Tana Toraja, Between The Cliff and The Dead
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Between the mountainous terrain of southern Sulawesi, you’ll be welcomed by religious spectacle and the hospitality of the Torajan’s [not Trojans! ^_^] people. With majestic panoramas, captivating villages and dramatic ceremonies, Tana Toraja is the undisputed highlight of any journey to Sulawesi.
click here for better resolution of the map
As the development of the tourism activity on this region, you’ll get no difficulties to find several star-rated hotels, tourism center, internet service, and other upgraded infrastructures which opened Tana Toraja highland to visitors of all interests. About 60 cheap lodgings are also available for backpackers, so you don’t have to worry about where to spend the bedtime. The main attraction of Tana Toraja is their beliefs and the way of life, which you can experience easily around the sites in the town of Rantepao (district capital), 328 kilometres north of Makassar. A gate built in traditional boat-shaped architecture, marked the spot as the entry of Tana Toraja (Toraja Land). Various of handicrafts and unique shops can be easily found in the traditional village called Kete. It’s another unique memorabilia beside the photographs you could take around your journey in Tana Toraja.
The Torajans believe that their forefathers descended from heaven onto a mountain some twenty generations ago. A traditional cult called “Aluk Todolo” governs all traditional ceremonies which is still follows by the majority people of Tana Toraja. Their colorful culture is especially rich in elaborate sacrificial, post mortuary, and cave burial sites. Between the magnificent cliff graves, Lemo and Londa are the easiest sites to reach. These graves are filled with the effigies of the dead called Tau Tau which depict their nobility. You can hire young village guides to guide you up to the graves so you can see skeletons and old coffins.
But not only the graves will amaze your curiosity. The festival before the dead is buried along the cliff is also an event that shall not be missed. People will hold a party called Rambu Solo in order to respect the spirit of the deceased. Rambu Solo is divided into four levels which is described upon the social status of the dead. The higher the status, the longer the party will took. The corpse is placed inside “Tongkonan”, the traditional house of Tana Toraja, while people performs bull fight, music plays, dances, and bull slaughter. According to the belief, the more bulls and pigs are sacrified, the better status of the deceased will have in the afterlife.
posted by Daniy @ 6:20 PM,
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Kinds of Traveling
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
What kind of traveling do you like? By what means? Well, a little hint below may help you to plan about your future traveling.
Transportation Modes
- Land This kind of travel might be the oldest one, before men knew that they could float on the water and fly above the ground. It usually taken as the best way for traveling short distances. In the old days, people travels by horses and carts, but nowadays, just count it on bus, car, motorcycle, bike, train and you’ll on the half way of your destination.
- Sea Christophorus Columbus made his journey by tons of woods which could float on the water that they called ship. Plus, the navigation system. Thus, he found America and later many sailors made the same efforts that concluded the roundness of earth.
- Air Talking about the 20th century inventions, the name of Wright brothers should not be forgotten. Since they presented the possibility of ‘air-riding’, people were brought to a new experience of traveling through air.
But in some cases, the transport vehicles are also the main attractions of the traveling activity. You might hear about people who traveled by bike from one country to another—just say country or even continent! These people didn’t make their destinations as the main result, but the journey itself that eager them riding miles to miles. Riding on a bike would make them more to enjoy the sceneries along the path they discover. Sometimes they could stop on some point that was interesting and spent a little time to enjoy it.
Travel on such archipelago destination would have needed this kind of transportation. Instead of unavailability of airports on certain islands [thus it can’t handle any airplanes], sea-transport is less expensive for tourists. Besides, you can enjoy the scenery of the wide open sea on your trip. If you’re lucky, you’ll met groups of dolphins on certain areas that must be an interesting attraction along your trip.
Sea and its ‘nowhere-ness’ is the basic idea of cruise travel. People are loaded into a large luxurious ship, that they can do anything they like aboard. These ships provide its passengers with amusing stuffs from swimming pool, tennis court, nightclub, to the gamblers heaven of casino.
In accordance with tourism, airplanes made it possible to global tourism, where large numbers of tourists from far distances are possible to visit certain tour object in an instant. The capabilities to cut the travel time, has made this transportation mode to replace the ship as the intercontinental transport. A short vacation time would make tourists to consider the travel time, which they’d end up with airplane
Regions of Destination
- Domestic It is a known fact that people intend to do vacation but also they don’t have enough chance to travel overseas. Instead of the budget reason, the procedural thing such as passports and visas which is needed to travel over countries is also become the obstacle. Thus, the domestic travel is the most affordable way to experience vacation.
- International In vice versa with domestic travel, the international travel requires you some legal documents like passport and visa. Passport identifies the carrier's nationality, and visa is the permit to do certain activity on a certain time in certain country. Visa issues by a country for many purposes such as vacation visa, work visa, travel visa. You can get visa in two ways: from the embassy of the destination country, and on the destination country itself. The late described called Visa on Arrival (VoA) which is not every country have facilitate. There are also rules and regulations should obey when entering another country.
If you’re intend to do a short vacation, then domestic visit is the most preferably option you can count on. Since the weekend holidays elapse in only 2 days, an international trip would not be a great chance to do. A couple days visit to a next town or even inside the town/region itself surely can make a good break for full month of activity.
The visit describes here are the journey which take distance about 100 miles or below that. Surely it is the mass kind of vacation because it’s affordable, short time, and can be done on every weekend holiday.
The influence of international travel is the economical side which has brought many income for the visited country. Many growing countries generate their income from tourism activity, thus they must have the Ministry of Tourism. The ministry make efforts to 'sell' their nation for the international tourist by holding exhibitions abroad and performing the great attractions of their country.
Labels: transportation, traveling
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posted by Daniy @ 4:32 AM,
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