Papua Indonesia

WARNING for minors: please ask your parents permission as some pictures contain tribal nudity. We tried to select pictures appropriate for all viewers, but if you are under 18, ask your mom or dad.

It never ceases to amaze us that there are still small groups of people on earth untouched by Western civilization and living as they have for thousands of years. It is estimated by Survival International (see their website for interesting reading) that there are still over 100 uncontacted tribes in the world. Papua has a large share of these tribes. While the Dani tribes that we visited in Papua's Baliem valley have been in touch with the outside world for several decades, the remoteness of the region where they live has largely interrupted attempts to change their culture.

Papua is yet another incongruous island in the largely Islamic country of Indonesia. Like the people of Vanuatu (see our previous blogs), native Papuans are mostly considered to belong to the group of Pacific Islanders known as Melanesians.

We opted to save some money and make our journey by hitch hiking around the area, so before heading out to the remote areas of Papua's Baliem Valley, we stopped off at the local market for some food and to find transportation. We loved the rich blend of aromas, colors and food. We were even pleasantly surprised to see many of the local Papuans in their traditional dress, consisting of penis gourds for the men and grass skirts for the women. Kelsi had visited Papua before and even purchased one of the penis gourds. Her dad was fond of fooling his friends into trying to play it like a flute before he showed them a picture of what it really is.


Our first stop in Papua after we left the market place in an overflowing van was a small tribe of Dani people. They were proud to show us a their village mummy which has a small pock mark on his scapula (see just below the hand in the picture below.) According to the man showing us the mummy, this hole in the mummy's back is from the arrow which killed the man in tribal war some 250 years ago.


The picture below shows a similar arrow wound just behind a living man's scapula from a tribal war a few decades ago. Luckily for him, he survived.

Rusty with the Dani Tribesmen. He asked if he could get a bone nose ring too, but Kelsi wouldn't go for it.
Funerary rituals are always interesting, and one of the more interesting ones in Papua is that when a family member dies, the women remove the top one or two joints from their fingers. Notice the left hand of the older woman below, who has obviously lost a number of close kin. We saw other women who were missing even more of their hands, which must make life rather difficult... The practice has been outlawed by the Indonesian government, but we still noticed some relatively young women who had continued the tradition.

Even though traditional tribal culture is still alive in Papua, this is changing rapidly. This move from traditional culture to modernization wipes out much of what is interesting (and valuable) in these cultures, which is one of the primary reasons we chose to travel now before international influences changes so many of the places we have been seeing.

We also had a great story about the airport security. The local military had all flights on one carrier booked out for 3-4 days due to elections. We found it amusing watching the soldiers put their bags through the security screening just before they walked through the metal detectors wearing semi-automatic machine guns. So, what, there might be some weapons hidden in their bags?

This reminded Kelsi of a similar incident when she was in Papua a few years ago. She forgot to put some spears she purchased into her checked luggage. The airport security motioned for her to put them through the screening belt to check them onto the plane as though the airport security was worried there might be some weapons hidden inside the spears!

Sulawesi Indonesia and Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

In Sulawesi we stayed in a typical beach shack and spent several days diving, snorkelling, and reading lots of books. It was a pleasant rest after our more vigorous traveling in Papua the week before. After destroying our diving camera in New Zealand, we didn't get any pictures while we dove the world class reefs in Sulawesi Indonesia. We did manage to get some video of the place, and we plan to make a nice video of our trip for anyone interested later. The reef and sea life were amazing. It was definitely among our top diving experiences. On one dive we had turbo current with the reef whizzing by. We saw lion fish just while snorkeling. They are such unique looking fish (pic from the web):


The highlight of this trip was meeting Vijay and Vivien, a newly married couple from Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. We told them that we had a layover in KL after Sulawesi, and they were kind enough to invite us home as guests since they coincidentally were on our same flight. They were very hospitable in letting us stay in their comfortable apartment, and even showed us around several interesting areas of town with nice ethnic food. The highlight was ducking into an Indian restaurant to wait out a torrential downpour as well as getting a Thai Massage. For some reason we both love the torture of the Thai Massages. Needless to say, we were very happy to make some new friends and did our best to convince them to come visit us in Utah some day!

Bali Indonesia

Bali has it all.

World class surfing and scuba diving. Mountains to climb and rivers to raft. Smoldering volcanoes and smoldering jungles (full of menacing monkeys)! It even has one of the most interesting cultures we have seen (see the photo of traditional Balinese dancing above). Bali is a Hindu island in the midst of the largely Islamic country, Indonesia.

Bali is one of many islands in the archipalego (string of islands) which makes up the country of Indonesia. Indonesia's enormous amounts of land (over 3X that of France) are spread out over an even more enormous area of ocean, and are highly populated (some estimate 300,000,000 people). Not surprisingly, the culture of each island is dramatically different from the rest.

Kelsi first visited Bali several years ago. Since that time, the best-selling travel/spiritual book, "Eat, Pray, Love," featuring Bali came into our hands. In the book, the author spends several months with a traditional Balinese medicine man named Ketut Lyer. Although we had no thought to look him up, by strange fortune, we happened to meet a man who took us to Ketut for a palm reading. Ketut was a delight! As part of the palm reading, he inspected our palms, backs, arms, legs, and heads. After looking us over, he pronounced with a huge, toothless grin that we were "very good boys and girls!" Among other things, he let us know that Rusty's lips were sweet like sugar, whereas Kelsi's were sweet like honey. He told Kelsi to slow down while driving and Rusty to work on a patient heart. Definitely worth the visit...


In addition to visiting with Ketut the medicine man and painter, we paid a visit to the famous monkey forest in Ubud. It was confirmation that Kelsi was indeed sweet like honey; the monkeys wouldn't stop bothering her!

Rusty seemed to get along alright. They must have thought he was one of their own!



In addition to our time enjoying Balinese culture, we decided to try our hand/feet at surfing. Before we rented boards on our own, we hired an instructor at a local surf school to get us started out. Although he was able to get us both up and riding pretty well, as you can see, he couldn't get Kelsi to quit plugging her nose. Her nose-plugging style is a little unorthodox, but she managed to take a few rides.



Bali is really a great place for anyone and everyone: great shopping, five star accommodations (not that we stayed in one), reasonably safe (if you stay away from the night clubs), and it's affordable on our budget.

Tonga - "The Friendly Islands"

As we approached the Island of Tongatapu, Tonga our pilot announced in all seriousness "no worries folks, the volcano has finished erupting, so we should have a clear landing." Tonga would be our final stop in the volcanic Pacific "ring of fire." Supposedly, the three-headed palm tree pictured above proves that we were there.

Captain James Cook, one of the greatest navigators the world has known, stopped by Tonga in the early 1800's and the locals threw him a huge party and feast, after which he bestowed upon Tonga the name of "The Friendly Islands." What Cook didn't know was that the Tongans were actually planning to fatten him up in preparation for slaughter and raiding Cook's obviously rich boats. However, the Tongans dropped the plan due to indecision among the leaders. Thirty years later, a different party of mariners fell to this plot upon reaching Tonga and were massacred. Cook was later killed in a similar manner in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) after leaving Tonga.

All the same, we decided to try our luck and enjoy a Tongan Feast.

After the feast, we enjoyed a show of traditional dancing. The highlight for us was the hip dancing (not pictured here) and the Tongan fire dancing (pictured below). In Arambol India we had already attended a professional fire spinning show put on by the local hippies, but watching these Tongan's light their hair and the roof on fire (no exaggeration!) was definitely well worth while.

In addition to the fire spinners, we enjoyed the traditional costumes. It's interesting to consider the different modesty standards we have found around the world. In Tonga it is not appropriate to have your knees show, but the traditional dress is mostly sleeveless. In India, the modesty is wrapping up from head to toe in brightly colored cloths, except that it is completely appropriate to wear a midriff with the belly hanging out. In Vanuatu, women go bare-chested, but showing thighs is considered very inappropriate.


In addition to the traditional food, dancing and costuming, we were also interested by the all-black clothed funeral processions, and the shallow-ground burial mounds.



Tonga has amazing vistas everywhere. The rough surrounding ocean has formed blow-holes and caves at every turn. However, Rusty was reluctant to take too many pictures of the spraying and drenching blowholes (didn't want to ruin another camera), so we instead took a few pictures from the top of these 30 foot cliffs. Just after snapping this shot, a colossal wave smashed the cliff below and show water clear up and over Rusty. Luckily the camera was spared the drenching this time, but so much for trying to protect the camera!


When the seas mellowed out, we took some time to snorkel and kayak around some of Tongatapu's outer islands. The fish-life was abundant and the corals were fairly colorful. We also saw some giant clams unlike anything we'd seen before. The shipwreck below is one of the sites where we enjoyed snorkeling.


Kayaking in the strong currents and winds wasn't too easy, but we had a good time all the same.

In additiona to great culture, vistas, and activities, Tonga is a total tropical paradise. They litterally drop sticks into the ground and Yams, Taro, and other hearty foods spontaneously grow without any needed maintenance. The result is that in Tonga one doesn't need to bother laboring much to feed themselves, making it the perfect place to master "the art of doing nothing," as our Tongan hotel owner concierge it.  While Kelsi and I were mastering the art of doing nothing, we attended a local rugby game.



We found particularly interesting the Tongan "Fakaleiti." These ladies are a long-standing tradition in Tonga, and provide a universally accepted alternate gender and sexuality choice.  Interestingly, for thousands of years, India has also supported a transsexual or transgendered tradition known as "Hijra." In India, the venerable Hijra were even incorporated into the Hindu religious rituals and afforded special roles at some ceremonies. We found it very interesting to consider how different societies around the world handle sexual variation.

Since we didn't quite master the art of doing nothing, we are off for another island in the Pacific. We've now visited two Polynesian countries (New Zealand and Tonga), but only one Melanesian country (Vanuatu). We'll leave you to guess where we are heading next...

Vanuatu's Very Active Volcano and John Frum Movement

As we explained in the last blog about Vanuatu, it is a pacific island nation. After we spent some time with the Namba people on the island of Malekula, we opted to take a puddle jumper airplane (grass landing strips and all) to check out the island of Tanna. We are told that this island may have been featured on a few television programs like "Lost," but despite any popularity, we had the place to ourselves.

As we've mentioned, we prefer to make arrangements "on-the-go," and fortunately, this was possible in Vanuatu because of their language of Bislama, a pigeon English with a vocabulary of around 8000 English and French words. Although very difficult to understand at times, the language was fascinating to study! Kelsi was so happy when an elderly man was surprised at how well she was hiking and shook (almost broke) her hand, excitedely saying "Yu SmatFalla!" ("You are a smart fellow!"). Here are a few common phrases and translations, complete with the original spelling as used by the people of Vanuatu:

Bae/Me lukem yu (Bye / Me look you (See you later))
Tankyu to mas (Thank you too much)
Nem blong mi Kelsi (Name Belong Me is Kelsi)

Here is a sign about AIDS prevention in the Bislama "pigeon english." See if you can get the meaning:

After a late landing on the Vanuatu island of Tanna and a night's rest in the island's main town (a sparse collection of a dozen buildings), we again thumbed a ride to Tanna's volcanic back country to see the famous and terrifyingly explosive Mount Yassur. We first had to cross a swollen river from the huge rains (it is rainy season here). Two big local guys helped Kelsi cross the waist deep raging river, while Rusty was able to cross with the help of one other guy. No other travelers were around since in the main town everyone was spreading news that the river wasn't crossable. That was partially true, but we like the adventure of figuring out how to make things work. The group of locals on the river's edge cheered for us when we made it. We had to leave all our bags behind with a villager so we wouldn't destroy our stuff if we fell into the river, so we spent the rest of the day and following night with nothing but the wet clothes we wore and our camera that we put in layers of all our baggies inside a pocket of Kelsi's rainjacket.

The climb up the steep, slipping and crumbly west slope of this volcano was scary enough, but nothing could prepare us for the exploding duel cauldrons of Mount Yassur, which often shot huge chunks of glowing, molten magma high over our heads. Although Kelsi claims that Rusty just caught her by surprise in this snapshot, it is pretty obvious (to Rusty) that she wasn't exactly relaxing into the experience:


After sliding and skiing back down the ash slopes of Mount Yassur, we hiked over to a nearby village where the locals are renowned for practicing a very interesting religion known as "John Frum." The John Frum movement is classified by some academics as a "cargo cult" which was developed as the islanders saw the inexplicable riches of cargo materializing into the hands of the European colonizers.

The John Frum movement took root when a man named John turned up and announced himself to the locals and told them that they would prosper if the Europeans departed and they returned to their traditional "Kastom" ways.  In some popular accounts, he wrote them a letter which ended in the signature of From, John, which the elders transcribed as "John Frum," and thus was a religion born.

In the beginning of the John Frum movement, the Vanuatuans used black magic, chanting, and dancing. During world war II, more cargo riches than ever began to pour into their lands. In response, they altered a few of their traditions and began to mimic many of the soldiers activities. The Vanuatuans reasoned that this must be the "magic" responsible for materializing the cargo riches they were seeing.

They cleared jungle and created bamboo airplanes and watch towers to "lure in" airplanes filled with cargo. They built bamboo wharfs to lure in ships with cargo from the sea, and even created a bamboo radio tower to send out orders for goods. The radio orders were sent using bamboo-made microphones and earphones which the chief would wear with a cord attached to an "oracle," which was generally an elderly village woman who would babble in response to the chief's orders.

To some of the John Frum people, the arrival of the Americans was a fulfillment of the John Frum prophecy. From that point on, the John Frum movement began to incorporate American Uniforms as their official clergy dress, sing traditional lyrics set to American battle hymns, and ceremoniously raise the American flag each morning.

Kelsi and I were greeted very warmly by the John Frum village, and personally received by the movement's leader, Chief Issak Wan. He not only took time to introduce us to his tribesmen and explain the religion, but even invited us to spend the night with him and participate in the Friday night singing and flag ceremonies the next morning. Friday night is the John Frum's "Sabbath", and we thoroughly enjoyed joining them for their all-night sing/dance along from Friday 6 pm until Saturday 6 am. The band was a gifted group of singing guitarists and drummers, and the villagers were equally talented singers and dancers. We especially enjoyed seeing the small children's natural sense of rhythm as they danced and clapped to the music ALL NIGHT LONG.


At 8am in the morning, we witnessed the morning flag ceremony, where the tribesmen marched like soldiers, even donning US army uniforms, and raised the American flag up over their village.

Rusty and Chief Issak Wan with the American flag and one of the US Military flags in the background.

Incidentally, Chief Issak Wan told us that he was taken to the US for a visit of LA, Atlanta, DC and a couple other places by some John Frum supporters. He said that it was terrifying with all the traffic and planes . . . This coming from a man who lives in the shadow of an active volcano that has constant 10 minute intervals of ground shaking explosions - on a calm day. Not to mention the "shark bay" practically in his back yard. We even saw the glow of the volcano in the background from his village music and dance evening.