Mentawai, outer islands of West Sumatera Province, Indonesia, have very beautiful panorama and unique community custom. There are four islands in Mentawai populated: Siberut, Sipora, North Pagai, and South Pagai. Majority population is Mentawai Tribe that has traditions maintained from generation to generation, since Neolithic age.
Mentawai Tribe maintains the tradition to tattoo their body. Mentawai tattoos are well known around the world, and become one of the oldest tattoos in the world. Every tattoo printed in their body becomes part of self identity, social symbol, work, and natural meaning.
Learning Mentawai Tatoo is not only understanding its motive, shape, and beauty, but also taking visitor and tourist to go to every place in Mentawai and study the meaning of tattoo for each and every Mentawai Tribe.
Besides that, the process of tattoo printing and its role for Mentawai Tribe have their own culture story, very unique.
On the other side, Mentawai also known with its ocean beauty. A lot of surfers love the wave along the coast of Mentawai, stretched across the high seas, Indian sea. Rumors said that Mentawai has the most challenging wave to be conquered. There are about various 100 surfing spots in Mentawai coastline. Because of this, Mentawai has been appointed as surfing competition host several times. Next year, 2011, Mentawai will be visited by world class surfers who participate in world class surfing competition.
Courtesy of Flickr
Although destroyed by earthquake and tsunami on October 25, 2010, Mentawai still has its unique culture and beauty of ocean wave for surfing. A lot of people are optimistic about the Mentawai future, especially their tourism in fishing, sailing, scuba and trekking charter adventure cruises. Earthquake and tsunami have brought around them to make a better living, to make a stronger tourism base.
No comments:
Post a Comment