Sulawesi Surprise ! : Sign of the Macabre

Outside the school gates, a group of students were huddled together and you'd believe they were waiting for a bus. School must be over and most probably it must be lunch time too as some of them were picking at their food. God knows if a bus would come to such an isolated area to fetch them but really, all of us were now more preoccupied with what looked like a limestone hill just across the little untarred road. In the Niah Cave in Sarawak, Malaysia, wooden coffin called death ships had been found and while I did not see the ships while I was there, here in Tana Toraja, there were a few ship-liked structure that had seen better times, lying around. Wooden effigies lined the cracks on the walls of the limestone hill. These wooden effigies are called tau tau and in Tana Toraja, their presence suggest the presence of a burial site...


Can you spot the ships and the tau tau?

Travel Tip: Visit a burial site!