fish for termites, and scoop for water. Yet primatologists know little more than that these smarter-than-we-thought apes possess culture; the pressing question now is to figure out how it’s acquired and transferred.

Though outsiders often refer to this swamp as “orangutan heaven but human hell,” the staff does not plan to jump ship anytime soon. They want to bring the station back to its old glory by this fall, with an new 6-room dormitory, solar panels for constant electricity, and three boardwalks (getting to the orangutans without them can take several hours). They’re even hiring-the graduate students need at least five more assistants to juggle the array of projects.

Since fieldwork stopped across Aceh, it’s difficult to precisely quantify the impact of the civil war on this biodiversity hotspot, home to elephants, rhinoceroses, leopards, sun bears, tigers, and some 6,500 orangutans. While the primatologists at Suaq lost much more time than their neighbors-eight years of data-the 70 or so test subjects haven’t missed a beat. In fact, the concentration of orangutans here, where fruits rain from the trees year-round, is greater than anywhere else in the world (twice the density of other sites on Sumatra and five times the density on Borneo, the only other island where these apes can be found). The unusually high density has enabled these solitary creatures to “teach” each other skills like tool-use, making Suaq the ideal laboratory for studying the origins of human culture.

But for now, Suaq is still a friendly neighborhood. I still distinctly remember the afternoon that I finally spot two of the residents: the mellow Lisa and her 6-year-old daughter, Lilly. Lisa, ambling in the treetops, much prefered her sour melaka fruits to our company. But for a brief moment, Lilly swung down to investigate these strange-looking two-legged apes, and realizing we would not make suitable playmates, disappeared in a blur of orange.

This brief encounter with one of the world’s most intelligent and beautiful creatures was worth dealing with the travel bug.

Dispatch from somewhere in Indonesia: A secret school for orangutans

by Jerry Guo on

I’m struggling to make friends here. Miriam, a 9-month-old orangutan orphan who’s learning how to climb a tree, almost scales past her trainer when I approach. For good measure, she starts to cry. Another orangutan signals displeasure by emulating the sound of a Harley barreling toward me. In fact, the only one who tolerates me is 11-year-old Leuser, and not because the 42 air-rifle pellets lodged in his body have mellowed him. He’s also blind.

At any zoo, these surly apes would bomb the aw-isn’t-he-cute exam, but here at the world’s most successful school for rescued orangutans, they’re taught to get back in touch with their wild side. Even playtime is serious business. Passing, say, the test of recognizing a friend (another orangutan) versus a foe (a human logger) could spell life or death for these critically endangered icons of the old world jungle.

Everything happens here with one goal in mind: graduation day, when the shaggy students are set loose into the harsh Sumatran rain forest. But for the students to have a shot at survival, handlers must teach them to avoid humans at all costs, a tough task considering they need to be fed by humans.

And teaching them about the dangers of Homo sapiens means no lines of gawky tourists dangling bananas and posing for pictures. That’s why this center at the far north of Sumatra – one of the main islands of Indonesia – is closed to the public and barely known to outsiders. Even if you made it to the nearby village – where the specialty dish is fruit-bat soup and the humid air is clouded with mosquitoes – this part of Sumatra is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Palm trees line the one-lane road to this village, and in the distance, various plantations – chocolate, banana, papaya – dot the endless green of the hills.

The locals don’t seem to understand why the special training and care given at this school. For instance, keepers will offer the apes a hollowed-out block of wood with honey inside to play with, rather than just chicken and rice, the customary diet of pet orangutans. Turns out, it’s a useful skill for wild orangutans to learn how to scrape honey out of a tree hole.

Another trick to keep the students sharp is to tie up rice sacks with the food inside (they like any sweet fruit). The dim ones will rip the bag open, but the smart ones? They will untie the bag.

But you could say those are elective classes. Most of the orangutans come here either completely spoiled by their former owners – almost all military officers who keep them as illegal pets – or with injuries from clashes with farmers and illegal loggers. The injured receive medical attention, and former pets are quarantined for a few weeks and then transferred into a sprawling system of socialization cages. For the young ones, it may be the first time they’ve seen another of their kind.

During the socialization stage, the residents make friends – and sometimes enemies. Two 30-pound toddlers, Kevin and Irwin, are rolling around some blue oil drums when they decide to fight (it looks more like tickling). Just as quickly, they become bored and begin swinging from ropes attached to the ceiling of their metal cage. The playground bully, Prince, who’s bigger by at least 25 pounds, glares at them, ready to steal their milk when the handlers bring the twice-daily bowls.

Though wild orangutans are usually solitary animals, a landmark 2003 Duke University study revealed that they have culture, the only primates besides chimps with this human characteristic. Even more surprising, they’ve been observed using all sorts of tools to dig for termites, scrounge for honey, and get at the seeds inside the razor-sharp neesia fruit – knowledge passed from ape to ape. After all, it’s unlikely a whole troupe of orangutans simultaneously realized leaves could double as gloves or umbrellas.

If all goes well, the students will soon leave this garden paradise – with its freshwater springs, wood gazebos, and hanging orchids – for the tiger-infested rain forest of Jambi Province. It’ll be a 36-hour drive down the spine of Sumatra to a place even more hidden away.

There, they must pass their final test. Handlers will bring them into the jungle each day and teach them everything else they need to survive: what fruits to eat and where to find them, how to eat ants and build nests, and perhaps how to use a tool or two. The wilder ones may graduate in a couple weeks. Tamer ones could take months or years. And the tamest ones? Well, like human students, they don’t want to get out of bed until noon and will expect food to be handed to them on a plate (and don’t even ask them to build a nest anywhere off the ground).

Regardless of their survival know-how, these orangutans face poor odds. Only 6,500 remain in Sumatra and 50,000 in Borneo, down by half from two decades ago.

Indeed it takes stellar teaching to assure an orangutan takes to the wild. More than 90 orangutans have been released since 2003, when the reintroduction began. And it’s not goodbye after graduation. Field observation of the animals suggests the survival rate may be as high as 80 percent.

As it stands, wild orangutans need all the help they can get. At current rates of growth, illegal logging, mining, and oil palm plantations, could destroy 98 percent of the orangutan’s habitat by 2022, a UN report warned last year. Many conservationists predict the extinction of the orangutan within a decade or two.